S-N Editorial

Iowa’s state parks are some of the most popular publically funded assets we have the pleasure of enjoying. After all, more than 16 million people used them in 2020 alone.

It’s a wonder, then, why we aren’t adequately funding these refuges of natural beauty. This month the Iowa DNR announced it is evicting park rangers from government-owned houses in 23 state parks because it doesn’t want to pay over $1 million on repairs to bring them up to modern standards. According to a report in the Cedar Rapids Gazette, a lack of resident rangers on park grounds could lead to longer wait times for service if there’s a boating accident, medical emergency, power outage or crime.

Dave Sunne, who was a ranger and lived in Back Bone State Park near Dundee for 24 years, explained the situation matter-of-factly.

“It’s a slippery slope when you start depending on other agencies to cover your bases,” he told the Gazette. “What do you do when the electricity goes out in the middle of the night and there’s no heat in the cabins? You can’t call the sheriff’s department for that. It is disheartening.”

The Iowa DNR disagrees with Sunne’s assessment. In a recent report, the agency stated “there is no quantifiable customer service benefit from housing.” Leadership at the DNR leadership engaged with staff throughout 2021 to reach this conclusion, determining “parks with and without housing are equivalently safe, supported and maintained.”

The report noted that only one-third of Iowa’s 71 state parks have housing. Maintenance is expensive and competes with public amenities for funding, which led to the decision to terminate housing. Staff were given one year’s notice to vacate.

At least one state lawmaker disagrees. Noting the state’s $1.24 billion general fund surplus, Rep. Chuck Isenhart, D-Dubuque, earlier this month introduced House File 2255, which would allocate $20 million from the federal American Rescue Plan toward repairs and renovations of buildings in all of Iowa’s state parks, forests and preserves.

“We’ve been living off the sacrifices off previous generations for a while now and we haven’t been making investments in our infrastructure,” Isenhart told the Gazette. “Knowing we had these surplus resources, the right thing for the governor to do would be to say it’s OK to give me recommendations on ways to catch up.”

Like most things, the answer is probably somewhere in between. If the Iowa DNR is correct and there truly is no quantifiable customer service benefit from housing, then those resources would indeed be better used elsewhere. But the agency wouldn’t be ordering mass evictions if things weren’t so tight. Isenhart’s bill is a logical step towards investing in a popular resource enjoyed by both Iowans and visiting tourists alike.

It’s clear we can do better for our state parks and the Iowa DNR. It’s safe to say most Iowans value our natural resources and enjoy the great outdoors. These amenities require adequate funding to stay great, though, and it’s up to the Legislature to realize that.

If the money is there, what are we waiting for? Investing additional money into our state parks and other natural resources isn’t a controversial issue and shouldn’t get placed on the back burner this session.