National Park Service Poor Management of Zion

[OriginalOscar]

http://www.sltrib.com/home/5546514-155/grant-to-fund-repairs-on-middle

December 2010 - Zion National Park has 2.8M visitors and a mudslide closes a popular hiking trail.

2011-2016 - Trail remains closed and visitation increases from 2.8M to 4.3M due to Utah's Mighty Five National Park tourism promotion.

July 2017 - A wonderful Utah philanthropic foundation gives $1M to get this trail reopened and the National Park Service won't finish the project for over two years. Due for completion December 2019.

The park charges $30 per vehicle and increased visitation 1.5M and they can't fund fixing a trail for nine years?

 

[Gerald Martin]

Better sell it to a private landowner so it can be managed properly. I'll take it for $100. Of course access might have to be cut off, but "no access is better than restricted access..."

 

[Lefty315]

Not making excuses for them, but I made an inquiry last year to a good friend who has close to 30 years with the Nat Park Service. I was in Yellowstone for two days and never saw a park Ranger anywhere while we were out and about. I asked him why, because the Park Ranger in the Smokey the Bear hat is the image I always have of National Parks. He told me their budgets have been slashed for years and they don't have the staffing levels they did 10-15 years ago. I guess the politics around funding of the Parks doesn't hold the interest it once did.

 

[mdunc8]

Have you contacted the folks at Zion or anyone with the NPS?

 

[WapitiBob]

I see a Yellowstone park ranger manning the radar gun every year when I drive thru at 2 in the morning.

 

[rtraverdavis]

So what's your solution, dukes_daddy?

 

[TrickyTross]

The part of the conversation that gets skirted around from time to time, that Randy and a few (very few) others have addressed in regards to PL. Funding for infrastructure and employees is something that previous administrations (the past 2) did not take into account and previous congresses also conveniently disregarded. Constant vigilance from sportsmen and women on not just PL ownership, but also on infrastructure and staffing and the dirty "m" word (management) where it is needed. the other part that I have observed is too many folks stick to that party line, and instead of researching and learning for themselves. The parties don't care.

It would also be helpful if folks, when they googled, entered "scholar" before the "google"

 

[Sytes]

Feds need fixing. Anyone dispute this lives in a bubble. Too scaaa-eeered to share such a thought? It dribbles out y'er body's pores. It's one entity to focus interest to assist with the "fixing".

Alternative? Transfer to 50 separate entities to "correct" the issues faced by the feds? Your land transfer bubble is so damn thick, no way in heck will any words change your thoughts. Not worth trying to share words to offer ideas.

There is a common factor here - the bubble the partisan players create that keep the rest of us... open to ideas, frustrated with your political gamesmanship/antics - A.K.A. - Bull Schnit.

Democrats and Republicans that play this political dribble are the reason we, the Americans will teeter on one extreme or the other. What a waste. Both are to blame.

 

[Ben Lamb]

It's messed up, no way around it. And Sytes is right - both sides play the game. NPS has been in the red for decades as the money collected from parks isn't always used for parks, nor is it sufficient to actually take care of what we have. It's part of a deliberate strategy to prove that public lands & parks suck. Of course it sucks when the subterfuge comes from the same people tasked with legislating their existence, management, etc. When the knee-jerk reaction from any party is simply to say "no," you end up with stupid stuff like this, or the massive sexual assault complaints w/in NPS, noxious weed infestations, etc.

You want these kinds of things fixed? You want good management of parks, public land, etc?

Fund it. There have been no shortage of proposed fixes with bi-partisan support that would help clear backlogs of maintenance and infrastructure, better manage public ground, create other revenue streams to help pay for it, etc.

They have all failed due to gridlock in D.C. and the prevailing thought that no action is better than compromise or honest dialog.

 

[3855WIN]

With stories like this, why would Utah residents want more restrictive federal control of their state?

NPS has said that their budget is less than the city of Austin, TX. They have 22,000 employees plus 84 million acres to manage. Is this enough to run it? I doubt it.

 

[Bambistew]

You've obviously never worked for the feds. It always cost 3x more to do anything, requires an act of Congress to spend more than $xxx,xxx dollars, and the red tape is 5 miles long. I hated working for the feds... the NPS is one of the worst. The last project I did for them was a $150,000 wood shop that cost $400,000.

I probably designed around 80 projects for various acronyms. The NPS was by far the worst organized of the bunch.

 

[u1299]

As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow we will always have gridlock, lack of compromise, partisanship, and all the other nonsense we all bitch about all the time, but it's important to stay involved and keep trying to fix things, especially as they pertain to issues important to us.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Ol' Commander Cosplay out there leading the charge for even less funding for Parks:

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article158481159.html

 

[u1299]

Same old do more with less bullshit.

 

[Oneye]

Funding, and cut some red tape. Funding is a major issue, especially with the amount of visitation. Red tape doesn't help getting things done quickly, but funding is the biggest step that needs to be taken at some point, or you don't even get to the red tape.

 

[OriginalOscar]

So what's your solution, dukes_daddy?

Apply P/L logic. Disney wouldn't let Pirates of Caribbean site closed for 9 years.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Apply P/L logic. Disney wouldn't let Pirates of Caribbean site closed for 9 years.

Disney's BOD don't sit around looking for ways to screw 1/2 of the board.

You get the gov't you vote for.

 

[noharleyyet]

You've obviously never worked for the feds. It always cost 3x more to do anything, requires an act of Congress to spend more than $xxx,xxx dollars, and the red tape is 5 miles long. I hated working for the feds... the NPS is one of the worst. The last project I did for them was a $150,000 wood shop that cost $400,000.

I probably designed around 80 projects for various acronyms. The NPS was by far the worst organized of the bunch.

Similar to our experiences with .gov...except they wanna pay you 150K but make it cost you the 400K.

 

[Ben Lamb]

Similar to our experiences with .gov...except they wanna pay you 150K but make it cost you the 400K.

Well, you shouldn't have been 14 minutes off your time. The contract clearly shows massive penalties for failure to complete on time. If we showed you favortism, we'd have bedlam. Nuns would be working brothels, people would be using leaded gas, Detroit would root for Green Bay.

Do you want this kind of anarchy? Because that's what you get when you make exceptions to gov't contracts.

 

[Sytes]

blah, blah, blah... Nuns would be working brothels...

Everything went into a hazed fog of curiosity... Baywatch Nuns?