Letters: With insufficient funds and staff, we’re loving our state parks to death
The Letters to the Editor below are in response to Short-staffed and strapped for cash, state parks struggle to handle surge of warm-weather crowds, The Boston Globe, June 7, 2022.
Years of disinvestment call for a greater outlay to support DCR
Alexander Thompson’s story about the continuing budget needs at the Department of Conservation and Recreation points to a $10 million increase in state funding on the table to support the agency (“Everyone’s ready for summer, but the parks might not be,” Page A1, June 8). This funding is long overdue, but it is not enough. DCR parks and reservations have played an important role in helping our residents to cope with the public health pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic. They also add value to the magnificent quality of life that Massachusetts has to offer, and they are an economic driver of our economy. It’s amazing that we can go from the mountains and forests of the Berkshires to the beaches and campsites of the Boston Harbor Islands National and State Park in Boston Harbor.
Outdoor recreation in Massachusetts constitutes almost $10.5 billion of the gross state product and supports close to 114,000 jobs for hard-working state residents. The properties under DCR’s management are a significant contributor to this equation. For years, disinvestment in our parks has allowed these precious resources to atrophy. Massachusetts deserves better. An agency of DCR’s scope and legislative mandate needs to be funded and staffed in a manner that adequately addresses the capital and operational obligations inherent in its mission.
Kathy Abbott
President and CEO
Jack Murray
Vice president of partnerships and operations
Boston Harbor Now
Boston
Abbott was DCR commissioner from 2003 to 2005, and Murray was DCR commissioner from 2013 to 2015, after having served as deputy commissioner beginning in 2007.
Vital stewardship is lost as we scrimp on full-time, year-round staff
There was a sorry familiarity to Wednesday’s front-page story about the continuing decline of state funding for parks personnel. One aspect of the problem that demands greater attention is the shift from full-time, year-round staff to an overreliance on seasonal employees. This became painfully obvious to those of us working with parks staff on legislatively required management plans. The most thoughtful plan can’t make up for a critical deficit of resources.
Seasonal employees are a great resource to operate a facility in peak season, but the loss of year-round employees and failure to replace them means a loss not just of skill and experience but of vital off-season work necessary to keep a park open and healthy, such as trail repair and construction, equipment maintenance, facility upkeep, and protection of natural resources.
DCR park staff do a lot more than collect parking fees. They work in important conservation lands, which they steward. They must be knowledgeable in natural resources, recreation and policy, and an increasingly complex regulatory environment. Most are highly qualified and credentialed professionals. They are clearly not in it for the money but rather for the love of the work and commitment to the environment.
Gates don’t actually get shut at the end of a season. More and more, parks are a year-round destination for a demanding public with changing recreational interests. Our state parks are being loved to death because of the lack of commitment to reinvest in them.
A $1 billion repair deficit is unconscionable, but capital reinvestment goes to waste without the resources to maintain improvements. The existing system is suffering even in the face of demands for worthwhile expansion of its current offerings. The first step, however, must be the reinvigoration of the corps of hard-working and dedicated park staff. When their ranks are replenished, the parks will approach their real potential.
Joe Orfant
Jamaica Plain
The writer is a former chief of the Bureau of Planning, Design, and Resource Protection at DCR. He retired in 2015.