[Senate Hearing 115-532]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 115-532
CHALLENGES IN GATEWAY COMMUNITIES OF NATIONAL PARKS
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FIELD HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
NATIONAL PARKS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED FIFTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 19, 2018
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
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__________
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COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming MARIA CANTWELL, Washington
JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho RON WYDEN, Oregon
MIKE LEE, Utah BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan
STEVE DAINES, Montana JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia
CORY GARDNER, Colorado MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico
LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii
JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine
BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois
ROB PORTMAN, Ohio CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada
SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West Virginia TINA SMITH, Minnesota
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Subcommittee on National Parks
STEVE DAINES, Chairman
JOHN BARRASSO ANGUS S. KING, JR.
MIKE LEE BERNARD SANDERS
CORY GARDNER DEBBIE STABENOW
LAMAR ALEXANDER MARTIN HEINRICH
JOHN HOEVEN MAZIE K. HIRONO
ROB PORTMAN TAMMY DUCKWORTH
Brian Hughes, Staff Director
Kellie Donnelly, Chief Counsel
Michelle Lane, Professional Staff Member
Mary Louise Wagner, Democratic Staff Director
Sam E. Fowler, Democratic Chief Counsel
David Brooks, Democratic General Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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OPENING STATEMENT
Page
Daines, Hon. Steve, Subcommittee Chairman and a U.S. Senator from
Montana........................................................ 1
WITNESSES
Sholly, Cameron, Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park,
National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior......... 4
Baltzley, Patricia, Chair of the Board of Trustees, Gardiner
Public Schools................................................. 10
Costello, Marysue, Director, West Yellowstone Chamber of Commerce 17
Purvis, Deb, President, Cooke City Park County Water District.... 23
Sacca II, Richard Anthony, Emergency Manager, Office of Emergency
Management, Flathead County, Montana........................... 31
ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED
Baltzley, Patricia:
Opening Statement............................................ 10
Written Testimony............................................ 13
Berg, Bill:
Statement for the Record..................................... 53
Costello, Marysue:
Opening Statement............................................ 17
Written Testimony............................................ 19
Daines, Hon. Steve:
Opening Statement............................................ 1
Purvis, Deb:
Opening Statement............................................ 23
Written Testimony............................................ 25
Sacca II, Richard Anthony:
Opening Statement............................................ 31
Written Testimony............................................ 33
Sholly, Cameron:
Opening Statement............................................ 4
Written Testimony............................................ 7
CHALLENGES IN GATEWAY COMMUNITIES OF NATIONAL PARKS
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FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2018
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on National Parks,
Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
Gardiner, Montana.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 11:05 a.m. in
the Multipurpose Room, Gardiner Public School, 510 Stone
Street, Gardiner, Montana, Hon. Steve Daines, presiding.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. STEVE DAINES,
U.S. SENATOR FROM MONTANA
Senator Daines [presiding]. The Subcommittee will come to
order.
I would first like to thank everyone for joining us here on
this absolutely beautiful day in Montana. I want to extend my
special appreciation to Randy Russell, the school's
Superintendent, who could not be here today. Also to Mike Baer,
the Principal, Mike LaPage, the Custodian, as well as Tom
Nelson, who I just chatted with, who is the head of
Maintenance, all of whom are here today and have helped make
today's event possible.
Today is a very special day because we are bringing the
official work of the United States Senate right here to
Gardiner, Montana. This is a great opportunity for kids of all
ages. I know we have a few in the audience. But I am also very
aware of the fact, as a father of four children who were raised
here in Montana, that it is a special holiday week.
I know in the Daines' household growing up that oftentimes
meant going hunting somewhere in Montana, usually antelope
hunting this time of year. So I know we have a lot of kids who
are out there enjoying being outside, which is actually a good
place for young people to be on a day like today.
But this is a great opportunity for kids of all ages
because whether you attend school here or if, like one of our
witnesses, you grew up here, you get to gain appreciation for
how the Federal Government works.
We are here today in this great school, sitting literally
minutes away from the only year-round entrance to Yellowstone
National Park. Most people in Washington, DC, and other places
around the United States dream of visiting Yellowstone maybe
once in their lifetime. But that isn't news to this room when
you have the luxury of living in this great town, it is such a
special place. You also experience the unique challenges that
come when everybody else, literally the entire world, wants to
experience this magic place as well.
I have a lot of memories of being right here in Gardiner as
a kid. I have memories of taking the Buick station wagon with
the wood veneer siding on it, a Griswold kind of station wagon,
and asking permission from my dad if, for our senior prom, I
could come down to Chico for prom, back in 1979.
But I think of all the countless times that we would load
up the car and come down to Yellowstone Park and this very
special part of our nation as a kid whose parents moved to
Bozeman back in 1964. So this really is home in many ways.
It is such an honor to be here. This is called a hearing.
It is meant to hear, that is why it is called a hearing. We
will have some great witnesses here that I will introduce in a
minute.
We are here to talk about the fact that--the secret about
this special place is out. A lot of people are visiting our
national parks and, particularly, Yellowstone National Park.
What does that mean? Well, that can be a very good thing.
For starters, visitors to Montana spent $3.2 billion in 2017
and much of that was near our national parks. In fact, we know
they spent about $275 million in Glacier National Park and
about $500 million in Yellowstone and the surrounding areas
last year, according to the National Park Service (NPS). So
this increase in spending can certainly lead to more jobs,
which is good news for our gateway communities.
However, all this increase in spending means one thing--we
are seeing more visitors to our parks. Don't get me wrong, I
know at times we like to keep our secret hunting and fishing
places secret and our secret hiking places secret. You are
looking at a Senator who likes to spend a lot of time hiking
miles and miles in the backcountry here, not too far from where
we are seated.
I love seeing people coming to Montana and I love the fact
that they visit our national parks, especially our parks right
here in Montana. But I chair the National Parks Subcommittee,
so I am very honored with what I consider my home parks,
Yellowstone National Park and Glacier National Park, as a
Montanan. I also realize with increased visitation comes some
strain. Just like we talk about deferred maintenance inside the
parks themselves, the increase in visitation can strain
resources in gateway communities as well. I know our witnesses
today are here to talk more about the specifics, everything
from responding to fires, to just the pavement on the streets,
the sidewalk in front of the fly shop, the increase in traffic
and so forth and just overall wear and tear.
In addition to routine infrastructure needs, it is my
understanding that the very school we are sitting in faces a
fairly unique funding challenge. We will hear more about that
issue from our witnesses, but I would like to commit to working
on that issue as we move forward.
I would also like to speak to a related matter. In a
business meeting in Washington, DC, just a few weeks ago, we
had one of the most productive Energy and Natural Resources
meetings in my six years in Washington, DC. We moved a
tremendous amount of bills related to conservation, public
lands and protecting our national parks that I had seen in a
long time. In fact, we moved over 40 bills, 40. The news media
did not pick a lot of that up.
There were some good things going on in Washington, DC, in
that Committee that day and some of them are related to Montana
issues. One of those addressed was very relevant to why we are
here today. We passed the Yellowstone Gateway Protection Act
that will permanently protect, for generations to come, the
local economy that relies on tourism and outdoor recreation
here. Secretary Zinke also recently acted to withdraw this same
area from mineral entry, immediately protecting the special
place for 20 years.
All this shows the special balance Montana has between
protecting the environment and supporting local economies. It
also shows our commitment to protecting and strengthening our
local economy driven by tourism and outdoor recreation, mostly
due to neighboring Yellowstone. I remain committed to seeing
this legislation pass both chambers of Congress.
As a native Montanan I take great pride in iconic parks
like Yellowstone and Glacier, but also in our state's lesser
known national treasures such as the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National
Historic Site just 50 miles north of Yellowstone and other
wonderful sites like the Little Bighorn Battlefield.
The National Park Service Centennial was a banner year with
record-setting visitation numbers. As we continue to build upon
that success, it is vital that we begin to plan for the future.
You think about the visionaries that launched this, Teddy
Roosevelt and others, that vision they had. We need to make
sure that we set forward a process of funding mechanisms and
plans that will protect that vision for years to come and not
just for the parks themselves but for these critical gateway
communities and the challenges they face outside the parks.
Before I introduce the witnesses, I want to thank everyone
who came out today. I will also just remind everyone about the
format today. I will introduce everyone. Each witness will have
five minutes to give their testimony. Following the testimony I
will ask questions, during which time each witness will have up
to five minutes to respond. Because we are not in Washington,
DC, today, thank goodness----
[Laughter.]
----I am not going to be too strict with the timer. But I
do want to try to keep it reasonably close to that time limit.
Once we finish up the questions I will gavel out the hearing.
There are no questions from the audience in an official
hearing. As a reminder, this is an official hearing of the
United States Senate and everything said here today will be
included in the official record, including my Griswold comment,
is that right?
[Someone in the background:] That's right.
Senator Daines. Okay, now we will get to the witnesses.
Joining us this afternoon is Mr. Cameron Sholly--I know he
prefers to go by ``Cam''--the Superintendent of Yellowstone
National Park. Day 2 on the job, Cam. Welcome.
We have Ms. Pat Baltzley, Board of Trustees Chairman of the
Gardiner Public Schools.
We have Ms. Marysue Costello, Director of the West
Yellowstone Chamber of Commerce.
We have Ms. Deb Purvis, President, the Cooke City Water
District, one of my favorite towns in Montana, by the way. It
is true. I like Silver Gate, too. Cooke City is great.
And Mr. Rick Sacca, Emergency Manager, Flathead County,
Montana.
We have some Glacier Park representation here as well and
then we pretty much have Yellowstone National Park surrounded
here with these gateway communities witnesses. I want to thank
you all, again, for being here with us.
At the end of your testimony, we will begin questions. Your
full written testimony will be made part of the official
hearing record.
Mr. Sholly, welcome back, I should say. I know you grew up
here in the Gardiner area, and we are really glad to have you
back. I know that you have only been on the job, I guess, about
48 hours here on the ground. We are glad you are back. When you
are ready, please go ahead with your testimony.
STATEMENT OF CAMERON SHOLLY, SUPERINTENDENT,
YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, NATIONAL PARK SERVICE, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
Mr. Sholly. Thank you for that introduction, and it is
fantastic to be here.
As I mentioned outside, I think the last time I was in this
building it was about 30 years ago. So it's special to be back
with all of you.
Thank you for holding this hearing today on such an
important topic. Relationships with gateway communities is one
of the most important things that we focus on in the National
Park System, the National Park Service.
I know how much you value, Senator, parks and public lands
here in Montana and across the country. Thank you for your
support. I look forward to working closely with you in this new
capacity that I'm in.
I really want to thank the witnesses for being here and
giving us, especially me in the beginning of my second day,
their insights and perspectives about how we can work best
together, the issues that you're facing and how I can work and
the team in Yellowstone can work collaboratively with you to
address those issues.
As you know, the National Park Service manages iconic
resources in destinations that truly represent some of the very
best that America has to offer. Our parks attract hundreds of
millions of visitors each year and the communities adjacent to
our parks are absolutely essential to helping provide our
visitors important services, accommodations, food and beverage,
gasoline, other amenities, all which help greatly improve and
contribute to the visitor experience.
Growing visitation at national parks is reflected in the
vitality of these gateway communities, as you mentioned, not
just here but across the country. And in 2017 visitors to our
national parks in the U.S. spent over $18 billion in gateway
communities. Annually, we estimate that Yellowstone visitors
spent almost $500 million in local communities and support more
than 7,000 jobs.
National visitation has gone up by about 50 million just in
the last four or five years. Here in Yellowstone, average
annual visitation has jumped by about 40 percent from where it
was just a decade ago. Near Gardiner, in West Yellowstone,
vehicle traffic counts are up by 60 percent in that 10-year
period. The entrance near Cooke City and Silver Gate is up 37
percent, and the east entrance through Cody is up by almost 50
percent.
So as you mentioned, Senator, there are positives that come
along with increased visitation levels. As you know, those
increases have had a wide range of impacts on infrastructure
and resources.
The National Park Service has an existing deferred
maintenance backlog of $11.6 billion across our entire system
of which nearly $500 million is right here in Yellowstone. So
we need to take aggressive actions to make infrastructure
improvements across the system.
As you know, and as you've mentioned, Chairman, Secretary
Zinke has made it his highest legislative priority to establish
a dedicated fund to address this backlog and we appreciate your
co-sponsorship of Senate bill 3172 which would help really
launch a multi-billion-dollar effort to rebuild park
infrastructure--probably one of the most important things we
can do now and one of the biggest challenges that we face
moving forward.
Wherever possible, it's important that we work together on
actions that help maintain positive economic activity but also
that we work together to lessen and mitigate threats to park
resources and values and continue to do this while we improve
visitor experiences. It's not just for the values and the
experiences inside our boundaries, but also outside our
boundaries and in and around these special gateway communities.
Along those lines, also, very pleased with Secretary
Zinke's recent announcement on the 20-year mineral withdrawal,
just here north of Yellowstone. I think it's a highly
commendable action. He recognized, along with Secretary Purdue,
the importance of preserving the community's larger recreation,
tourism and outdoor cultures. I really do think this is a very
tangible example of a decision that helps us protect lands
outside of the boundary that are closely connected to shared
conservation and recreation values, especially in places like
this that are in such close proximity to great places like
Yellowstone.
Although Gardiner and Mammoth are separated by five miles
and a state line, they really do function as one community. Our
employees who live in Mammoth rely on services provided in
Gardiner and, similarly, residents that live in Gardiner rely
on services provided in Mammoth--a medical clinic, preschool,
the daycare.
As we succeed together, we also face a lot of the same
challenges. Affordable housing continues to be an issue. Like
the park, the Gardiner school has substantial infrastructure
needs. These challenges can make it difficult for Gardiner
businesses, for our concession's operators in the park and for
NPS operations to attract and retain employees with families.
The NPS continually strives to improve the public's access
to our national treasures; however, if visitation continues to
increase, we must also increase our ability to collaborate with
one another.
Yellowstone, like other national parks, needs the
perspectives of its partners to address both challenges and
opportunities before us.
Mr. Chairman, this concludes my statement, and I'm happy to
answer any questions you might have.
Thank you again for holding this hearing.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sholly follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Daines. Thank you, Superintendent Sholly.
Just a comment on that $11.6 billion maintenance backlog.
That was one of those 40 bills that was moved a couple weeks
ago. It was such a great moment when we saw two Democratic
senators, Mark Warner and Angus King, come together with two
Republican senators, Lamar Alexander and Rob Portman on the
committee that I chair, the National Parks Subcommittee, to
move that bill through.
Fights tend to sell more media and press in DC than getting
something done. I can tell you we got something done and did
not get a lot of press about it, but that is a great bill and
it is not going to add to the deficit. We are going to,
hopefully, get this passed here, maybe in the next couple of
months in this lame duck session. I am hoping. That is my goal
to get this done because as Angus King, who was a Governor of
Maine and is now a Senator, said, ``deferred maintenance is
debt.'' It really is and we need to deal with it.
So hopefully we will have some better news for you here. A
great way to start off your new job here in Yellowstone.
Mr. Sholly. Thank you.
Senator Daines. Alright, Ms. Baltzley.
STATEMENT OF PATRICIA BALTZLEY, CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES,
GARDINER PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Ms. Baltzley. Good morning, Senator Daines and others
gathered, for this opportunity to share the challenges of
gateway communities.
My name is Pat Baltzley, and I am Chair of the School Board
of Gardiner Schools. We welcome you to our school in this
beautiful location surrounding us. We're lucky to be here.
To begin with, this has been a tough stretch for our school
district--arguably one of the most challenging in its history.
We face severe budgetary constraints due to a change in
financial structures, we face an infrastructure in need of
maintenance due to aging, and we face declining enrollment due
to a change in our community's housing situation. The impact of
these factors has hit us hard as we've been a school district
committed to providing the best educational experiences for our
students. We are proud of the school district's commitment to
excellence and to supporting a quality education for our
students.
Gardiner School has consistently been ranked as one of the
top schools in the State of Montana. Recently the U.S. News and
World Report once again rated Gardiner as the number one school
in Montana.
As an educator myself for over 40 years, having grown up in
the Northern Virginia school system and having worked in
several large school districts in Maryland, including Baltimore
County, I've been so impressed with the quality of the teaching
staff and the students in this small, unique community.
There are some bright spots on the horizon that include a
partnership with the newly created North Yellowstone Education
Foundation, a rallying community support system and connections
with other partners and support systems, but we are in a budget
shortfall and still need help to stabilize.
While the school district understands and acknowledges that
the past financial benefit received from the Yellowstone
National Park was unique to Gardiner, the change forced drastic
changes to our educational programming. In the past, the school
received money from the National Park Service for its students
who attended school in Gardiner. This allowed the school to
buildup a significant cash reserve and to spend liberally on
programs, staff and resources. The NPS no longer provides this
funding and the State of Wyoming has picked up, with your
support if you remember, that responsibility for the students
who reside inside the park in Wyoming.
Because another state is now providing money for these
students, Montana now deducts that amount from the funding they
provide to Gardiner Schools. The money from Wyoming goes into
Gardiner School's general fund, reducing local taxpayer funding
obligations by nearly 50 percent while maintaining the general
fund's maximum budget allowed by the state.
Furthermore, and of great concern, is that Gardiner
School's enrollment is falling--169 students are currently
enrolled, K-12, as of this fall. When I came on the school
board in 2013, there were close to 250. Enrollment during the
last three years has been the first time the number of students
has been below 200 in decades. Declining enrollment is a result
of large-scale trends that face our community, including
housing shortages, escalating real estate prices, transition of
housing from family residents to vacation rentals and the
changing hiring practices of the area's major employers. Fewer
students equal less funding.
With our changed financial situation and with declining
enrollment, major changes were needed to balance our general
fund budget. The school board had to make many tough decisions
over this past year to bring the budget in balance. The school
district was using 97 percent of its general fund budget for
staffing costs compared to 80 to 85 percent for most other
schools in Montana. This prompted the school board to
investigate options to stabilize the budget and ensure the
long-term sustainability of the school. We reduced our staff,
the equivalent of 7.5 full-time employees which for a small
school district has a huge impact. Most upsetting of all was
having to make the changes that affected the lives of our
friends, families, students and fellow community members.
As with any aging infrastructure, one part of our building
is over 50 years old with a newer section, built after fire in
the 1980s, which is 30 years old. There's a need to ensure that
our school environment is safe and healthy for our students.
With this aging infrastructure and immediate maintenance
concerns, the board has made some recent maintenance decisions
with large financial impact.
We completed a part of our roofing replacement project
utilizing a 1-to-1 matching grant of $200,000 from the Gardiner
Resort Tax that helped us replace a portion of our roof for
$475,000. We still have another 35 percent to replace that is
30 years old. This will be another significant cost.
We have just begun a project to replace and repair our
three aging boilers and our infrastructure system for our
boilers. This project could cost the Gardiner School District
close to $650,000. An application has been made to the Gardiner
Resort Tax Board for $250,000 but more financial support is
needed.
We need help in stabilizing our financial structure so that
we can continue to provide the quality of education that we
have been able to provide in the past and that every student
deserves. This means a stabilization of impact aid that we
receive. If it gets reduced or eliminated entirely, then we
would immediately need to reduce our staff further by about
three more teachers, close to $160,000.
The current method for quantifying the number of families
that work in or near Yellowstone is inadequate as we have
families that work in the park, although their offices are not
inside the park boundaries which is a qualification for being
factored into our impact aid funds.
Gardiner Public Schools are in a great part dependent on
public lands, and we are at the whim of global market forces.
In order to maintain our community and school, we need help.
The school district is working with the larger community to
determine how as a community we can address the housing needs
in a landlocked community surrounded by national and state
land. Our school itself has part of its property on national
park land. One of our questions is whether there is a
possibility for exchange of national or state land to support
the building of needed, affordable housing in our community.
The school would like to take advantage of an opportunity
through the National Park Restoration Act, U.S. Senate bill
2509 or House bill 5210 or similar legislation for federal
assistance in such a way that does not impact funding options
for the park itself. We are involving our community in
political advocacy through awareness of these bills and have
circulated a petition to garner support for our position. We
have gathered 840 signatures to this date in support of this
bill.
Your support in general to continue commitment to our
national educational system, including financial support for
aging infrastructures in the United States, as well as your
support for our specific needs as a gateway community, is
significant and needed.
Thank you for this opportunity to share our challenging
situation as we work to educate our students in this unique
environment.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Baltzley follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Daines. Thank you very much.
Ms. Costello.
STATEMENT OF MARYSUE COSTELLO, DIRECTOR, WEST YELLOWSTONE
CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
Ms. Costello. Honorable Senator Daines and other guests, I
am pleased to be asked to present information to you today
about gateway communities, national parks and the impacts faced
by each, and full well knowing that each impacts the other.
Gateway communities, such as those represented at this
hearing, economically rely on tours and recreation and the
environmental health that drives those activities. They are our
lifeblood. Many, many things can affect that blood flow. Public
policy, weather and natural events nearby and even worldwide
can constrict or open the flow. Specifically, today I would
like to talk about fires in national parks, dramatic increases
in visitation and access.
The item that gains the most notoriety is fires. They are
dramatic, photogenic and alarming, and they go on for months.
In recent years Yellowstone's gateway communities have gone
through several iterations of impactful fires.
Due, I believe, to the recognition that entities cannot
work in isolation, there has been a significant shift to
transparency and cooperation. Two summers ago, and again this
summer, West Yellowstone has been directly affected by fires
that encompassed both Forest Service and Park Service lands.
Both Gardiner and Cooke City have had their share of challenges
by fires too.
Some citizens are of the opinion that all fires should be
managed to be suppressed, while others are more accepting that
fire is critical to the maintenance of healthy forests and will
be a part of the landscape. Regardless of those positions, West
Yellowstone has, especially in more recent years, experienced
tremendous openness and cooperation from public agencies, and
we are grateful. We feel our local representatives are included
in the decision-making processes and we value, too, the joint
participation in public meetings and information dissemination.
Fires definitely have a price tag across a broad spectrum
of resources: public, private sector and individual citizen.
Balancing benefit to cost will always be challenging and we, as
gateway communities, highly value the assurance that we will be
contributors to the discussion and the decisions.
We, in West Yellowstone and many locations throughout the
regions, were first affected this summer by smoke beginning in
early July. First was the impact from the fires in California
and Oregon, then came Canada and on to Idaho before there were
fires burning in our more local areas. It would be my
estimation that there were very few days between the last two
weeks of July and mid-September that smoke, in varying degrees,
was not in the air.
More than a century of hard suppression of wildland fires
and the unintended and detrimental impact it has had on our
forests cannot be overcome quickly. Nevertheless, it is time
for further exploration into a more comprehensive plan to allow
fires their natural role while not impacting the entire West.
We do not say this lightly and fully recognize that any
solutions need to be openly discussed and with all parties
having seats at the table.
Next, I would like to address the dramatic increase in
visitation over the past few years and its impacts. Yellowstone
is known worldwide, and for many internationals it is on their
must-see list. Traffic jams sometimes miles and hours long,
overflowing parking lots and restrooms, challenges with
language, disrespect for wildlife and the fragility of the
unique geology place grave demands on Yellowstone's resources.
They all dramatically affect the Park and bleed out directly
and indirectly into the bordering communities.
The way will not be easy. We look to and for solutions that
will enhance visitor experience while not adversely offsetting
the economies of gateway communities. With over four million
visitors, five gateways and four U.S. highways, answers will
need to be multi-faceted, responding to an army of stakeholders
and, in the end, providing maximum security for the incredible
unique resource that is Yellowstone.
We appreciate the Park Service's commitment to the research
that is already well underway and that will inform and guide
visitor management decisions and planning. Additional funding
for all our parks and monuments, as they grapple with current
increased visitation and that which is expected to come, would
be a blessing.
I wish to express appreciation to Senator Portman and to
you, Senator Daines, for all the work on championing the
Restore Our Parks Act. It will be critical, I believe, to this
area and to all national parks. This Act, by addressing the
backlog of infrastructure needs, would enable more of the
regular park appropriations to find its way into additional
staffing, integral to addressing many of the visitor management
challenges.
Lastly, at this time I would like to address access to
public lands for West Yellowstone. To our east lies Yellowstone
National Park and on our other three sides the vast majority of
land belongs to the United States Forest Service. We are,
truly, an impacted community. Hence our survival depends on
access to public lands.
West Yellowstone has long desired year-round access to the
Park instead of the current fall and spring closures of our
gate. Each closure is approximately six weeks in length and the
result is very like a spigot being turned off. Certain seasonal
affects, of course, would continue. We are, after all, a
seasonal area. However, our community would be able to better
develop a more sustainable year-round economy with such a
change and visitors would be more easily satisfied.
With Yellowstone on the bucket list of both citizens and
international visitors throughout the world, rarely is ``time
of the year'' considered. Yellowstone is the goal. Everyone
understands that weather can impact a vacation; however, the
planned, extended closures are confusing and many visitors
arrive to be greatly disappointed. Access. It's essential.
Thank you again for committing to be here in Gardiner and
in Yellowstone and asking to hear from local voices. We
appreciate your time and dedication.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Costello follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Daines. Thank you, Ms. Costello.
Ms. Purvis.
STATEMENT OF DEB PURVIS, PRESIDENT, COOKE CITY
PARK COUNTY WATER DISTRICT
Ms. Purvis. Senator Daines, thank you so much for taking
the time to reach out to our gateway communities. I'm really
grateful for the opportunity to tell you about the challenges
to our tiny little community.
As you know, Cooke City is located--we're isolated. We're
between Yellowstone National Park and then there's about ten
miles of highway in Montana and on the other side of that is
Wyoming. So we're truly an island and that presents unique
problems with our highways and plowing and being able to access
our roads. We have no cell phone service. Some people really
enjoy that. Our visitors do not as much. We also have very
limited internet.
Senator Daines. If you get to the top of Granite Peak, you
can get cell service.
[Laughter.]
Ms. Purvis. Yes, you can hike up to the hill.
[Laughter.]
The little community, Silver Gate and Colter Pass, on
either side of Cooke City have very limited internet. We have
to operate on satellite internet until you use up all of your
limited data--they generously give you 10 gigs of data. When
you use that up you're down to dial-up speeds.
But mostly what I want to talk to you about today is our
wastewater problem. Cooke City has a really big wastewater
problem. As with all of us, tourism is the mainstay to our
economy. We're blessed and challenged with the rapid and
significant increases in the number of people who visit our
area. So just wastewater is not a real popular topic to talk
about, but I'm going to give you some idea of what we're
facing.
First of all, everybody in Cooke City, business and private
residence, has their own onsite septic system. We have no way
to manage community wastewater. In 2009, we had 4,000 visitors
to our community center. In 2017, we had 23,000. You know about
the gate interest we have, and we also recently have had a lot
more bus traffic. This summer we had 222 buses carrying 6,660
people and mostly they stopped at the community center to use
the bathroom.
The businesses on the south side of Main Street lease space
from the National Forest Service for their drain fields. That
permit is set to expire in two months, in December of this
year, so we're scrambling to work on this.
In 2010, we did build the community center, and they have
their own onsite system. They sized that for 600 gallons per
day based on best estimates and the DEQ usage table. The
reality is that in August of last year, they averaged 990
gallons per day with a peak day of 2,340 gallons. And so, they
had taken some steps to address this. We were able to use some
of our resort tax money for matching funds for a grant to get a
PER, a Preliminary Engineering Report, which is the first step
to address this. That initial draft is due out in March 2019,
and we hope to have an election to form a sewer district in May
2019.
We are working with other organizations as well. I traveled
to Helena this spring to give testimony at a local government
legislative subcommittee hearing. We've also been able to work,
not closely, with Park County Commissioners to partner and gain
assistance and work toward solving this problem, and they've
been wonderful to work with. We've also had just a real light
at the end of the tunnel in that the National Forest Service
approached us recently and offered, well, they didn't offer to
give it to us, I'm sure, but----
[Laughter.]
--offered six parcels of land and asked, you know, how
would this work for your community drain field? The engineer
and I were just blown over. We didn't quite know what to do
with that. So there's a real spirit of cooperation there, and
that's been really refreshing.
So, in conclusion, Cooke City is not a city, we're not
incorporated. We're not a city or a county. We're very remote.
We have no ability to tax that a political subdivision or a
government entity does. We're a very important gateway to
Yellowstone National Park--220,000, roughly, people go through
the Northeast Gate. We need to be able to provide basic
sanitation to our citizens and our guests while still
safeguarding the natural resources.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Purvis follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Daines. Thank you, Ms. Purvis, I appreciate the
testimony.
Mr. Sacca.
STATEMENT OF RICHARD ANTHONY SACCA II, EMERGENCY MANAGER,
OFFICE OF EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT, FLATHEAD COUNTY, MONTANA
Mr. Sacca. Good morning, Senator Daines and ladies and
gentlemen.
My name is Rick Sacca. I'm here from Flathead County, up in
Northwest Montana, where I serve as both the County Emergency
Manager and the County Coordinator for Montana State Disaster
and Emergency Services. I'm also fortunate to be the Local
Emergency Planning Committee, or LEPC, Chairman. And in my part
time I'm the Assistant Chief of Bad Rock Fire. So, as you can
tell, my perspective is probably going to be an emergency
services perspective.
I plan to brief you on some of the many successes that
we've seen as a result of the positive relations with our
partners at Glacier National Park, I intend to highlight the
importance of these relations as it relates to the never-ending
cycle of emergency management, and I also hope to show you the
value of these relations, the value that these relations build,
particularly in terms of the management of emergencies and the
processes that we have developed for emergency management. And
these incidents go far beyond the response actions that you
might think of: sending an ambulance or a police car. These are
much more in-depth than processes and this allows us to work
together in managing any incident or event or crisis that
occurs in or out of the park.
As detailed in my written testimony, the ever-increasing
number of visitors to our national parks places an increased
burden on the local emergency services and response agencies,
particularly in the closest gateway communities. These agencies
have grown over the years but at a rate commensurate with the
population growth, permanent population growth, not in step
with the significant increases in visitors that we are now
serving.
In Flathead County, these emergency response agencies in
the gateway communities and throughout the county are primarily
all volunteer, unpaid, rural fire departments. The lack of
growth of these departments can be attributed to the lack of
increased property ownership, lack of increased property taxes
and the ever-
decreasing rates of volunteerism we see nationwide. There is no
improvement in that situation visible on the horizon from our
view.
The park is also, arguably, not keeping up with the
dramatic increase of visitors in terms of their emergency
services staff. In essence, none of us have grown sufficiently
to accommodate the needs and demands of these increased
visitors.
Glacier National Park, Flathead County Office of Emergency
Services and all of our emergency response and service agencies
recognize this limitation and have chosen to seek better
solutions. The idea that we can and do all work together helps
us to combine our forces. Our emergency management team, if you
would, and the collective pool of resources we have work
together.
The relationships we have developed allow us to plan and
use these resources in this resource pool to plan for, respond
and recover from any incident or emergency we face. The types
of incidents that we have developed processes to respond to
range from the minor vehicle collision, minor medical
emergencies, serious trauma, structural fires, hazmat or
hazardous materials leaks, search and rescue, wildland fire and
all the way up to large events like mass casualty incidents,
the Bakken oil train derailment and possible leak, and
avalanches which cut off our interstate highway and major rail
lines. All of these negatively affect tourism and the gateway
communities.
The ability to plan for and respond to these incidents is
rooted on relationships with the park and county agencies that
have created effective emergency management processes and a
teamwork approach with the park and the community. I don't have
a funding solution to the challenges we have.
The commitment that's been demonstrated from the park and
the county to protecting these relationships is clearly seen as
they are designated as ``values of risk.'' And that's what I'd
like to leave you with today is we, the park, Flathead National
Forest, Department of Natural Resources and Conservation and
Flathead County Emergency agencies include these values of risk
in our delegations of authority when we sign a delegation of
authority letter and commission incident management teams.
Those teams consist of the typical Type 3 Incident
Management Teams which we use on a routine basis. Regional Type
2 teams we bring in when there's a larger-scale incident, and
the national Type 1 teams as we brought two teams in this past
season. The incident management objectives that are outlined in
those delegations of authority become incident management
objectives for every single person working on that incident:
firefighter, police officer, what have you.
The same needs to be done in the daily standard operating
procedures of our national parks. The idea that we want to
protect these relationships needs to be something that's
regular course of business, not something that's a standout
that we do only when there's a big fire.
It is my hope that you have seen the tremendous value in
these relationships and their results, and we ask you to help
craft a more formalized mandate for the parks to follow this
model, this successful model, and encourage support and nurture
this type of relationship-building and relation maintenance
with the external gateway community's emergency services.
None of us can do this alone. We are all in this together,
and I'm proud of the important work and successes we have
achieved with Glacier National Park.
Thank you for your time and thank you for listening.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sacca follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Senator Daines. Thank you.
Before we get into some questions, I think it would just be
worth noting some of the support staff who are here that makes
these hearings possible.
I will start with Rebecca--Rebecca Bonner is a Professional
Staff Member from the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Raise your hand there, Rebecca. She serves on the Minority
Staff with Senator Cantwell, who is the Ranking Member of this
Committee from the State of Washington.
And then to my right is Michelle Lane, Professional Staff
Member from the Committee who serves on the Majority Staff
under Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
To my left is Joshua Sizemore. He serves on my legislative
staff in Washington, DC. He is a native of Billings. So
Billings is home, but we have him temporarily displaced in
Washington, DC.
And then Darla Ripchensky, Chief Clerk from the Energy and
Natural Resources Committee. So it is great to have you out
here as well. Thank you.
So this literally is all the formalities of a U.S. Senate
hearing, the way it is recorded and so forth. The beauty of
this is we are in Gardiner, Montana.
I am going to start with you, Mr. Sholly. If you could get
the microphone back here.
Welcome back to Montana. Welcome back to Yellowstone.
Welcome back to your old school here.
The question I have for you, in your mind, how do you see
the relationship between the National Park Service and the
Gardiner Schools working today and how is that different than
when you were a student? Can you remember that far back, Cam?
Mr. Sholly. I'm not sure if I was really thinking about the
relationship between the park and the school district when I
was going to school here. It's a great question though.
From what I understand in my first 24 hours, 36 hours here,
the park works very closely with the school district. The
school has produced some amazing graduates--I wasn't talking
about myself.
[Laughter.]
I was--I know this school is regularly ranked not only
number one in Montana, but it's a top-ranking school in the
country, too, from a Class C perspective, and that's because of
the leadership of the school and the commitment of Gardiner and
the importance that Gardiner puts, and Mammoth, on having a
great school in a community like this which is absolutely
essential. So I think we have a good relationship.
I will tell you that my goal is to continue to ensure that
that relationship ascends, that we really work on understanding
better what issues you have, in what ways we can help solve
some of those issues and, you know, anything that's within our
legal authority that we have the ability to help you with, we
will. The school itself, from an executive management
standpoint, and the park and I can speak for the concessions as
well and the businesses even here in Gardiner. Our goal is to
attract the best and the brightest into this community, into
Mammoth, and the best and the brightest have families and many
times they'll make a decision if they think that a school, not
just here but in many places around the country, is not up to
their satisfaction for one reason or another. They will choose
not to transfer and that can have a big impact on who we bring
into these communities and the types of talent that we want and
need to attract.
And so, I think we have mutual objectives, mutual goals and
a mutual commitment to continue working together to elevate and
improve not only the relationships, but the type of things that
we work on and the opportunities that we have in the future.
Senator Daines. It is interesting. The two of you are
sitting next to each other. I mean, you think of the important
relationship.
I remember when we were building our technology company in
Bozeman, trying to sometimes recruit talent to come to Montana.
The first question that was asked was, tell me about the
schools. And that was, oftentimes, a key decision, like to use
a matrix to come to a place like Gardiner, to Bozeman,
wherever.
Mr. Sholly, as you are aware, the Centennial set records
around the country as it relates to visitation at our parks.
Here at Yellowstone we continue to see record visitation
numbers and just when we thought we would not see another
record, we break that record here in Yellowstone. I know you
track those numbers. Could you speak to how the increased
visitor levels that we are seeing here impact the park and
looking at both in terms of the challenge it presents as well
as an opportunity?
Mr. Sholly. Well, I really appreciate that question. It's
very timely.
I think we've increased visitation by about 50 million
people nationally, since 2013 or 2014. We were running on about
a 270 to 280 million visits per year for a very long time and
with the buildup to the Centennial and other reasons, we've
increased substantially in the last four to five years.
That's not a bad thing, I mean, 330 million people enjoying
our parks and connected to our parks. As you mentioned, our
parks represent the very best of America, and they're
bipartisan. And it's incumbent upon us to make those
connections, and we've tried to do that very successfully in
the past.
There are impacts to that. I would put those in, kind of,
two different buckets. One, impacts to resources, operations
and staffing at the park level. And then in another bucket, the
impacts on, kind of, peripheral impacts on communities and on
the visitor experience itself.
On the first bucket, which I think is in my mind, they're
all priorities but something I'm going to be very heavily
focused on is the corridors within, say, Yellowstone of my
peers and around the service we're looking at these same
things, where we have high-density, high-use, visitor impacts
on fragile resources or see an increased damage to resources
because of the visitor use. Those are things that need to be
addressed immediately.
And in the short amount of briefings that I've gotten here
in my first day in the job, I can tell you already, there's a
considerable amount, and especially in the West Yellowstone to
Old Faithful corridor, of impacts because of the higher
visitation levels, not just on visitor impacts, not just on the
communities, but directly on the resources where people are
parking their cars, where they're walking on geothermal
features.
And so, there are a lot of things that we need to do on
that front, working with communities, working to come up with
solutions that make sense. That doesn't necessarily mean
restricting visitors, but as far as things that we can do to
prevent that damage and those impacts, we need to line those
out and work to execute them.
Forty percent more visitation in the last 10 years in
Yellowstone. And I haven't looked at these numbers in my first
day here too much, but when you look at the numbers across the
service, you see--when adjusted for inflation, some flat
budgets--you see similar or eroding staffing levels. And so,
you've got an increase in Yellowstone at 40 percent. You've got
similar staffing. That's a stressor on our ability to manage
the visitations. That's something that we look at.
And then I heard an anecdotal story yesterday about
visitation, or cars backing up at West Yellowstone all the way
into town. And so, there's a lot we need to do from the
standpoint of how efficient we are, do we have the right
entrance framework, whether that be a west or here in Gardiner
or anywhere else. And then once visitors are in the park, are
they--are we doing what we need to do to manage that traffic
flow, to manage that experience and do it in a way where they
can enjoy these incredible resources, but we're also protecting
them at the same time.
Senator Daines. Thank you, Cam.
I know we have had some good hearings in Washington looking
at how technology might help us as well in terms of trying to
smooth out some of the crowding issues we are seeing at times,
so I think there will be more to come on that as we think about
the future.
Ms. Baltzley, first I want to congratulate you and Gardiner
for achieving the ranking as top school in Montana, not only in
Montana, but having the national recognition, and I think your
own credentialing of your experiences in Virginia and Maryland
and seeing what is out here. I know sometimes out here in
Montana people think that we are not quite as smart as they are
back east.
Ms. Baltzley. That's right.
Senator Daines. But we prove them wrong most of the time,
don't we?
Ms. Baltzley. We do.
Senator Daines. Yes.
Ms. Baltzley. The staff here is incredible.
Senator Daines. Yes, exactly.
Your testimony mentioned that enrollment in the school has
fallen below 200 students for the first time in decades. As I
travel around the state--I get to all 56 counties every two
years--the plight of the Class C schools around Montana is
very, very troubling. You attribute this to a variety of
factors. Would you like to elaborate on what you feel is
causing enrollment to decrease? You talked about it a bit in
your testimony, but maybe you could elaborate further. And
what, if anything, could be done to get enrollment back up in
Gardiner in the coming years?
Ms. Baltzley. Well some of it, you would assume, would be a
natural ebb and flow of trends, as most school districts see,
but this is such a dramatic drop that when we take a look at
what's happening, we realize that our housing issue is probably
at the root of--it's probably the largest cause of what's our
declining enrollment.
Although there are still employees who are working in the
park for both either the National Park Service or for Xanterra,
some of those employees are coming from Livingston, so they're
no longer living in the Gardiner area because either they can't
afford the housing that is here or there isn't housing
available.
So over the past, I've lived here since 2010 and we've
noticed a dramatic shift and I think it was even occurring
before that. When houses go up they're often bought at a huge
price that may be investment, investors, et cetera, are able to
afford and are changed into vacation rentals. They often then
are used from May to October and then they may sit empty, some
of them sit empty, or we even have in-seasonal employee housing
for which the houses also sit empty during our school year.
So we have young families who cannot afford to buy houses
here in Gardiner or there's not even rentals available for
them, affordable rentals, that they can come and purchase. So
consequently they move up the valley, as we say, and they are
beyond a point of rocks which is, where 89 crosses Yellowstone,
our Gardiner boundary and a lot of our families are moving out
to the Emigrant area or north of there. And, consequently, they
have a choice: they can either continue to send their students
here to Gardiner as out-of-district students, or they can go to
Livingston. I think both choices are made. We have about 35, I
think, families right now who are, choose to continue to send
their students to Gardiner. A lot of the reasons are they're
coming from Emigrant and their employment is in the National
Park Service. So, consequently, that has a huge impact on our
enrollment.
As far as what we can do. There are several community
groups that have been working on this housing situation, and
we've been working to see whether or not there are places that
we might be able to support some development of affordable
housing. Well, just like West Yellowstone was talking, we're
landlocked. We can't find those places because we have national
lands. We've got state forest lands, et cetera. And so,
consequently, we're not able to find the property in order to
be able to work with some of the agencies to help us with that
affordable housing.
Senator Daines. Yes, interesting.
Ms. Purvis talked about the national forest, talking about
maybe some land for you all because you're landlocked as well,
right? You are surrounded--just thinking about what we need to
do here----
Ms. Baltzley. Right.
Senator Daines. ----as we grow and you have a 40 percent
increase in visitation----
Ms. Baltzley. Right.
Senator Daines. ----over a period of 10 years.
Ms. Baltzley. Right.
Senator Daines. Something has got to give here, it seems
like.
Ms. Baltzley. Right.
And we look to, you know, maintaining that same quality----
Senator Daines. Yes.
Ms. Baltzley. ----of education that we've been able to do,
that has given us that ranking of number one, et cetera. And we
do need to be able to figure out a way in order to have our,
yeah, our teachers, which is another piece.
Senator Daines. Right.
Ms. Baltzley. Is, you know, you asked about declining
enrollment but even when we do have new teachers the first
question is, we did a little reconnaissance before we came and
we're not going to be able to afford housing here.
Senator Daines. Yes.
I want to follow up on another question and get into some
details about the funding for the Gardiner Schools. You talked
about that a bit in your testimony. You mentioned the school
used to receive funding directly from the National Park Service
for students who attended school in Gardiner. I remember that
distinctly.
Ms. Baltzley. Yes, thank you very much for helping us.
Senator Daines. I think I was going through the National
Park budgets, and the issue was revealed.
Ms. Baltzley. Right.
Senator Daines. And that line item has now been replaced
with a payment from the State of Wyoming. I remember hearing
about it when I was in the House, and we were working with the
Wyoming delegation to protect prior year payments because that
was also an issue regarding the arrears piece.
Ms. Baltzley. Correct.
Senator Daines. That would have been devastating, if I----
Ms. Baltzley. $8 million.
Senator Daines. Yes, and to assure the school was made
whole.
How is this updated arrangement working for you all? I
would like to hear more about that.
Ms. Baltzley. Well, we've had to adjust and you heard that
this past year was very dramatic in our adjustments because we
did have, you know, with the confluence of things that have
been going on since that money, which was not earmarked in
our--did not need to be earmarked in our general fund budget,
which then allowed us to use it for some things over and beyond
what we, a Class C, might typically have been able to use. When
that money was no longer coming to us and the Wyoming payment
came in, working with the State of Montana, that money now
needed to go directly into our general fund which then offset
what Montana was paying for us, paying us.
So now, we only--the only pieces that we have coming in,
for the most part, are in our general fund which is spent every
year and we are not able to add to our reserves as much as we
have been in the past, which then creates an issue of when we
have major factors like what I described with our
infrastructure maintenance with having to replace an aging
roof. It had to be replaced. We have three boilers of which
one, the oldest, is the only functioning one. Those kinds of
things take down from our reserves. They're not budgeted into
our general funds.
So we do receive impact aid. We also receive REAP money
which is, I think, they----
Senator Daines. By the way, Ms. Baltzley, on the impact
aid, you mentioned the formula issue----
Ms. Baltzley. Yeah.
Senator Daines. ----there, about where the employees
actually were working, where the offices were----
Ms. Baltzley. Correct.
Senator Daines. ----and all that, then some that did not
qualify for impact aid.
Ms. Baltzley. Correct. Right.
Senator Daines. We have staff here who took notes quickly,
as I did as well. We want to go back and look at that----
Ms. Baltzley. Great.
Senator Daines. ----to see if there is something there that
could be changed in just an administrative rule issue. Is that
a law issue? We are going to go investigate that, yes----
Ms. Baltzley. Well, thank you because that is a challenge.
Senator Daines. Yes.
Ms. Baltzley. Because so many of the people living in the
community actually work in the park, but their offices--they
could be guides.
Senator Daines. Right.
Ms. Baltzley. They could be independent contractors.
Senator Daines. Yes, we will take that as a follow-up item
here, too, to see if there is something we can do there.
Ms. Baltzley. Great, thank you.
Senator Daines. Because I think we are violating the
principle and the spirit of what is trying to be done on the
algebra there.
Ms. Baltzley. Great, thank you.
Senator Daines. The formula needs to be adjusted, best I
can tell, first look.
Ms. Baltzley. Thank you.
Senator Daines. Yes.
Ms. Baltzley. So consequently, our funding has changed. And
so, we're trying to, and especially the Board of Trustees,
being the stewards of the money, is trying to act responsibly
and trying to be able to take care of our aging infrastructure,
be able to appropriately use our budget without going over,
without dipping into reserves more than we need to because
those reserves are needed for some of the things that are one-
time costs, et cetera.
Consequently, it's been a change in the way that we do
business and that has impacted our programs of education. We've
eliminated some of our academic programs. More of our students
are taking online courses because we don't have the staff in
order to have direct programs for those students.
Senator Daines. Thank you.
I am going to move to Mr. Sacca here for a minute.
You described this close, cooperative relationship with the
National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, other federal
partners. Would you describe your relationship with the Park
Service as generally positive? And what, if anything, could be
done to improve that relationship with the service and other
federal partners for that matter?
Mr. Sacca. I believe that Flathead County and our
relationship with Glacier National Park is truly outstanding.
It's to be commended that they're so willing to be good
partners. We enjoy the same level of partnership with the Park,
the Forest Service, DNRC and the County.
It was really started, just a couple of people that knew
each other, myself and the Chief Ranger, we work next door to
each other. We live next door in the park and when our jobs
took us in different directions, he stayed in the park and I
went to the county, we maintained that relation and continued
to build that.
That was quickly capitalized and actually championed by the
superintendent and then our commissioners at the county level.
They actually recognized the value in that. That allowed it to
flourish and happen beyond just the two guys that knew each
other to all of our offices working cooperatively in that
spirit of cooperation which now is championed by the
superintendent and by the county commissioners. That's the
value of what we found.
Senator Daines. Thank you.
Ms. Purvis, how are the wastewater and the water
improvements currently paid for?
Ms. Purvis. Wastewater is not currently paid for. Our water
improvements--we built a new water system in 2011, $2.2
million, made up of a combination of grants and low interest
loans.
People in the community right now pay, we fund that with a
system called EDU, which is an estimated daily usage. Each unit
is $32.17. It's, kind of, an arbitrary assignment. Restaurants
are assigned 1.5 EDUs. So I have a cafe there. Our water bill
is like $46 a month. The hotels are hit very hard. They pay 1
EDU, plus 0.5 EDU for every room that they have. So some of
them are paying $700 and $800 a month for water. Residents pay
$32.17. We are looking now at moving to a different rate
structure based on usage. Restaurants, unhappily for me, are
going to be paying considerably more. Hotels will be paying
less, I believe.
Senator Daines. What alternative funding models do you
think need to be explored?
Ms. Purvis. I'm at a disadvantage here. I'm a psychiatric
nurse and a restaurant owner, and I don't even know what the
options are.
You know, we have a population based on the recent Census
Bureau of 2015. I'm not sure it's entirely accurate, but they
had said we had 35 year-round residents with a median household
income of $38,500. So the community cannot afford to do this on
their own.
Senator Daines. Any kind of thoughts, perhaps, on whether
it is a user fee where visitors would be able to contribute to
that as well, or just thinking out loud here of ideas to try to
generate revenue to cover some of these things?
Ms. Purvis. Sure. And we have our three percent resort tax.
That generates about $170,000 a year in Cooke City.
Senator Daines. Yes.
Ms. Purvis. But in January, it's an interesting meeting
when people fight for their share of the pie. The local option
tax that Park County Commissioners and Erica talked about would
be, I think, useful for us, so that just the gateway
communities could charge that tax for visitors who come
through.
Senator Daines. I have to believe that somebody who gets to
your part of the neighborhood here often, Silver Gate and Cooke
City, especially in August. You talk about those peak-use
months in August. How does that compare to what you see in
January and February when it turns into more of a snowmobiling,
cross-country skiing, backcountry skiing, kind of economy?
Ms. Purvis. That's a really nice time of recovery for many
of our septic systems. The numbers are not nearly as high. I
don't have the specific figures for you.
Senator Daines. Ms. Costello, my question for you is a
little more general in terms of the habits of visitors to
Yellowstone National Park. Are you able to capture how many
tourists stop at local businesses versus those who drive
straight through to the Park?
Ms. Costello. Well, when I consider that question I can
really start to think of maybe a way of trying to understand
that. But I don't believe, I know we do not have a way of
capturing that at this point in time because we would not know
if a visitor, for instance, stopped at the far side of town and
had breakfast before they went through the gate.
So all of those sorts of things would be very difficult for
us to really know. We obviously know that West Yellowstone is
the most popular gateway to Yellowstone, and I'm sure much of
that is because we're closest to California. But also--well,
it's true. But the other part of that would be just if, you
know, we have a couple of highways, three highways and so, it
makes a busy place. And no, we do not know that figure.
Senator Daines. As you work with the businesses there in
the Chamber and so forth that you interact with, do you have
any strategies for the businesses? I mean, how do they increase
their revenue there to get tourists to stop in West Yellowstone
before they enter the park and spend some of their money?
Ms. Costello. We spend a considerable amount. West
Yellowstone is one of the funded communities for bed tax in
Montana. There's a whole formula, but West Yellowstone is
fortunate to have that. And then we also have the West
Yellowstone Tourism Business Improvement District. Both of
those fund a considerable amount for our small community, a
considerable amount of marketing and advertising that we do.
And that strategy is reviewed and gone over annually to see
which ways, what more we could do.
One of the things that we like and are excited about are
the additional activities and attractions that are beginning to
appear in our area, because I do believe it helps take some of
the pressure off the gate because people will come and do other
things as well.
For instance, the Adventure Park with ziplines and the
Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center are in the process of this
early into the next tourism season will be opening their
riparian habitat which will have otters and lots of types of
fish of the area. And we see that as being a tremendous
attraction as well. So the more of those things that we can do.
We also send people on tours all over the area. Of course,
always bringing them back to West Yellowstone, I might add. But
we send them on loop tours that bring them back but encourage
them to visit those things that are wonderful places but
additional to Yellowstone--Mesa Falls, the Earthquake Visitor
Center, all of those.
Senator Daines. Thank you.
Mr. Sacca, your testimony mentions that the local emergency
response agencies of Flathead County are primarily funded
through resident property tax levies and most first responders
in the area are either all volunteer or partial volunteer. I
know this can put a strain on your resources in terms of time
and people, particularly in the peak fire and the peak tourism
season when it all happens, usually at the same time. Could you
describe the type of fiscal impacts this has on your local
budget and what ideas you might have that could be better
appropriated in the future?
Mr. Sacca. Well, sir, when we have the large fire season or
large other types of incidents that exceed four hours, the
response takes a long time. There's a funding mechanism that's
in place. There's agreements between the Forest Service, the
county, the park and DNRC and have standardized rates that we
can use for that.
But anything that's less than four hours is considered
mutual aid, the Good Neighbor Policy, and we just go and do it.
And the vast, vast majority of those responses that are related
to tourism directly, are those one and two and three hour
responses, somebody has a medical emergency, a vehicle
accident, a vehicle fire and things of that nature.
There is no funding mechanism that exists right now, that
we're aware of, and that puts a huge strain on us because
that's the bread and butter of what we do. We have some
departments that go out several times a day. For a rural
department with just six members, that's a tremendous burden on
them and their families.
On some of the larger departments, where we send out 10,
12, 15 calls per day and none of it's being reimbursed, but yet
it's all in support of somebody else's jurisdiction, that takes
a tremendous financial burden on those.
Then those finances, or financial burdens, some of it is
salary. Three of our 20 departments have a full-time pay
structure, just 3, where the 17 others are 100 percent
volunteer. They're not funded at all.
So there is no money coming in there, but we're still
consuming resources. We're still using things to clean up the
spill from the vehicle accident and medical supplies and things
like that on every single call that we do. We're putting wear
and tear on all of our vehicles and ambulances and fire trucks,
and we're consuming fuel, another huge expense. None of that is
reimbursed.
So for the big incidents, yes, there's clearly a funding
mechanism and there's 100 percent reimbursement, and those
multi-day events and these strike teams and task forces that we
send to respond to fires, 100 percent is being reimbursed. But
all of the small ones are the ones that are really doing the
damage to us.
Senator Daines. So it is my understanding the task force is
paid for services. I guess the question is going to be, do you
think you are receiving fair market value?
Mr. Sacca. Yes, sir, I think we do.
For example, the task force that I led this summer to go in
and respond into Glacier National Park based on a phone call, a
911 call from the park, to bring what's called a wildland
structure protection task force. It's about 26 people, about 13
vehicles, and we go into the park to help them protect the Lake
McDonald Ranger Station. Every single gallon of fuel, every man
hour for the employees that went, and the daily usage rate or
hourly usage rate for those vehicles, all were part of a
formula that's been agreed upon, an existing agreement through
DNRC. The DNRC rates are reviewed and updated every single
year, so all of us, all of our partners, feel that that's an
accurate and fair rate for reimbursement.
Senator Daines. Okay, thank you.
Ms. Baltzley, I want to come back to something that you
said in your testimony. You mentioned the Gardiner Schools had
to reduce, I think, 7.5 FTEs in order to balance the budget.
I have to applaud you, first of all, in balancing a budget.
DC hasn't figured that out yet. But in terms of keeping
Gardiner's reputation as one of the top schools in the state, I
mean, I think about when we were raising our children, that
would be a very attractive thing to think about, bringing your
kids here to one of the top schools in the state, not to
mention the nation. But can you speak to what it means to the
students and staff here when you have to reduce 7.5 FTEs out
of--what's the total FTE count?
Ms. Baltzley. Nineteen teachers and then a staff that
includes another 7 or 8, so close to 30.
Senator Daines. Right.
I mean that is 7.5 and the absolute is one thing, but when
you look at it in terms of about a quarter----
Ms. Baltzley. Correct.
Senator Daines. ----of your entire staff.
Ms. Baltzley. Correct.
Senator Daines. Having spent a lot of years managing
businesses, a 20 to 25 percent kind of reduction in force is
huge. Maybe you could talk about what that means to the
students and staff here?
Ms. Baltzley. It's been--I'm not sure the students have
noticed as much because of the staff that we have, a lot of
them have stepped up and taken on commitments. For example,
even our administration, we reduced the athletic director, so
now the principal and the superintendent split the athletic
director position, so, things like that. So a lot of the staff
have stepped up to the plate and picked up some of those
pieces.
The Board of Trustees has been calling this a Phase Two, is
what's going to happen this year. Phase One was addressing the
budget issues. Phase Two was addressing what we're calling the
new normal. And the new normal is we have to take this as an
opportunity of taking a look at our programs and saying, what
do our students need for their future? So how are we going to
rework what we currently have, knowing the staff that we have,
and try and figure out a different way of keeping that quality
education program.
We also have a new educational foundation, the North
Yellowstone Educational Foundation, that has started with
their--put together an organization that is a non-profit--
that's an organization to help us meet some of the needs that
are over and beyond what would be our normal educational needs.
For example, they funded a position that is going to help us
make those connections with Yellowstone in an educational way
because our students benefit from being in this area and having
a unique opportunity to explore things that they wouldn't have
other places. So they are helping us fund a position in order
to coordinate that. They're also working on some other
opportunities to be able to support professional development
for teachers that we can't afford in our general budget. We
need to have our teachers have that training.
So we're trying to do other things outside of our general
fund that we might be able to do that. We've just set up our
committees at our last board meeting that are looking at our
academic program. We're looking at the housing situation. We're
looking at the future strategic planning as it relates. So this
is our year of work toward that. We will involve the staff in
order to help us. They're always on our committees. And so, how
can we best utilize the resources that we currently have here
now?
Senator Daines. Thank you. Thoughtful answer.
I have a question here I am going to open up to the entire
panel, kind of go round robin here, as we wrap up.
We have talked a lot today about some of the challenges we
see in our gateway communities, but it also sounds like there
are some success stories out there as well. Sometimes it is
nice to end on a higher note, too, as we also look at the
challenges. I would like to hear from each of you if you have
ideas for solutions that could come from either a federal,
state, local government, maybe something you have seen already
work that we should continue to explore further.
We have spent some time working with the Congressional
Research Services as it relates to things like wastewater. Ms.
Purvis, for example, like what federal grant programs are out
there for small, rural communities that have scale problems but
don't have a source of tax revenue, particularly in tourism
type towns.
So that is the question, what solutions come to mind,
federal, state or local government or private sector? You
talked a little bit about some of the foundations, perhaps,
that are out there, philanthropic causes to help out in
education or some combination thereof to help address the
issues we are talking about here today.
I will also let whoever has an idea to start off. It looks
like the Superintendent is ready to say something. Cam?
Mr. Sholly. Well, I really appreciate that question. I
think that you can look at this gateway arch project right out
here that was completed here recently, which really helped
improve traffic flows, pedestrian safety. It accomplished a lot
of objectives and I think it was a terrific partnership with
the community of Gardiner.
The leveraging of private dollars, as you know, working
with Senator Blunt, we just completed the largest public-
private partnership in the Gateway Arch in St. Louis where we
really leveraged, effectively, philanthropic dollars with some
federal dollars and local tax dollars in order to achieve
something incredible.
I think for us there are areas in which we can work with
federal dollars, legally, and have positive impacts on our
gateway communities by the things that we do within the
boundary. There are many things we can share--responsibilities
for that have joint benefits both in the communities and within
the park.
Our Yellowstone Forever group has done a tremendous job in
Yellowstone raising private dollars for an incredible amount of
projects within the park, but also things that support efforts
outside of the park.
So I think it's really about, do we have an inventory, do
we recognize where some of those opportunities exist and then
how do we best leverage our resources, either appropriated
dollars, community dollars, philanthropic dollars, to get the
results that we need and make sure those dollars are invested
in the right places.
Senator Daines. Thank you.
Ms. Baltzley. Kind of tagging in on that collaboration
piece, I think that's an extremely important piece for the
entities that do work in these gateway communities to be able
to work together.
Specifically, we really need support for our housing
solution. And since we're--land is our constraint, that's
probably a place where the national and state agencies might be
able to support just, you know, possibly some of the things
that were done with the Cooke City issue. We might also be able
to tag into that opportunity because we don't have anyplace to
build housing. There's no land available.
The general support for education, you know, not reducing
the general educational budget, especially as it relates to the
aging infrastructures. I know that Gardiner is not the only
school district, having worked in a lot of school districts and
even our neighboring school districts, that is an issue. So if
there's anything from a national perspective that could be done
from an aging infrastructure of our school buildings, I think
that's an important aspect.
Senator Daines. Ms. Baltzley, it seems like we keep
circling around this housing issue.
Ms. Baltzley. Yeah.
Senator Daines. It seems just critical right now.
Ms. Baltzley. Right.
Senator Daines. And as you talked about strategic
planning----
Ms. Baltzley. Correct.
Senator Daines. ----that you are starting to do here with
your board. Is there, and this is maybe outside the realm of
your responsibility, you probably have a view on it or know
about it, just the community of Gardiner, per se. Are they
looking at long-term master plans here on housing and where
this all goes?
Ms. Baltzley. We have been.
I joined the community in 2012 and there was already--there
was an organization that was out there called the Greater
Gardiner Community Council and it was an opportunity for,
because we're unincorporated there is no--where do you go for
grants? Who is going to get grants on behalf of the community?
How are we going to make decisions?
That's still a question. There's a current community group
that is just starting some work that's called Gardiner, A
Successful Community. It's looking at addressing the big issues
that face us as a gateway community where we do rely on our
tourism businesses to be a dynamic, economic community but that
comes at a price.
And how do we remain a dynamic community so that we're not
just a tourism community that then shuts its doors when the
season is over and, I mean, you probably noticed if you are
staying here, a lot of our restaurants are now closing and it's
a little bit different.
We've been working with some of our area groups, the HRDC
out of Bozeman, et cetera, have been part of that organization
where they actually, over the past several years, have been
working on, can we get some developers in here in order to be
able to help us support affordable housing? We get them in
here, there's no land. So it circles back to that land issue
all the while.
So, yes, this community is extremely dedicated to trying to
make sure that Gardiner remains that dynamic community of
people that really want to live here and want to be able to
maintain the excellence in all things, not only our schools,
but in everything else. There are organizations that are out
there, and this will probably be a big year of some decisions.
There was a recent article in the Livingston Enterprise
that a survey was done before the gateway project and housing
was a big issue. Then they were able to come back, I think it
was the University of Montana that also did the survey, came
back this past summer, did another survey. Same exact things
and that was five years ago and more intense about the housing
issues and how do we solve that.
Senator Daines. Well, having grown up in Bozeman since 1964
and growing up in the construction business there, Mom and Dad
were in the home building business, I watched that, certainly,
what Bozeman did when it was 13,000 people when I was going to
kindergarten there at Longfellow.
It is something I know Cam will be looking at as well. I
mean, the partnership here between Gardiner and Yellowstone
National Park around thinking about this landlocked situation
which might require some Congressional action to work with
everyone here to probably have some, I am sure who owns the
deeds around the town here probably might involve our neck of
the woods here in Washington, DC, to see what we can do here to
try to figure something out here too.
Ms. Baltzley. Thank you.
Senator Daines. Thank you.
Ms. Costello. Well, I was thinking that about a couple of
things. One is going back to the idea of being landlocked and
I, because I don't remember exactly how this occurred
initially, but West Yellowstone was recently able to purchase
80 acres from the Forest Service directly. But that was
included in some legislation that allowed for that.
Is that a possibility for other areas that are exactly in
exactly the same situation because that might, indeed, be a
solution?
Senator Daines. You are living on islands here, if you
think about the ownership, right? We have to figure something
out.
Ms. Costello. Right.
Senator Daines. Because this is, I mean, just projecting
this out 10, 20, 30, 40 years--at some point, I mean, the
crisis is here now. It is only going to get worse.
Ms. Costello. Right.
Senator Daines. We are going to start thinking about that
longer-term, perhaps.
Yes?
Ms. Costello. And West Yellowstone is in the process, has
received a grant to do some study that will help, hopefully,
with the park entrance, the whole situation as well. So that's
one thing that West Yellowstone is doing.
We're also, of course, where is the topic of housing not?
Nowhere. It's everywhere.
And so, I don't know, I was just reflecting on the fact
that when Superintendent Wink was here he changed the
conversation from numbers of snowmobiles in the wintertime to
sound. It changed the whole viewpoint, sound, sound events.
Maybe we're all locked into just looking at it one way and
we need a voice that will change that conversation so that we
do see another solution. Isn't there a line over here? Open
your mind before your mouth. So I think we're going to have to
have really, really open minds about a solution to this because
from the projects in big cities to wherever you are, it's been
tough.
Ms. Purvis. Well, I'd just like to echo what you're saying
about collaboration and partnerships and opening our minds.
We've been very fortunate to find an ombudsman in DEQ who has
been actually helping us look for solutions rather than just
tell us, ``no, you can't do that,'' ``no, you can't do that''
and ``no, you can't do that.''
I think that would be incredibly helpful. We're addressing,
well, we're not addressing, but we're suffering from the
housing issue as well and attracting employees because we have
no place to put them. And it's easy in Cooke City, as we're so
isolated, to feel isolated as well, as we're trying to address
these problems.
It would be really wonderful to be able to bring these
resources together and work with a problem-solving mindset as
opposed to the regulations and what we can't do.
Senator Daines. Great, thank you.
Mr. Sacca. I know it sounds, kind of, just common sense,
but one of the things that we can do is really work on just
maintaining those close and cooperative relationships. I know
that it sounds hokey, but realistically if we have good,
quality relations that we're cooperating and we're
communicating on all issues, not just when the bad day occurs
and we have an emergency or when we have crises that we need to
address. A good relation is going to help facilitate finding
and implementing the solutions that we need. Bad relations
could easily derail any type of improvement that we want to do.
So what do we need to do? And how can we do that?
Setting the tone at the top, whether that's the Director of
the Forest Service or the Director of the NPS setting the tone,
saying that quality relations are values at risk that need to
be nurtured and maintained. That trickles down to the Forest
Service, the state DNRC. We see the success of that in Flathead
County with our agency heads of those two agencies, DNRC and
the Forest Service, and the Superintendent of the National
Park.
Seeing this as a value at risk and understanding that it
needs to be maintained and nurtured, that leadership, if they
would continue to champion and protect those relationships with
all of the emergency services, but also all the stakeholders
and all the cooperators, that's what we need. And we need to
set the tone at the top.
Senator Daines. Well, that is a good way to close on the
last word, I think. I appreciate that.
We are going to conclude, and I especially want to thank
the witnesses for your time here today, for your testimony
today, for your thoughtful comments. I found it very, very
enlightening. I appreciate it very much.
This hearing record will be open for two weeks.
This hearing is now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:35 p.m. the hearing was adjourned.]
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