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John Wessels Appointed Director of National Park Service's Intermountain Region

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John Wessels, who has served as the National Park Service’s Intermountain Region associate director for administration, business and technology since 2004, has been named director of the region, the largest in the agency.

Mr. Wessels succeeds Mike Snyder, who opted to take retirement not long after Jon Jarvis took the helm of the Park Service. While the Park Service director never came out and directly said it, Mr. Snyder’s management style was widely criticized in the Intermountain Region for taking a predetermined approach when it came to cutting both personnel and programs.

“John has an incredible track record of tackling tough issues and finding
innovative solutions,” Director Jarvis said Monday in announcing the appointment. “Results-oriented and goal-driven, John manages by inclusion, building a collaborative work ethic among employees and with partners. He strives for the highest standards of transparency and accountability. He has an easy grasp of the big picture and is dedicated to the effective use of new and emerging technologies to meet the needs of the National Park Service.

“As the National Park Service looks toward its second century, he will be a valuable member of our national senior management team.”

Mr. Wessels called the appointment a “tremendous honor.”

“The region is home to some of this country’s most spectacular landscapes and most compelling stories, places that have been entrusted to the National Park Service by the American people for nearly 100 years. It is our privilege to care for the natural and cultural resources in parks and to work with communities around the region to help them preserve local history and create close-to-home recreational opportunities for their citizens.

“For me, this is an opportunity to support employees in their dedicated efforts to care for these special places and engage park visitors, partners, and communities,” he added in a prepared statement. “I will listen carefully to their voices as we work together to preserve these places, engage the public, draw young people to the parks, and provide meaningful experiences to our diverse audiences.”

During the last 18 months, Mr. Wessels has led the investment of $200 million in American Reinvestment and Recovery Act funds in priority park projects across the region.  He was the key figure in developing a virtual acquisition strategy that has improved accountability and empowered the workforce with more flexibility for purchasing and contracting, according to the Park Service.  He was responsible for overseeing property management for 43 million acres of public land and more than 2,000 park structures.

Mr. Wessels joined the Park Service in 2000 as the Intermountain Region’s comptroller, where he managed all finance and budget-related activities and developed a web-based system to integrate financial systems data and project information to provide park managers with real-time access to critical income and expense data by park.

During his career he has served as acting deputy superintendent at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco, acting deputy Intermountain regional director, acting associate director for business services at the National Park Service headquarters in Washington, D.C., and most recently as acting superintendent of Grand Teton National Park and the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Memorial Parkway in Wyoming.

From 1989 to 2000, Wessels worked for U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Boulder managing financial and administrative functions and systems for the national physics laboratory.

The Intermountain Region spans the states of Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.  The region includes 92 parks encompassing 11.1 million acres; employs 6,000 permanent and seasonal employees, and generates one-half of all National Park Service concession revenues.  It has more than 230 national historic landmarks and more than 11,000 properties listed in the National Park Service’s National Register of Historic Places.

Comments

"The National Park Service is a more dynamic animal, and administratively more sophisticated, than any one person."

hmmm...Perhaps the inverse of Ben's statement is more accurate. Insert "static" and "provincial" for dynamic and sophisticated.


As does Kurt, I believe that the new RD should be given the opportunity to make his own decisions. Only then will we be able to judge the quality of those decisions. I have friends who have very good instincts in the Intermountain Region who believe that John's appointment will be beneficial for the region.

His first memo to his colleagues in the region demonstrated grace, humility and a willingness to listen, qualities all in short supply in that region for some time. Let's cut him some slack until we see his leadership qualities in action.

Rick


I share Rick & Kurt's comments about giving John Wessels a chance to perform and represent the values of the NPS. Anyone who worked closely with Mike Snyder knows how difficult that could be and the bodies that were left behind attest to his management style. We all were grateful that Jon Jarvis was selected as the NPS Director because we trusted his judgment and knew of his dedication to the Service. He is also not the kind of person to roll over and just "give in" on the appointment of someone to a position that is critical to the success of the National Park Service. We need to back both Jon and John and give them to chance to move the NPS where most of us have thought that the agency was straying away from the last few years.


While all we are left with is the "give him a chance" mentality, it is clear that Wessels has a bad track record. If we dismiss that track record as simply Snyder's evil influence, we are left with an Intermountain Region insider who has practically no NPS experience beyond the Regional Office budget and one has to wonder how he could be best qualified to lead the Intermountain Region out of the quagmire.
The appearance of selecting Mr. Wessels, given his closeness to past events in IMR, clearly sends the wrong message. This is the concern of my contacts in the IMR, and I understand their pessimism. With all due respect, it may have been much wiser to select someone with new ideas from another area of the NPS.

Give him a chance - we're forced to - but that still does not mean his selection was a wise one. On the other hand, it's my understanding that the best candidate(s) didn't want to take on the IMR problems. Hard to understand how someone so deeply ingrained in those problems can straighten them out.
Mr. Wessels came to the NPS as the IMR comptroller, or to use the jargon, as a bean counter. I truly hope he can finally see the parks and people from behind that big jar of beans.
Good decision or not, we have to wish John Wessels the best in his efforts to rebuild Intermountain Region.


Are there no qualified career people who could do this job? This is a puzzling choice and not a good signal to career people.


This was no merit system vetting process, it was an industry appointed decision. Obvious TALKING POINTS, seen here by industry sent commenters to convince the public:
-“Give him a chance - we're forced to”
-“Shouldn't Mr. Wessels be given an opportunity to prove himself”
-“ we have to wish John Wessels the best in his efforts to rebuild Intermountain Region.”
-“ Let's cut him some slack until we see his leadership qualities in action.”
-“I believe that the new RD should be given the opportunity to make his own decisions”
-“Mr. Wessels should be given a chance to live up to the comments made in the press release”

more dishonest info: “a three-person search committee handled the interviews/vetting and that this was an an open search throughout NPS.” “That it was a nationwide search, at least by the vacancy announcement, is certain.”

Finally, how does he REALLY qualify to protect our national treasures, he'll ACT one way and DO another=
acting deputy superintendent at Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco,
acting deputy Intermountain regional director,
acting associate director for business services at the National Park Service headquarters in Wash D.C.,
most recently acting superintendent of Grand Teton National Park .
before that for 11 years worked for a lab selling products with the U.S. Department of Commerce.

Obviously the NPS didn’t use the “BEST MANAGEMENT PRACTICES” to hire, instead use the ole’ most money for natural resources international sales practices.

sadly our nation is corrupted, it will not be corrected.


A highly qualified career NPS'er with strong roots in resource protection and preservation is perhaps the last person park concessioners and gateway community businesses would want to see take over at the helm of the Intermountain Region. From the given qualifications of Mr. Wessel, it appears that his appointment was likely influenced by strong political forces within and external to the NPS with sensitivities to the regional importance of national parks as the economic engines of industrial tourism.


"Never has a decision been so eagerly awaited, and never has one been so bitterly disappointing."

That my friends is the whole story in a single sentence.

Never has a region been so starved for effective, balanced, and experienced leadership and we've been served damaged goods. The best people can muster in support of Wessel's selection seems to be "give him a chance" or let's "wait and see."

We've waited far too long to re-emerge from years of vindictiveness, narrow vision, and lack of field experience. As one commenter observed we were thrilled when Jon Jarvis was named Director - but don't ask us to be thrilled that one of the prime architects of the programs that ran this region into the ground has been selected as the Regional Director.

Wessells may well be a gifted leader (although there is little strong evidence if you look at the programs he has been responsible for during the last decade) - but he begins with at least one hand tied behind his back. Why make the parks in the Intermountain Region suffer that handicap?


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