Scratch in the Press

National Geographic this month published articles on saving national parks. Some of the article relates to directly to what I do for the National Park Service. Essentially, we help the Park Service determine the maintenance backlog and the maintenance requirements for the NPS assets and then given budget constraints develop a plan for the maintenance and life-cycle costs. It is exciting to see that the deferred maintenance backlog and budget limitations are recognized by the article, and that the service that we provide to the NPS is valuable in this aspect.

The following paragraph broadly describes the problem in deferred maintenance and the increasing backlog.

Campaigning for the presidency in 2000, George W. Bush pledged that, if elected, he would wipe out the huge 4.9-billion-dollar backlog in deferred maintenance of the national parks' crumbling infrastructure. Given the fallout from 9/11, among other things, it was not to be. This year, in its budget request for fiscal 2007, the White House proposed cutting the Park Service's budget by 5 percent, or a hundred million dollars. Most of those missing dollars would come off the top of the service's construction and major maintenance funds, prompting the New York Times to suggest in a lead editorial that such deliberate cuts "could create the necessary cover for opening the parks to more commercial activity."

Check out this months National Geographic if you get a chance.