Uncertainty and fear over the economy and decisions coming out of Washington were the predominant concerns expressed by a hand-selected group of 10 people during a roundtable held by U.S. Senator Michael Bennet yesterday at the Estes Valley Library.
Two of the participants, Aubry Andreas and Brandon Mitchell, were former Rocky Mountain National Park rangers who lost their jobs on Feb. 14. Both had been probationary employees who held their jobs for less than a year.
Four were elected officials: Mayor Gary Hall of Estes Park, Mayor Hollie Rogin of Lyons, Mayor Christina Bergquist of Grand Lake, and Commissioner Jody Shadduck-McNally of Larimer County.
Two were Estes Park Business owners: Julie Pieper, owner of Poppy’s and Mama Rose’s restaurants, and Reed Woodford, owner of KMAC Guides. Woodford is also a member of the Estes Valley Voice Editorial Board.
Also present at the round table meeting were Tracy Coppola, the Colorado senior program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association, and Walt Borneman, the Rocky Mountain Conservancy board chair.
The two fired Park rangers shared their stories of losing their jobs last month.
Andreas, a visual information specialist, began working for the National Park Service in 2019. She held positions with both Rocky Mountain Conservancy and RMNP and, last May became a permanent employee with her salary funded through a public-private partnership between the two organizations.
As a graphic designer, Andreas explained, the National Park Service position was a dream job. Her duties involved developing publications for the public and NPS employees, including visitor guides and junior ranger books, and overseeing signage, brand management, and website development.
The ranger said that, on the afternoon of Feb. 14, there was a heightened concern among NPS staff that job cuts were coming. “We had been hearing chatter, you know, the Forest Service had just fired all their probationary employees the day prior, so we were kind of on edge all day.”
Andreas took time to download as much information as she could to document the work she had done and to verify her employee performance evaluations should she need the information, perhaps in an appeal. Sometime around 3 p.m., she received an email from a person in Washington, D.C., that announced her job had been eliminated.
Mitchell, the other former NPS employee, explained that he made a career transition a few years ago and began working with the RMNP first as a volunteer. He returned to school for additional training and obtained some certifications before taking a seasonal position. Mitchell is an emergency medical technician and has participated in search and rescue operations.
When the opportunity to become a permanent ranger came, Mitchell took it and began working for the RMNP division that manages the campgrounds.
“We get a lot of first-time visitors,” he said. “Some of them don’t even know where they are. Not a joke.” His position as a ranger brought him into contact with people who needed safety information or insight into winter road conditions.
The former ranger told Bennet that, even though he lost his job in what has been dubbed the “Valentines Day Massacre,” he had been out the previous night with a search and rescue team until 3:30 a.m. to help a woman who had broken her leg and needed help.
The rangers said probationary employees who lost their jobs in the RMNP firing included nine rangers and other staff members who worked at the entrance booths and visitor center, an archeologist, and a research coordinator who had been in charge of issuing permits for research in the park.
Perspectives from Lyons and Grand Lake
The mayors told Bennet they were concerned about their communities’ local economies, each of which is dependent on RMNP.
“Our biggest concern has always been that the gates are open,” said Bergquist, who was appointed mayor of Grand Lake three weeks ago. Much of Grand Lake’s tourism comes up and over Trail Ridge Road from Estes Park, explained Bergquist. She said that her community is willing to do whatever it takes to keep the gates to the Park open so people can come to Grand Lake.
Rogin told Bennet that Lyons, a town that is 1.2 square miles in size and that has 2,200 residents, is a “double gateway” for RMNP. “During the summer season, we have literally millions of cars driving through on the way up to Estes Park and on the way to Rocky Mountain National Park,” Rogin said.
Half of local businesses take advantage of the town’s 0% interest revolving loan fund in the winter and then pay it back over the summer, “year after year after year.”
“If there are fewer visitors to the Park, I have no idea how our businesses are going to survive. I have no idea,” Rogin said. “Everybody is scared, scared about what is going to happen to our local economy.”
Pointing to concerns over tariffs that will cause delays in the construction of a boutique hotel planned for downtown and reconstruction of a lot that burned two years ago in the downtown district, Rogin said, “We’re very concerned.”
The Lyons mayor described what she called a “ripple effect” from the federal firings that will affect everybody in the country. “If we don’t get our federal grants for our trail project, we’re not going to hire the guys pouring concrete, and if we don’t hire the guys pouring concrete those guys are going to get laid off, and as you mentioned, they’re not going to stop for lunch at Smokin’ Dave’s.”
Recalling the many natural disasters the region has faced with fires and floods, Bennet told the group that the economic situation is “self-inflicted on top of everything else.”
Concerns of local business owners
“The uncertainty is hard,” said Woodford, who brought on new staff members for his guiding business last week but is worried about his staffing numbers, “because nobody knows what’s going on.”
Woodford and a business partner bought Kent Mountain Adventure Center in October 2022. “We’re hustling. We’re trying to expand the business,” explained Woodford, a father of one toddler with a second baby due in a month. He said that he has talked to other tour operators in town, and they are concerned that business could go down by as much as 25% this year.
“Our life blood is tourists in this town, and if we’re down 25%, that’s going to hurt, and I don’t know where that 25% would have to come from.”
Pieper and her husband, Rob, have operated Poppy’s Grill for 30 years and Mama Rose’s Restaurant for more than 20 years. “This is the first season that we’re going into in all those years that we have no idea what to expect,” said Pieper. “There’s no sense of stability. No security.”
Pieper said she is concerned if she will be able to hire workers on a J1 visa this summer. Those individuals are an important piece of summer staffing at the restaurant, she explained. “If we do not get the J1 students, we are going to have to change our business model.”
“We have been reasonably successful for 31 years. Most restaurants don’t last that long. I don’t know if we are going to make it through this year,” said Pieper, who added that she is proud that five of her employees are homeowners. “There’s just so much uncertainty in America right now.”
The concerns of partner organizations
Coppola’s advocacy organization, the National Parks Conservation Association, projects that, at present, nine percent of NPS employees have been fired across the country. She added that some 1,000 probationary employees who held their jobs for less than 12 months were also let go and that another 700 took the “Department of Government Efficiency”-driven offer of an early retirement, with more coming.
Additionally, the Interior Department announced Tuesday a new round of “voluntary separations” and “voluntary early retirements” sent to some 70,000 employees. The initiative is aimed at reducing the NPSk payroll by 30%. The buyout caps at $25,000, and the savings will be used to build housing on federal lands.
Coppola expressed concern about lease terminations in Fort Collins for federal agencies’ administrative office space, including the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NPS, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service. “This is not just a Colorado thing,” Coppola said. “This is a directorate for stewardship and science across the board.”
The Rocky Mountain Conservancy, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization, raises funds for projects to help RMNP that NPS cannot do on its own. “It is a win-win,” said Borneman, chair of the Conservancy, which interfaces with public lands as far as Casper, Wyo., and puts “employees in the field, many of whom are red card-certified. But there has to be someone on the ground at the land manager agency, right?”
Private versus public meeting and National Sunshine Week
Bennet’s regional director, James Thompson, emailed a notice about the meeting to Estes Park’s mayor and the other hand-selected attendees on March 17. The email is accessible on the Town’s public email portal.
Rob Denning of Estes Park saw the email and showed up to attend but was told by John Brockmeier, a senior policy advisor to Bennet, that he could not attend because the meeting was “private.”
The notice, which listed the names of the 10 invited meeting participants, also indicated the meeting was not open to the press. “We’d like this to be a frank discussion (closed to press), about the importance of National Parks and park employees to Colorado communities, especially gateway communities.”
Denning asked a librarian for clarification on the library’s meeting policy. He said that he was informed that all meetings at the library were open to the public.
Denning told the Estes Valley Voice that he was not at Bennet’s meeting to be disruptive but, as a constituent, wanted to have an opportunity to meet with the senator.
According to Denning, Brockmeier told him, “‘’No, you can’t come in. It is private. We don’t want to embarrass these people. I don’t want to embarrass the Senator.’ I told him, ‘I’m not here to embarrass anyone.’”
Rather than to cause a scene, Denning left the library. He said he was offended by the senator’s staff member.
No other community members were in attendance.
Ironically, March 16 to March 22 is National Sunshine Week, an annual observation that began in Florida in 2002 by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. In 2005, the American Society of Newspaper Editors launched the observance nationally.
Sunshine Week aims to educate the public, journalists, lawmakers, and others on the right to know regarding the business of their local, state, and federal government.
This gets to the root of the problem, government is always expanding, never shrinking. In the private sector business grow, businesses shrink, some go out of business. People lose their jobs, it sucks to lose your job, I lost jobs due to failed businesses, it sucked, but I picked up and found new opportunities. No one wants to see anyone loss a job. This government has a 36 trillion-dollar dept. and continues to add to it in the trillions every year. This is not sustainable, and the entire financial system will collapse. If that happens the world economy will falter and very few people will have a job. I think it is interesting that the business attendees and mayors are worried about the effect on the local economy, but no mention of the timed entry system, that in my opinion has had a very negative effect on the local economy, just look at the sale tax revenues. Closed special interest meetings are not a good way to move forward.