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HomeMy WebLinkAbout1991-05-20; City Council; 591-3; Park Barrel PoliticsPARKS & RECREATION COMMISSION - AGENDA BILL DEPT. TITLE: PARK BARREL POLITICS (INFO) RECOMMENDED ACTION: Accept and file. ITEM EXPLANATION; During the January Commission meeting, staff was directed to process the attached letter supporting the reinstatement of a park service panel to review the selection of national park sites for City Council consideration. Staff determined the most appropriate forum in which to process this request was through the City Council Legislative Committee. The attached documents have been distributed to members of the Legislative Committee- for their consideration and action. EXHIBITS; 1. April 15, 1991, memo from Assistant to the City Manager April 15, 1991 TO: MAYOR LEWIS & MAYOR PRO TEM KULCHIN City Council Legislative Committee FROM: Assistant to the City Manager During a meeting in January of this year, the City Parks & Recreation Commission reviewed an article entitled "Park Barrel Politics" from Newsweek Magazine's. November 26,1990 issue. The article expressed concerns regarding the current process by which potential national park sites are nominated and selected. Previously, nominations for national park sites were reviewed by a Parks Service Panel, which consisted of historians, scientists, and other scholars. Congress relied upon this panel for its expertise in the ultimate selection of new national park sites. However, the Reagan Administration disbanded the Parks Service Panel and left the selection process entirely at the discretion of Congress. Without the review of nominations by the disbanded Parks Service Panel, the article infers that the selection process has become indiscriminate and egregious to the point where the selection of new national park sites of questionable repute have forced the closure of existing(unfamous)sites due to a lack of adequate maintenance and operational funds. The Parks & Recreation Commission wishes the City of Carlsbad to support the reinstatement of a valid review process for the selection of national park sites, such as a Parks Service Panel. The attached letter reflects the Commission's support of the reinstatement of the panel. The City's Legislative Platform does not specifically address this issue. While the Commission is requesting that it be allowed to send the attached letter, it has not indicated a desire to support specific legislation. If the Legislative Committee wishes to support the Parks & Recreation Commission in this effort, the attached letter from the Commission will be sent. LORI UEBERMAN ll:pgk c: Council Members City Manager Assistant City Manager Parks & Recreation Director Senior Management Analyst, Parks & Recreation 11 Park-Barrel Politics If Congress has its way, there will be a national park in every member's district Anational park or historic site is sort of like pornography—you may not be able to define it, but you know it when you see it. The thundering falls of Yosemite, for instance. The richly colored chasms of the Grand Canyon. The family estate of Frank- lin D. Roosevelt. The rusting rolling stock of a rail yard called Steamtown, in Scran- ton, Pa., where nothing of any significance to the development of the nation's rail sys- tem ever took place. Whoa. For most of the 74 years since the National Park Service was created, there was no question that the wilder- ness areas and historic sites named to the national system had a significance that other babbling brooks or old houses didn't. No longer. Sav- vy members of Congress have discovered that Park Service money can be used to promote economic renewal in their dis- tricts. Through the efforts of Rep. Joseph McDade, for in- stance, Steamtown was desig- nated a National Historic Site and has received S43.6 million since 1986; Austin Burke, presi- dent of the Scranton Chamber of Commerce, expects that, once the site is completed in 1994, the area will attract be- tween 400,000 and 500,000 visi- tors a year. "It's a major economic boost, an impetus for urban development," he saysj Park barrel is nothing new. Political clout, more than inherent merit, was re- sponsible for Fort Stanwix in Rome, N.Y., a fabrication of a Revolutionary War fort, being designated a national monument in 1935. But until lately, nominations for bat- tlefield sites, monuments,' seashores and WILSON LAKE Wilson, Kans. To skeptics, a big mud hole. To boosters like Sen. Bob Dole, a national recreation area. RALF FINN HESTOFT—PICTURE CROUP; MIKE BL.UR—KAMSAS FISH * CAMZ DEFT. KENNY GANZ-XATIO.VAL PARK SERVICE the other 13 categories within the national park system have had to be formally re- viewed by a Park Service panel that includ- ed historians, scientists and other scholars. Congress, whose committees overseeing the Interior Department have the power to authorize new sites and appropriate money to run them, took this evaluation seriously. The service, though, has not proposed a new designation in more than a decade: the Reagan administration, opposed to spend- ing money to open new sites, disbanded the panel that evaluated nominees. That left the responsibility entirely to Congress. As a result, park-barreling is more open and more egregious than ever. Says one official who asked for anonymity, "Pork used to come with a pretense of national signifi- cance or recreational value, but now people are so shameless they don't even bother to put up that fagade." As a result, some 20 sites of dubious na- tional significance have benefited from re- cent congressional largesse. Among the zir- cons in the Park Service crown: • The Keith-Albee Theater in Hunting- ton, W.Va., which got its 34.5 million with nary a congressional hearing, thanks to Sen. Robert Byrd. The theater's claim to fame is that it's the largest, most ornate, most unusual in the state, according to a local booster magazine. (It now serves as a four-screen multiplex.) • Wilson Lake, a Corps of Engineers proj- ect outside Wilson, Kans., which got 3125,000 for a feasibility study that may lead to its being designated a national rec- reation area. Although Sen. Robert Dole is not on the appropriations committee for the Park Service, "they took care of him anyway," says one Hill staffer. Even some locals were amused; one reporter called it SO NEWSWEEK : NOVEMBER 2S, 1990 12 STEAMTOWN Scranton, Pa- URRY DOWNKG-NEWSWEEK: KENNY GANZ-.NATIONAL PARK SERVICE al funds started steaming in. I possible sites. None was, yet Congress just The chamber of commerce's keeps dumping more money into it." Paul Thanks to Rep. Josvph McDade. *43.6 million has bean spant on this abandoned rail yard "the nation's most significant mudhole." • The former home of President McKin- ley's in-laws, in the Canton, Ohio, district of Rep. Ralph Reguia, ranking Republican on the Interior Department appropriations subcommittee. The Feds will spend more than SI million in the two years it takes to acquire it. • The Char lesPinckney Mansion, named after the South Carolinian who wrote part of the Constitution, which was named a National Historic Site in 1988, thanks to Sen. Ernest Rollings. Unfortunately, not only did Pinckney never live in the build- ing, but it was built long after he died. • A visitors' center for Lawrence Welk's old home in Strasburg, N.D., got funded as part of the Agriculture Department's pro- gram to help impoverished farm towns. It's' not in the park system yet, but is a likely candidate for transfer once the town finish- es its tourism master plan. The critics' favorite target—partly be- cause of large amounts of money in- volved—is Steamtown. The project is a product of the work of local boosters and rail buffs who acquired engines and cars (some Canadian) from a collection in Ver- mont. The rolling stock was shipped to the abandoned turn-of-the-century rail yard In Scranton. Representative McDade man- aged to get Steamtown designated a Na- tional Historic Site in 1986, and the feder- Burke lauds Steamtown as "a reminder of how hard people worked at the turn of the cen- tury and a reason to celebrate our heritage." Rail experts have another view. In the cur- rent issue of the journal Amer- ican Heritage of Invention and Tech- nology, John White, recently retired as the Smithsonian In- stitution's curator for trans- portation, calls the stock "a third-rate collection in a place to which it had no relevance... establishing a big railroad mu- seum run by the National Park Service would have been fine, provided that some effort had been made to evaluate all the Pritchard, president of the private Nation- al Parks and Conservation Association, sees Steamtown as emblematic: "The Park Service is the new dumping ground, the place where Congress puts things that are not wanted and not needed." In the zero-sum federal budget game, other parks projects are suffering even as KEITH-ALBEE THEATER Huntington, W.Va. 13 In a bow to San. Robert Byrd, $4.5 million without so much as a congressional hearing BRUCE HOERTEL: DAVID FATTALEH—KUNTKGTON QUARTERLY the Steamtowns are raking in taxpayer money. Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, site of the first Conti- .al Congress and of the signing of the L/eolaration of Independence, is closing nine buildings due to lack of funds. Some employ- ees at Channel Islands National Historical Park, a wonder of natural beauty off the Santa Barbaracoast, are living in transoce- anic cargo crates; there is no money for housing. Yellowstone, Glacier and other crown jewels of the national park system are slashing hours, staff and programs. Park Service pay is so low that at Yosemite and some other parks, employees need food stamps and are defecting to state parks; by thissummerthe seasonalrangers whoguide visitors may be as extinct as the dodo. "Ev- eryone likes to cut a ribbon on a new facili- ty," laments Park Service Director James Ridenour, "but when it comes time to re- place a sewer system nobody signs on." Mill town: At bottom, the problem here is one of honesty in labeling. No one doubts the virtue of helping distressed communi- ties get back on to sound economic footing. But why call it historic preservation? Low- ell, Mass., a former mill town, got a huge boost when it was designated a National Historical Park in 1978, and the Park Serv- ice, along with the state and city, began restoring it as a sort of 19th-century New England Williamsburg. Other cities in the northeast hope to go the Lowell route. But ost every town in the nation has a bit of <ericana that, to someone somewhere (usually right there) deserves special recog- nition and federal largesse. The debate is whether, as the purists wish, we should stop cheapening the "national" designa- tion. Pragmatists counter that Congress just reflects what the public wants, and sometimes that means pushing the nation- al park system into the tourism and eco- nomic-development business. Are there any reforms in sight? Director Ridenour intends to sift through the sys- tem for places that should be turned over to states or municipalities or even private en- terprise. Rep. Bruce Vento of Minnesota, who heads the subcommittee that autho- rizes the naming of new national sites but has no power to appropriate money for the designation, will reintroduce a bill giving the Park Service greater autonomy and perhaps more say in what is—and is not— added to the system. But no one holds out much hope for restoring meaning to the system any time soon. Too many pols want their favorite places designated a national something or other. The only hope may lie in ridicule. Designate history's first strip mine as Byrdland, W.Va. Or the first prai- rie welfare office as On the Dole, Kans. Or, better yet, just change the name of Capitol . to Steamtown, U.S.A. SHARON BEGLEY u,'i<AMARY HAGZHin Washington 62 NEWSWEEK : NOVEMBER 26, 1990 EDUCATION Diagnosis: Harassment A medical-school prof overcomes sexual slurs PAULJENSEN A five-year battle in the courts: Dr. Jew For more than a decade, a male profes- sor at the University of Iowa medical school spread lies about a female col- league. She was trading sexual favors for career advancement, the stories went— sleeping with her boss, sometimes in a mo- tel, sometimes in his office. He told these tales to faculty members, graduate stu- dents and staff members. She complained | repeatedly about the harassment. And what did the university administration do? Nothing. Last week the school paid for its laissez- faire attitude. Settling a five-year-old law- suit, the university issued a humbling pub- lic apology and agreed to pay Dr. Jean Jew 550,0(30 in back pay, 5126,000 in damages and 8895,000 in fees and expenses to her attorney. "Dr. Jew deserves our apologies and our respect for her stand," concluded Iowa's president Hunter Rawlings El. The case has created sharp divisions in the university community. Jew's support- 's ers thought the school should have settled i sooner—as an example to other institu- tions involved in sexual-harassment suits. Others argued that settling the case limit- ed academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus. The suit has brought much negative publicity to Iowa City, a town proud of its reputation as a liberal, sophisticated community. Last month The Des Moines Register printed a full page of excerpts from a federal district court rul- ing in Jew's favor and urged university officials to give up their plan to appeal. "It would be an outrage to delay justice ... a moment longer," the Register said in an accompanying editorial. In her suit, Jew claimed that a fellow anatomy professor, Robert Tomanek, : spread a rumor that she was having an affair with Terence Williams, a former . chairman of the department. Williams had been a professor at Tulane University in New Orleans before taking the Iowa job in 1973; Jew met him when she was a medical student there. She and two male doctors came to Iowa with Williams; Jew became a tenured assistant professor in 1979. . - No comment: In a 34-page ruling issued in late August, U.S. district Judge Harold Vie- tor wrote that Tomanek "told faculty , grad- uate students and staff members of the department, sometimes in locker-room lan- guage, that Dr. Jew had been observed hav- ing sexual intercourse with Dr. Williams in Williams's office, that she was a 'slut,' that she and Dr. Williams were having an affair, that they had been seen coming out of a motel together, and that Dr. Jew had re- ceived preferential treatment based on a sexual relationship with Dr. Williams." Tomanek is still at the university; he de- clined to comment. In a 1985 defamation lawsuit brought by Jew, a jury returned a 535,000 verdict against Tomanek. Others in the department joked about her ethnic background. Jew is an Ameri- can of Chinese descent. Explicit sex-based graffiti about her appeared on the walls of the department's men's room when she was being evaluated for promotion. In 1979, another professor, apparently drunk, yelled at her as she walked down a hallway in the department, calling her a "slut," a "bitch" and a "whore." Before filing suit, Jew protested several times to university officials. She says they told her to endure the insults; her life might be "hell," but she was assured she would continue to progress. Last week she said that "the hardest part of all is still to come" — correcting the problem. "It's so much easier to hand over money than to do what's right." Rawlings promised that the school would "provide a hostility-free envi- ronment for Dr. Jew," and "not tolerate" any other cases of harassment. That's a tough assignment, and one that no univer- sity can afford to fail. ;| \&'.-:•» BARBARAHEATHER WOODIN in Iowa City 14 C itv of Carl s b ad f--<1.v^«-.-=»..t^. February 15, 1991 James Ridenour, Director National Parks Service Department of Interior 1849 C Street N.W. U j; ^ .f •«* * Washington, D.C. 20240 ijn* " Dear Mr. Ridenour: We regard our National parks as national treasures. We feel that a National Parks Service Panel should be reinstated for the purpose of formally reviewing potential new sites and setting the very criteria for their selection. The panel should also be empowered to reject new sites if funding is not available for sufficiently maintaining our current parks. As you know, National Park attendance is up. and the quality of a park's scenic attractions that awed past generations of Americans should be available to our future generations as well. We feel a re-instated parks panel within the National Park Service would better recognize any national significance and/or recreational value inherent in our country's land and would act in our National Parks best interest. CARLSBAD PARKS AND RECREATION COMMISSION dm c: Senator Cranston Senator Seymour Representative Ron Packard 15 RECEIVED MAY 1 * 1991 Citv of Carlsbad "^ ^•^^•^••••••^^••^•^•PW^^^^^^^BOffice of the Mayor May 13, 1991 James Ridenour, Director National Parks Service Department of Interior 1849 C Street N.W. Washington, DC 20240 Dear Mr. Ridenour: The City of Carlsbad regards its National Parks as national treasures, and feels that the National Park Service Panel should be re-instated for the purpose of formally reviewing potential new sites and setting the criteria for their selection. The panel should also be empowered to reject new sites if funding is not available for maintaining existing parks. As you know, National Park attendance is up, and the quality of a park's scenic attractions that awed past generations of Americans should also be available to our future generations. The City believes a re-instated parks panel within the National Park Service would better recognize any national significance and/or recreational value inherent in our country's land, and would act in our National Parks' best interest. LEWIS Mayor ll:pgk c: City Council City Manager £ Parks and Recreation Commission** Senator Alan Cranston Senator John Seymour Congressman Ron Packard 12OO Carlsbad Village Drive • Carlsbad, California 92OO8-1989 • (619) 434-283O