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."
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As a couple of others have commented, the park can't simply take money collected from tours and put those dollars right back into hiring the seasonal employees needed to conduct those tours.
There are strict limits on how fee revenue can be used by parks and only 80% of the money is returned eventually to the park. Individual parks don't have a "checking account" where they can simply deposit and withdraw collected funds to use as needed. Those are for the most part restrictions imposed to satisfy politicians who are more interested in bean-counting than efficiency.
Well said, indeed, Rick. Good to hear from someone who has actual experience running a national park. (I assume the irony of my earlier post didn't go unnoticed.)
Tell me, could the "Bubble Effect" be in play here? I have for years raised the issue of the big picture connectedness of the economy and the parks but I tell you in the real world outside the bubble economic issues concerning the privarte sector will come down on the Parks but always later than everyone else in the private sector (middle class) employees. Rick B you are, respectfully, the poster child for the Bubble you've referred in earlier posts. I said respectfully, so I would expect the same from you (giving you a break).
Well Jim, there-in lies one of the problems. If the system is set up such that money generating programs (tours) are cancelled even though the generate more money than they cost then the system is broken.
Its like our Post Office in Beckenridge. The Post Office doesn't deliver to physcial addresses, only to PO Boxes. If a package is sent to a physical address, even though the PO has a data base matching physcial addresses, they send it back to the sender. Why? Is it cheaper to send it back than to look up the address? No, but the local post mistress gets charged if she hires someone to lookup the address. Since sending it back shows up in someone elses budget, that is what she does even though it is terribly uneconomic.
The problem is not the lack of funds, it is terrible mismanagement.
TA, with every concievable bit of respect, you have no clue in hell who or what I'm a poster child for.
By the way, ec, per the University of Google, 'deceit' is only spelled 'deceipt' on redstate.com. You could even check it in the Urban Dictionary for a more precise statement.
One again Rick, rather than address the issue , you run and hide, this time behind spelling.
If any attempt to honestly explain the NPS budget issues is branded as being in the "bubble wrap", then I give up. We are simply dealing with people who don't want to listen.
Rick