Dear editor:

With the common sense revival underway in Washington, there is no better time to think out of the box regarding employee housing, resource protection, and maintenance in Yellowstone.

I ask you to pass legislation transforming unsustainable employee housing to public lodging operated by a concession with the National Park Service retaining ownership, thus relieving taxpayers of exorbitant maintenance costs precipitated by inept, incompetent and inefficient NPS staff.  

Under concessionaire contracts, maintenance would actually be performed, as opposed to the current model of neglect and replace.   

This plan would greatly increase Wyoming revenue in the form of sales and lodging tax, and the NPS would realize concession fees — a win, win.

Superintendent Cam Sholly has been on a new housing binge. Thanks to a government swamp friendly media, impacts to the equilibrium of development to wildland is unknown. Relying on the NPS to produce such information on its own will never occur.

Impacts to the park’s resources can be measured in many ways other than habitat loss to facilitate new housing. During time-off periods, employees step out of their residences and become visitors. Concession employees disproportionately violate laws and are often in need of emergency medical services (EMS), straining services. Living outside the park would reduce these impacts. 

Bus employees from locations outside the park. Importing menial task employees from across the country and around the world exacerbates housing shortages. Luxury resorts of Yellowstone Club, Spanish Peaks and Moonlight Basin in Big Sky, Montana, have been successfully bussing employees for years. 

Law enforcement would remain living in the park for safety and resource protection.

Full-time, fully staffed fire stations would offer better protection than the current volunteer model.  Yellowstone is not so much one location as it is a group of individual populated areas, each relying on the other for mutual-aid. Utilize so-called Kelly work shifts common among metro fire departments. Off duty fire and EMS personnel would reside outside the park.

To imply hundreds of bureaucrats and concession employees should reside in the park to protect it is beyond absurd. The NPS policy of “required residency” needs reevaluation.

Housing transformation would reduce hiring discrimination practices. Required residency leads to a new hire’s spouse being given a job, snubbing qualified applicants and locals. Required residency is a perversion of original purpose and need for in-park housing. Yellowstone is no longer a distant, frontier military outpost.

Notable NPS resource protection failures: lake trout introduction; discoloration of Morning Glory Pool, (coins, foreign objects introduced); 1991 elk poaching production video replete with hunting camp; 2013 Sylvan Pass plane crash, survivors rescued by Park County Search and Rescue; 2017 East Gate Road, one hour and 45-minute law enforcement response to a man-with-a-gun-shots-fired call.

The NPS cannot produce rain gutters for employee housing in Mammoth. 

The last known rain gutters on houses on Officers Row is from a 1905 picture. 

The copper gutters were either stolen by entrepreneurial recyclers under the noses of NPS residents protecting park resources from the comfort of their arm chairs, or removed by park maintenance too lazy to keep them free of ice. Lack of gutters results in foundation deterioration. Under the current model of systemic, purposeful neglect, taxpayers will be on the hook for eventual expensive repair or replacement. 

An NPS couple earning $150,000-$200,000 per year pay $500 per month rent on Officers Row. The same unit as public lodging — with elk lounging on the manicured lawn — could fetch as much as $40,000 per month.

Don’t be caught flat-footed in the common sense rebirth. Take action.

Sincerely,

Steve Torrey

Cody