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Ask A Former National Park Superintendent

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As a member of the National Parks Traveler community for more than five years, I have noticed that many stories touch on aspects of National Park Service management and policies.

Often, comments on these stories have posed questions about NPS management procedures and practices. Sometimes the questions are answered by persons who know the subject. Sometimes the questions go unanswered.

It is heartening to know that so many people care about the national parks and want to be involved in improving the parks and their management. Along those lines, we are starting a new Q&A feature: Ask A Former National Park Superintendent.

Questions regarding NPS policies and practices can be submitted and I will answer one question or more every other week. Questions can be of any subject or park, but we will not address or comment on individual people or employees.

The goals of this effort will be to post accurate information, resources for further information where appropriate, and to encourage vigorous and informed discussion of national park management.

With that said, raise your questions via comments to this post, and I'll pick one or more to answer.

Costa Dillon is a recently retired veteran of 35 years with the National Park Service. He was the superintendent of Fire Island National Seashore, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, and Homestead National Monument of America. He was also the Superintendent of the Horace M. Albright Training Center, responsible for the orientation training for all new NPS employees.

He is the recipient of the Department of the Interior Meritorious Service Award, the National Park Service Sequoia Award for Interpretation, and the Secretary of the Interior's Award for Long-Term Achievement in Diversity. He is an Honorary Fellow of Indiana University's Eppley Institute for Parks and Public Lands and is currently an Adjunct Instructor in the Department of Recreation Management and Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

Comments

Agree Lee, I do not completely support all the changes, for example, I think more emphasis in all LE training should include people skills including the concept of enforcing the spirit and intent of the law, not the letter of said, thepurpose of the National Parks, and the concept that it is easier to escalate a situation than to do otherwise. Thanks to Mr. Rick Smith for two educational posts.


Slc72, I know you didn't pose this question to get a response from me but I'll put this out there anyway. I too have worked at sites were there is seemingly little for commissioned rangers to do as far as law enforcement. I believe the way to better use those resources is to go back to how it once was before the NPS became so specialized and have those guys (and women) with commissions do a lot more work that is now walled off into other divisions. This will give a better result for the public cost wise and quality wise. I recall as an interp seasonal being so frustrated because you have this feeling of being anchored to a visitor center. But the public comes to you to ask questions about the entire park and if you have't been out in the resource seeing trail conditions first hand or actually getting hands on doing the work of bio techs it is hard to give good answers. The solution I think that will work in many medium to small parks is to have the real rangers who range do a lot more work now being isolated into separate divisions. So when a visitor comes to an info desk to ask about conditions on on ORV trail they can speak with someone who's actually driven that trail in recent days.

In his book "Worth Fighting For" Rob Danno has a great chapter about how the over specialization that sweep through the parks in the early 90s has been a disaster.


Amen, Ron. Many's the time I've met an LE ranger in a park and thought I'd just encountered an entire SWAT division wearing a ranger's hat.

Then again, there have also probably been at least an equal number (and maybe more) times when I've met a gun-toting ranger who was as good an interpreter as you might find.

But, oh boy, do those negatives outweigh the positives once they are entered into memory.

Perhaps it's true that it all comes down to individual attitude. We see the same thing in the ranks of city cops and county sheriffs. There often seem to be echoes of too much fear-based training these days in law enforcement of all kinds. Maybe it's somewhat justified given the proliferation of firepower among the public and fear-based rhetoric of some radio heads and politicians.

And perhaps it has a lot to do with the maturity and experience levels of the one wearing the badge.


Perpetual - Amen, too.


See a lot of law enforcers sitting around doing nothing but handing out tickets for speeders in the Smokies. I would like to see how much those bureaucrats budget for automatic weapons in their private shooting range here in the park. I'm glad that backcountry fees can get put back into the general fund to pay for these frivolities. Can't remember the necessity of any swat raids in this area.

The only thing more noxious than the entitlement mentality of a taxpaying citizen expecting responsible fiscal mgmt of a PUBLIC resource is the entitlement mentality of a NPS worker who chastises a citizen's right to question his agency. That is what is wrong with the NPS. That kind of entitlement.


Just one more thing I'll add to the discussion. As an interp I'll say that the best supervisors I had were commissioned LE rangers. I think things would be better to put all the resources of a district in the hands of the district ranger to use at his discretion. That way you don't have situations like I've seen where interps are on their feet all day long dealing with hordes of people while the VUA in the campground fee booth is able to lounge and watch movies. Or where some seasonal interp thinks it is beneath them to clean a bathroom. The walls between divisions keep us from being able to say hey Bill and Suie in interp can handle the campground a couple days a week and get caught up on necessary research between assigning campsites. The problem is though there are Division chiefs far away at HQ whos jobs depend on keeping those walls between divisions high.

Also of course this isn't the good old days when the guns were kept in the glove box of the patrol vehicle but at many small and medium size parks with low rates of incidents it doesn't make sense to have a guy ready to apply the latest choke hold but cant answer the simplest question about the resource and even sees that side of the job as beneath him. These jobs are so sought after we can find people who can do it all.


Smokies... I don't think Margaret Anderson would have thought that the ability to return fire was a frivolity.


Ok here’s the issue I’d like to submit for Costa’s consideration. And I’m sure most of you can guess what the question deals with but I’m not giving up on this dead horse yet.

The land management agencies of the federal government like the National Park Service, the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management discovered long ago they could make their budgets go further by keeping many employees at the field level in seasonal and temporary jobs. This allowed those agencies to avoid the costs of offering benefits and a pension as is required with permanent federal employees. When the term of appointment for these employees ends the agencies often will simply bring in another "seasonal" or “temporary " employee to do the work. I am not talking about situations where the work is truly temporary. I am talking about what is permanent work being divided among multiple temporary employees. I am talking about parks where they could not keep the doors open on their slowest day of the year if not for a patchwork of seasonals, volunteers, student hires, and term appointments.

There are so many who see this kind of work, being a park ranger or a wildlife biologist for example, as a righteous calling that they repeatedly sign up for it year after year. Although after they get out of their twenties and begin to realize they are mortal and will one day need health insurance and retirement benefits these people do start to develop a sense of resentment with the knowledge that their idealism is being used against them by their government.

The biggest controversy in the nation right now is the Affordable Care Act AKA Obamacare. This law will mandate that private businesses with more than fifty employees will have to offer health insurance benefits to employees working more than thirty hours a week. The President has delayed this employer mandate or it would now be in effect. No doubt many businesses will begin to look for creative ways to avoid this mandate such as shifting much of their workforce into seasonal, internships, and temporary status. Almost certainly the federal government won’t accept this and will being imposing fines on these businesses. Soon our government will be imposing sanctions on others for something itself is guilty of. How is it going to look for the Federal Government to begin going after these businesses for engaging in the same tactics it uses to avoid providing benefits to employees?

Do park superintendents and NPS upper management see this approaching pitfall? Do park superintendents feel they can approach regional chiefs, regional directors, and the NPS Director and bring up hard subjects like this? Or is it a climate, as it is at the lower levels, to never pass along unpleasant news to those above? I know there must be people who see this coming but are they of the mind oh well I’m going to keep my head down and let the agency walk into this buzz saw.

What is going to happen when someone on the fifteenth month of their “not to exceed one year” appointment starts wondering why their employer isn’t offering them the same benefits as the people they work along side doing exactly the same work. Might they decided to take these issues to court. Can a class action suit be long in coming?

The agency took a huge PR blow back in the 90’s when a maintenance worker on the Mall died of a heart attack after working eight straight years in back to back seasonal appointments and his family wasn’t eligible for a penny in benefits. http://business.highbeam.com/137618/article-1G1-14860891/flexible-work-f... Just this year a firefight for the city of Prescott Arizona, one of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, was killed fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire. Some how this man worked for the city year round even though he was in a “seasonal” job. His sobbing widdow is seen in TV news reports wondering how she is going to feed her children. http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/08/07/209892173/arizona-firefig... Can NPS management see that it is just a matter of time with the number of people working in this patchwork approach to staffing before the NPS is faced with a similar PR disaster. And never mind the PR is any thought given what these crafty HR games do to moral, the level of service rendered, and just the damage to the concept of the rule of law?

Does this issue get talked about at the upper levels or is there too much of a shoot the messenger mentality?


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