Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky is being hit twice by the federal budget sequestration -- first by having to cut 5 percent from its budget, and again by lost revenues from cave tours that have been canceled due to lack of staff.
Park Superintendent Sarah Craighead said Tuesday that the park stands to lose about $300,000 in tour fees as she can't afford to hire seven seasonal interpretive rangers who normally lead the Grand Avenue and Snowball Room tours.
"So we will suspend those tours, and that will affect about 28,000 visitors, and will eliminate about 600 tours," she said during a phone call. “It’s a pretty big impact to us, because it’s actually kind of a double whammy because it also means that we don’t collect about $300,000 in fees. ... That’s where most of our funding is in the summer.”
The superintendent said other problems could come to light, so to speak, underground as the position of an electrician also will go vacant in a cost-cutting move.
“One of the things that we’re facing wtih sequestration is one of the positions that we have to lapse is an electrician position," said Superintendent Craighead. "On the surface we have 150 buildings that we have to keep with good electrical service, but underground we have 36 miles of distribution system, and several transformers and hundreds of lights. And all that you have to hike to to get to in most cases, some cases it’s a couple miles to get to where you need to go."
Also idled this coming season by sequestration is the Houchins Ferry, one of two ferries that cross the Green River in the park, she said.
"We usually open that (ferry) in March and run it through late fall, and we will not be opening that at all this year," said Superintendent Craighead. "For those users of it, they’ll have an extra drive (of about 30 minutes) to the nearest bridge. So it’s an impact on the local commuinty there."
Comments
Justinh--
I hope you did gain a precise understanding of Mammoth Cave's operating budget because then you know how expensive it is to run a park for the visiting public. I was the superiintendent of Carlsbad Caverns. There are a lot of items in a park's operation's budget that aren't readily apparent to the average visitor. For instance, in a cave park, there are enormous costs involved in the lighting system and its maintenance. I haven't been to Mammoth Cave in a long time, so I don't remember if there is an elevator there, but running the two at Carlsbad involved considerable maintenance and electricity costs. Carlsbad does not run tours, but allows visitors to visit at their own pace. The cost for that goes up as additional rangers are necessary to prevent damage to cave speleothems.
Then there are restrooms to be cleaned and maintained, roads to be maintained, and maybe at Mammoth, occasionally plowed. There are always law enforcement costs to monitor parking lots. I have seen comments from time to time on NPT that the NPS ought to get out of the LE business. Very few local law enforcement agencies want to patrol parks and provide the basic services that NPS protection rangers do so in lot of places, if the NPS got out of the business, no one would be there to fill in behind.
There are costs involved in Search and Rescue and Emergency Medical Services. Parks in remote areas like Carlsbad have to provide these services for visitors. The city services are just too far away to react quickiy.
Parks maintain water systems, sewage treatment systems, trail systems, garbage pickup and other services that most of us get from the municipalities in which we live and for which we pay taxes.
Finally, there are administrative costs as the result of having employees and doing business: HR, contracting, concession management and the like.
Without trying to defend Superintendent Craighead's decision on what to cut and what not to cut, there are a couple things to consider: the sequester comes in with one half the fiscal year completed (a fiscal year for the Federal Government runs from September til the end of the following August). So the impact of the sequester are approximately double what they would have been had the sequester started in the first month of the fiscal year. Secondly, many of the costs outlined above are fixed. There is little that can be done to reduce them. That's why this is so hard.
Rick
Rick Smith...
Well said.
No Rick, I don't know what the incremental cost of running a tour is. But I do know, if it is $500, there is something terrribly wrong. I also know that if it is less than $500 it is foolish to shut down the tours.
I also know the current admin is trying to scare people into believing millions (170 mil according to Maxine) are going to lose their jobs, services are being dramatically cut people will die ...... and they (the admin) are willing to lie about it.
See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/capitol-janitors-m...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/5/email-tells-feds-make-seq...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-appears-have-exaggerated-effec...
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/matthew-balan/2013/02/28/cbs-spotlights-arn...
If the superintendent had the authority, I bet she'd use the revenues from the tour fees to pay the salaries of the interpretive rangers. I suspect that she can't, though. If tour fees are like entrance fees, you can't pay (permanent) staff salaries out of them (a rule meant to ensure that fee demo $$ goes to identifiable projects that benefit the visitors, not merely offload normal costs to free up appropriated funding for other purposes). You can't obligate them (e.g., to someone's salary) until after they have gone to the region & the 80% sent back to the park, 1-4 months after collection, and they only go to specific approved projects with explicit justification in terms of visitor experience, not into general funding or a slush fund.
My impression is that NPS is trying to play this one straight down the line: the hiring freeze and travel ban affect everyone up to the director's office, parks have been warned not to shift costs among accounts and play budget games. [The sequester is not a 1-year temporary cut. If you cut maintenence to cover interp rangers, in a few years you start losing facilities.] Sometimes the rules meant to prevent budget gaming end up with perverse consequences, but the superintendent (and likely even NPS) doesn't have the authority to change the rules.
My understanding is that NPS _may_ receive delegated authority to approve seasonal and temporary hires (without individual approval from above the service), so parks that budget for seasonal rangers are likely to be able to hire at least some seasonals by this summer (not too helpful to parks where spring is the peak visitor season).
People are losing their jobs; how many we can count up after.
Services are being cut.
Don't know about where you are, but here people don't lose their moral standing just by taking a federal job; it is one of the employers in town. I can put a name and a face to the individuals who are in fear of losing their jobs. Takes a bit of the blood lust out of your slashing when it becomes personal.
And you cite [1] the Moonie Times, ultra-conservative outlet [2] Weekly Standard, ultra-conservative outlet and [3] Newsbusters, ultra-conservative outlet, & a blog posted in the Post. Of the four, only Kessler's blog is known to equally skewer the right and the left. Not a stellar "objective" commentary on President Obama.
Once again Rick, you can't address the validity of the arguments so you attack the source. You expect the huffpo to report Obama's deceipt.
For what it's worth, I recall hearing/reading that federal agencies are required to give employees 30 days notice before they're furloughed, so perhaps we should wait and see what happens the first week of April...As for seasonal hires, well, if they're not hired, they're not hired, right? And to keep permanent employees on the job, seasonals likely will go first.
Rick Smith, thank you for your informative comment on dealing with budget issues in the parks. I must agree, it can get very complicated, doubly so when congress is having difficulty getting any kind of agreement on what the budget should be. It creates a lot of extra work for the parks, is tough on the employees and the visitors also get the short end of the stick. It truly is a shame to see this happening, and the people who are going to get hurt the most are the ones who can least afford it. Have seen it several times now over the last 50 years, it is a terrible waste of human time and effort let alone the lack of respect shown to the vast majority of these competent and decent men and women park employees.