ANPR has lacked the ability to consistently “sell” to the widest variety of NPS employees that we are an organization that advocates for all NPS employees, not just those in park ranger positions. Over the years we’ve focused issues of Ranger magazine on specific disciplines other than interpretation or protection, most recently on cultural resources in the spring of 2009.

We also have regular columns in Ranger magazine for administration, interpretation, protection and resource management for over a decade. We’d like to have a regular column on maintenance issues and concerns if we could find someone willing to write the column on a regular basis. This issue of Ranger is focused on facility management and maintenance career paths for seasonal employees.

Back to my original point of employees of all disciplines joining ANPR as members. Is there any evidence that ANPR would advocate for your discipline if and when the need arises? I believe there is.

In addition to advocating at congressional committee hearings, with presidential administrations and with NPS management over the last 33 years on topics such as training, housing, and safety that cut across many NPS job titles, there is one instance in which ANPR helped discourage a potential policy shift. If it had been adopted, it would have directly impacted many NPS employees in various job titles. Those impacts would have come first to those employees with jobs in administrative, fee collection and maintenance disciplines, and perhaps later would have spread to resource management and interpretive jobs.

That proposed policy shift championed by the executive branch was known as competitive sourcing. It meant replacing some NPS employees with private contract employees to perform some or most of the work required for the operation of the National Park System if those contract workers could perform the duties at less cost. Political appointees in the top NPS management positions were given their marching orders to support this policy and not say or imply anything other than support in their official or unofficial capacities.

In 2003 ANPR President Ken Mabery asked me to act on his behalf as a witness to provide testimony (www.anpr.org/testimony2.htm) at a Senate national parks subcommittee hearing that was investigating if competitive sourcing would be beneficial or detrimental to the National Park System and the National Park Service. It was also decided that I would represent the Association of National Park Maintenance Employees with the testimony.

While ANPR was not the lone organization to speak in opposition to this proposed policy, we certainly did our share of the communicating to ensure that decision makers knew the thoughts and feelings of NPS employees in the field. On that day we were mainly advocating for NPS employees who are not park rangers by job title. Make no mistake that if individuals or organizations with credibility had not spoken out against this policy, it would have been adopted and implemented. If you are an NPS employee in a nonpark ranger job title you may today be working for a private contractor with a dollars-and-cents motive rather than the agency and its preservation-and-enjoyment motive.

Maintenance employees encompass the largest single discipline of NPS employees in parks. As a group their experience and expertise is heartily welcomed in greater numbers as ANPR members.

Regardless of your job title, I hope you can see that ANPR advocates for you and your profession. The only way you can make ANPR even more responsive to the expectations and desires of employees or potential employees is to involve yourself in the process by becoming an active ANPR member.

— Scot McElveen