Don’t evict Iowa park rangers

This week we’ve seen yet another example of how Iowa’s paltry, stagnant state parks operation and maintenance budget is negatively affecting park services and safety.

The Gazette’s Erin Jordan reported on an Iowa Department of Natural Resources announcement that the agency plans to evict park rangers from state-owned houses in 23 state parks. The DNR would rather move rangers out of the parks than spend $1 million on deferred maintenance and bringing the houses up to code.

Moving rangers out of parks will obviously mean slower response times to deal with accidents and emergencies and provide less of a deterrent to vandalism and other unlawful behavior. The shortsighted decision underscores the woeful lack of parks funding provided by the Legislature and Gov. Kim Reynolds.

Reynolds’ 2023 budget plan calls for $6.2 million for parks maintenance and operations, the same inadequate funding level approved in 2020 and 2021 budgets. This while Republicans who control state government tout a $1.2 billion budget surplus. Instead of making critical investments in parks and other deferred maintenance on state infrastructure, they’re planning another round of tax cuts.

Never mind that Iowa’s state parks drew a record 16.6 million visitors in 2020 as Iowans flocked to outdoor spaces during the COVID pandemic. But park usage had been climbing even before the coronavirus arrived.

Reporting by IowaWatch last fall found that the number of park rangers patrolling state parks has dipped from 55 in 1995 to 35. That creates a ranger-to-visitor ratio of one for every 474,000 park visitors. That’s unacceptable. And moving rangers out of parks only makes the problem worse.

The DNR contends houses are only present in one-third of its state parks. But we believe rangers living in the park should be the norm if we truly care about supporting parks services and safety.

After all, there’s a lot at stake. A study by the Reynolds administration found that state parks generate $8.7 billion in consumer spending that supports 8,300 jobs and provides $649 million in state and local tax revenue. And yet, we can’t find the money to fix up rangers’ homes.

Reynolds has made outdoor spaces a main attraction in her “This is Iowa” publicity campaign to attract new talent to the state. But the truth behind those images is we have a parks system that can’t afford to make repairs to basic facilities. This, unfortunately, is Iowa, too.

(319) 398-8262; editorial@thegazette.com