Parks Division plans to eliminate three positions statewide, including one at Wood Tikchik, to balance a $500,000 cut.
Alaska State Parks submitted a plan this week to manage for a $500,000 budget cut proposed by a House Finance Subcommittee. The plan would cut three ranger positions, one of them in the Wood Tikchik State Park. KDLG’s Dave Bendinger has more:
Audio transcript below ...
Under Governor Walker’s budget, there were no cuts to State Parks. The half-a-million dollar reduction came from the House Finance Subcommittee on Natural Resources, and the Parks Division then began considering its options. Director Ben Ellis points out that State Parks pays for a substantial portion of its operating budget through user fees … last year, about 35 percent:
"And through fee increases and so forth, we're projecting that we'll cover about 44 percent this coming year, with probably 50 percent or more the following year."
Ellis says obviously he supports the Governor’s proposal with no cuts to Parks, but if he has to manage for it, he’d rather not do it at the expense of the areas that are generating the most revenue in user fees. And cutting everybody equal across the board isn’t feasible. He says doing so would also probably result in lower revenues from user fees:
"There's not enough places to do a haircut or a toenail trim to save $500,000 statewide, because we are very very lean as it is."
Instead, Ellis proposed cutting the two positions in Sitka and Valdez, which would put those areas under “passive” management with no staff on site.
The third cut would come from Wood Tikchik, the state’s largest state park, which stretches north of Lake Aleknagik. Wood Tikchik was pulled under the administrative management of Chugach State Park last year.
Currently staffed with two full time rangers, Ellis said the restructuring can enable the job to be done by one:
"Especially in office management. The need to have a 'Ranger 2' position in Dillingham was one that could be accommodated within the Chugach State Park. So the Ranger 2 position was part of this package that we put together that came up to a little less than $500,000, and it was accepted."
He says these decisions haven’t been easy, and points out three things with that proposed staff cut to Wood Tikchik. The first, he says, is that it's in no way a reflection of the work done by current staff. The second is that if it does happen, he believes that Wood Tikchik would likely have added staff from Chugach during peak times of the year. And the third is that it’s still early in the session to know how things will play out:
"This is a very dynamic process. I mean it can go one of at least three ways, and probably 50 different ways, or 60, because that's how many legislators there are."
Ellis says cuts to Parks could be removed, deepened, or the Division’s budget could even see an increase by the time the full Legislature agrees on a version that passes the Governor’s approval.