National Park Deferred Maintenance Tops $11 Billion

America's National Park System is one our national treasures.  Visitors from all over the world come to visit our 417 National Parks. The Parks are operated and maintained by just over 19,000 employees.  Because of the huge backlog of deferred maintenance at National parks ,the entry fees are going up as is the Senior (Over 65) lifetime pass.  The current cost of the lifetime pass is $10.00 until August 28 when the fee will be $80.00.  So if you are over 65 and you want a pass, you need to act now.  Click HERE to go to the National Park webpage where you can purchase your pass online or visit your closest National Park to purchase.  For the third year in a row, the National Park System broke attendance records with 331 million visitors.

Since the Park System started keeping records in 1904, more than 13 Billion visitors have enjoyed the American National parks.  With that many visitors, our parks are under sever stress to keep the parks safe and beautiful.  That is why funding the deferred maintenance budget is very important.  Just take Florida for example.  The deferred maintenance funding is estimated to exceed $273,000,000.  Just the other day an email was circulated notifying Floridians that the visitor fees at the Everglades were going up.  The fees are going up because of the $78,000,000 in deferred maintenance.  I did a little research and number crunching.

The Everglades National Park gets about 1,000,000 visitors a year.  The fee increases depending on category are from $4.00-$5.00 each.  Many of the fee categories remain unchanged.  See the fee changes below.  Even if all of the $30.00 fee for a Private vehicle 7-day pass went to deferred maintenance at the Everglades National Park, there is not enough money to go around.

The solution to the huge National Park deferred maintenance shortfall is for Congress to fully fund the maintenance of our amazing National Parks System.  Just take a few billion from the Department of Defenses' shown below.  Instead of adding $52.8 Billion to the base, just add $31.8 Billion and put the $11.0 Billion in National Parks Service's deferred maintenance budget and do all the backlog work.

Until next time, be safe in the sun and have a great day in the great outdoors.