{"id":1075,"date":"2013-04-04T17:30:51","date_gmt":"2013-04-05T00:30:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/?p=1075"},"modified":"2022-08-02T17:24:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T00:24:02","slug":"national-park-service-braces-for-impact-of-sequestration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/2013\/04\/04\/national-park-service-braces-for-impact-of-sequestration\/","title":{"rendered":"National Park Service braces for impact of sequestration"},"content":{"rendered":"

Volunteer program will take\u00a0a hit<\/strong><\/p>\n

Source of this article: The Thousand Oaks Acorn<\/a>, April 4, 2013<\/p>\n

Now that the government sequester is officially in effect, some public agencies are feeling the squeeze.<\/p>\n

Sequestration is the automatic spending cut imposed by Congress and the Obama administration that hits a multitude of public sectors in the country.<\/p>\n

The National Park Service, which runs the local Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, is one agency feeling pinched.<\/p>\n

The recreation area is comprised of more than 150,000 acres of mountains and coastline in Ventura and Los Angeles counties.<\/p>\n

David Szymanski, SMMNRA superintendent, said the park system must slash its $8.5-million annual budget by 5 percent, or $427,000, by Sept. 30 to meet the new sequestration law that went into effect March 1.<\/p>\n

A wide array of services will be impacted, Szymanski said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible that up to nine permanent positions at the park will go unfilled. Two education rangers, a volunteer coordinator, two maintenance posts, two law enforcement jobs and a deputy superintendent are jobs slated to remain vacant.<\/p>\n

A chief of administration is retiring in June, and that position as well will probably remain vacant.<\/p>\n

National Park Service spokesperson Kate Kuykendall called the loss of the volunteer coordinator and subsequent volunteers a \u201cbig issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe rely heavily on volunteers,\u201d Szymanski said. Nationwide, the park system uses more than 88,000 hours of volunteer service. \u201cEco-helpers,\u201d volunteers who earn service hours by cleaning up Zuma Canyon and working on restoration programs, will be greatly reduced, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause the park\u2019s volunteer manager position is vacant, the park expects to lose about 4,000 hours of volunteer time, valued at $86,000 in staff hours. Volunteers maintain trails, remove garbage and eradicate invasive plants.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

LOCAL IMPACT\u2014National Parks Service ranger Mike Theune tells a large crowd gathered on Saturday for a lecture on \u201cMulholland, Miller and Motor Sports\u201d about the Paramount Ranch Raceway that operated on the site in the 1950s. The agency is being asked to cut its annual budget by 5 percent.<\/p><\/div>Youth education programming at the parks is also being squeezed. More than 6,000 students who would typically participate in an educational or service-learning program in the mountains will not do so because of sequestration cuts, Kuykendall said.\u201c The majority of the affected youth are from und erserved communities in Southern California with limited access to parklands,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Szymanski said the 40 percent reduction in education programs will hit urban kids hardest. Annually, SMMNRA hosts field trips for 15,000 students from kindergarten through 12th grade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is that important?\u201d he asked. \u201c We need to give all kids a taste of parks, even urban kids . . . from underserved neighborhoods in Los Angeles and Oxnard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Park maintenance will also be affected under sequestration. John Williams, the park service chief of maintenance, said he\u2019s not too worried about any impacts this year, but long-term problems could arise.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have vacancies that aren\u2019t going to be filled,\u201d Williams said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been adjusting the workload, meaning that we\u2019re probably going to be doing a little less work. There might be some long-term ramifications for things that we\u2019re not doing. We\u2019re back to putting out emergencies instead of working on our long-term plan of correct fixes. Basically, there are two ways to do things\u2014the right way or putting a Band-Aid on them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rather than paying for a new roof, an emergency patch might have to suffice, Williams said.<\/p>\n

Szymanski doesn\u2019t like the idea of patching problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like your own house. You don\u2019t know when the termites are going to eat through the siding.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scheduled repairs will have to wait, and certain jobs may end up costing more when the work comes due, he said. Szymanski also worries about trash buildup in the park recreation area.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are so close to urban areas,\u201d he said. \u201cThere are a couple of hundred places you can access parks. Unfortunately, people leave things behind. We will see fewer garbage cans.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sequestration cuts will require a continued shift from preventive maintenance in order to accommodate more pressing operational needs, Kuykendall said.<\/p>\n

Szymanski said the inability of government to compromise reflects a \u201cpublic and a Congress that are deeply divided about how to tackle the nation\u2019s fiscal problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean Congress and the American people don\u2019t like parks,\u201d he said. \u201cSequestration is not something they would choose (but) they just can\u2019t agree upon an answer. We live . . . within the means Congress provides. This is democracy in action.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Volunteer program will take\u00a0a hit Source of this article: The Thousand Oaks Acorn, April 4, 2013 Now that the government sequester is officially in effect, some public agencies are feeling the squeeze. Sequestration is the automatic spending cut imposed by Congress and the Obama administration that hits a multitude of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,32,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-budget-and-spending","category-nps","category-santa-monica-mountains"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1075"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3625,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1075\/revisions\/3625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/venturacountytrails.org\/WP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}