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By Mark Grossi
The Fresno Bee - June 30, 1998
WASHINGTON-An embarrassment for Yosemite National Park officials could become
good business for California architects and engineers.
One year after amazed auditors found that Yosemite was lavishing an average of $584,000 on each new employee housing unit, influential lawmakers are pressing reforms in how national parks build new facilities. Foremost among the reforms is a proposal to have much more of the work farmed out to local firms.
"We want to move the responsibility to the superintendents so they can use local people as much as possible and thereby hold the costs down," said Rep Ralph Regula, R-Ohio.
Regula chairs the panel on the House Appropriations Committee that divvies up the National Park Service's $1.3 billion annual budget. As part of its fiscal 1999 spending bill, the committee has approved a new requirement that 90% of park service construction projects be contracted out to "local" architecture and engineering firms.
Depending on how it's administered, the 90% requirement could push new management burdens onto park supervisors and provide opportunities for local firms.
Yosemite, for instance, anticipates spending $178 million over the next several years on re-building projects following its record January, 1997 flood. Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park will spend millions on projects in Giant Forest and the new Wuksachi Village.
Officials in the Sierra Nevada parks said they could adjust to whatever guidelines Congress sets. Local firms already do a lot of work in the parks, but the designing and engineering usually is handled by the park service's Denver-based administrative center. Regula wants Denver to do far less of the work.
"The work has to be done one way or the other," said Sequoia-Kings Canyon spokeswoman Malinee Crapsey. "It's more of a matter of how the work gets done."
But Yosemite management assistant Chip Jenkins raised a question that would have to be answered in any new law: Does "local" mean hiring from the counties surrounding the park or from throughout the state?
"We hire plenty of local contractors from Mariposa and Oakhurst, but the bigger design jobs might work better with other companies in California," Jenkins said. "It depends on the definition of local."
Park officials also said they assumed any projects already under construction would not be affected by a new law.
For next year, the House Appropritations Committee is offering no additional money for Yosemite construction and $6 million to continue construction on new visitor facilities. The Senate panel is also offering $6 million for Sequoia construction but does not have requirements for local work. The House and Senate versions of the spending bills still must be reconciled.
The 90% local requirement in the House bill joins other proposed reforms including cutting the Denver-based administrative staff by half. In evaluating park superintendents the agency also is being urged to take into account "cost-effective construction."
Yosemite officials, already acutely aware of public interest in construction projects, have organized a planning unit to efficiently use its $178 million for the flood rebuilding projects.
The money will rebuild roads, relocate campgrounds, and remove bridges as the park moves visitor traffic out of the Merced River floodplain. Officials are working on a separate project to rebuild part of the Yosemite Lodge also damaged in the 1997 flood.
"All the design work is being done under private contract," Jenkins said. "Our flood recovery unit is handling most of the construction. The unit focuses on the most efficient way of using the money. We're already doing this."
All the reforms spin from an Interior Department inspector general's audit finding that the Yosemite employee housing was at least twice as expensive as privately built local housing. The issue is not unique to Yosemite: One restroom built at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area in Pennsylvania was pegged at $797,000.
In Yosemite, the park service spent $20.2 million to build 34 apartment units and 19 single-family homes - high-quality units built to last, but more expensive than auditors thought appropriate.
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