TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT... By Jim Stiles THE FEDS: THE WORST & THE BEST It is a long-embraced tradition,ef-American Life to bash the government and the men and women who work for it. If you want a taste of the Good Life, get a soft government job. As a little kid I remember passing a road construction crew and hearing my grandfather grumble, "One guy to dig, five guys to watch. And I’m paying for all six." I used that line just the other day. Now I find myself in a somewhat contradictory position—I’m a frequent critic of government land agencies; yet, I was one of those very same ‘useless feds’ for more than a decade. Should I hate myself for what I did? Should I be proud for having the good sense to get out? Or ashamed of myself for bashing the good people who once sent me a paycheck (as pitiful as it might have It years were life. I been) to feed my chips and salsa habit? would be fair to say that all three apply in my case. My ten with the National Park Service at Arches National Park some of the most rewarding and frustrating times of my cannot recall higher or lower moments. I can’t imagine such bliss and such mise Early on I came to learn that the National Park Service was just as wasteful and mismanaged as any other agency of the federal government. As the years passed I saw it grow worse and I left the NPS more than a decade ago--the mind boggles at what it has become today. But it was a familiar story. Some divisions of the park always had money to burn.while others went begging. Interpretation has been the perennial NPS division that waits for the leftovers and road and trailbuilding divisions have always been able.to We all felt so proud. If you look at it today, you'll see that much of the gravel has eroded off the trail into the adjacent landscape and nearby gullies. So it was like that. Other examples... The park installed a new chlorinator at the campground and built a little 8 x 10 foot building to house the fifty gallon drum of chlorine and the pump. The tiny cinder block shed cost taxpayers $28,000. The same year I bought my house...an entire house...in Moab for ten grand less. The next day the new chlorinator malfunctioned and started sucking pure chlorine through the water system; thirsty hikers at the trailhead water fountain got more than a mouth Roads and Trails spent $3000 on 495 pairs of gloves for its six division employees. The park changed. its garbage collection system five times in three years. It kept buying and discarding equipment faster than I could keep track. Yeah...it was like that. I suspect it still is. And that’s whyI have a difficult time finding much reason to support the new Fee Demonstration Program (discussed more thoroughly on page 18). Parks and recreation areas have always complained that revenues generated by user fees never stayed in the parks where they could do the most good. The Fee Demo plan supposedly changes all that. But it’s the same old story: Priorities are always misplaced and pet projects of congressmen and superintendents get all the funding. A few years ago, anew housing area was built at the Needles District of Canyonlands N.P. Few, if any, of the employees who lived in the "old" housing had a problem with their accommodations. But, at a cost of millions (and a bunch of cost-overruns), the new: fake adobe command a lion’s share of the funding. Interpretive programs village was completed. Somewhere else in the Park system, NPS were constantly being cut back for lack of staff and many walks and talks were conducted by volunteers (and they still are). Yet : employees ARE living in sub-standard housing as a result.' the big construction projects always had money. In my last years as a seasonal ranger, frustrated to tears, I started taking notes about all the waste and I still have them. I'll never forget the infamous Devils Garden Trail rebuilding project. In the mid-80s, more than $65,000 became available for major reconstruction work of the park’s premier trail—-the Landscape Arch Trail. No visitors had complained about the condition of the trail and it was already eight feet wide at the time. The Trail Supervisor defended the project, claiming that when it rained, the several large puddles on the trail were difficult for hikers to circumvent. Of course it rarely rains in the desert and puddles dry up very quickly in 10% humidity. But never mind all that. Debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that... may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials. William J. Brennan. Jr. My fellow seasonal ranger Mike Salamacha and I attached an informal survey to the trail registration box. It said: “There is a plan to spend $65,000 to rebuild this trail. Do you think it’s a good idea?" More than 75% of the hikers who responded said NO and our supervisors almost cooked us over hot coals for asking. Then the Trail Boss announced that he intended to use a road grader with an 11 foot blade and a five yard dump truck to haul rock and gravel as far as Landscape Arch, a ‘mile up the trail. The trail winds and bends its way to the arch and I asked the trail guys, "How do you expect to run a grader and a dump truck on this trail without taking out all these trees and all this vegetation?" They looked at me like I was nuts. "Of course, those trees and bushes get removed," the trail boss replied. "That's just the way itsisis Tempers something flared. Their plan called equivalent to a Demilitarized for the creation of Zone. Nothing alive would be allowed to survive on either side of the trail and the crew came within days of implementing their search and destroy mission. Finally Superintendent Pete Parry stepped in and proposed a compromise--if the ranger division would assist in the project and use its smaller S10 pickup trucks to transport gravel and rock, the project could be completed with minimal damage to the adjacent resource. It was the best anybody could come up with and the project moved forward. In the next six weeks, we ran more than 800 truckloads of materials up the Devils Garden trail and managed to keep most of the trailside vegetation intact. ~ But they still Spent all that’rnohey.’When the work was done, *2. the’Landscape’ Trail ‘had a new six-inch layer of loose jround gravel that acted like ball-bearings when hikers walked ont it On the day. the $65,000 trail re-opened,,a man from Denver slipped on the rocks and broke his ankle. No...I have a difficult time shedding a tear the NPS is hurting for funds and that its collapsing. The NPS simply needs to learn how use of the money it receives. As far as I can tell, still haven’t learned. when I hear that infrastructure is to make the best it’s a lesson they And yet... Despite all my perennial concerns about the government's lack of fiscal responsibility, I still take pride in having been a part of that agency. I have very little contact nowadays with those rangers in the field who do the real work of the National Park Service-—the seasonal and "low-echelon" permanent employees who greet and meet and are-seen by the public. I don’t know if increased visitation and a heavier emphasis on law enforcement and a greater regimentation of their jobs has taken all the fun out of working for the Park Service. But I did have some fun as a ranger and, more importantly, I felt like I was doing something worthwhile. Many of us who came to Arches and Canyonlands felt that way. We were the defenders of the grail. It was an opportunity to share something special with people who had often never seen anything quite like the landscape we worked for. And that was often the difference between many employees-some of us were here for the Park and others were here for the Park Service--defending the Land versus defending the Agency. I could never hold much allegiance to the grey and green uniform but there was very little I wouldn’t do for the park. Most NPS employees who put their hearts and souls into the place, then and now, receive little of the financial benefits that most citizens believe come with a government job (see Cort Felts’ Seasons of Discontent in this issue.) But there were some satisfying moments out in the Arches that I will cherish forever and would not trade for a fool’s fortune. I think that a great many federal land agency employees still embrace the high ideals upon which those agencies were created, but are constantly frustrated by the layers and layers of bureaucracy that keep them from the work that needs to be done. Until there are utterly consumed by it. How that will ever be resolved is beyond me. BLACK:QPS AND BUREAUCRATS., So.. government j is wasteful and il-iranaged, but is it‘all part of some vast world-wide conspiracy? You'll find that opinion mofé prévdlent thar you might ‘think, especially in this weird little corner of the world. Utah has never exactly been fond of the