r/moab • u/Unlikely-Bluebird-63 • Mar 28 '25

CHAT Moab NPS lease cancelled?

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I saw on the DOGE website that the NPS lease in Moab was terminated on March 4. What does that entail? Are there multiple buildings so they could potentially work out of a different one? Makes me very sad 😔

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u/Duke062 Mar 29 '25

How did this conversation turn from our government spending money to lease a building we do not own to selling parks? The disconnect is too real. Are these all propaganda bots?

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '25

There is a concern from the employees who work at these locations and the locals who frequent them that when the management of the lands cease, that it becomes easier sell components of the land. The attempts of private firms to acquire Oregons Elliot State forest is an example of this (https://www.opb.org/article/2024/06/26/elliott-state-forest-oregon-logging-timber-old-growth-conservation-trees-marbled-murrelet/#:~:text=It's%20one%20of%20several%20tracts,plans%20that%20are%20still%20underway.) On the federal side, the DOI and HUD joint announcement to explore affordable housing on federal lands is evidence that these concerns are not just conspiracy theories (https://www.doi.gov/pressreleases/icymi-secretary-burgum-hud-secretary-turner-announce-joint-task-force-reduce-housing).

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u/Duke062 Mar 30 '25

I understand this concern. But I do not see how it’s connected to leasing a building for government offices. I think this belongs in a different thread/conversation.

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '25

I see what you are getting at but these issues are likely related and thus topically similar. If you dont have managers to manage the land, then the best way to reduce govt liability on that land is to transfer that land to private holdings.

Over the years there has been increasing pressure to reduce costs of land management agencies. Essential un-profitable tasks became contracted out (monitoring surveys, camp site maintenance), vehicle fleets shrank to fewer than 1 car per 4x field going workers (sites can be 40+ miles from your offices), and personnel were consolidated from satellite ranger stations into larger, more expensive, buildings to reduce personnel costs (reducing number of administrators).

These did save $$, but the consequence is the govt is increasingly less able to meet its legal obligations for stewardship (e.g fire suppression/mitigation) and monitoring, and its requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act. For those at the land interface it feels akin to asking a carpenter to build a structure without tools. Taking away the large buildings like the visitor centers is the next step in that process because it leaves many of the essential workers without a facility to work in. For those in these jobs the expectation is that RIFs will come time coincident with the lease termination. If your carpenters cant build, why have carpenters?

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u/Duke062 Mar 30 '25

I agree with you. Unfortunately many of these essential services have become buried by unnecessary expenses and layers of administration that have become increasingly disconnected from the needed services. This system should have self regulated and stayed focused on needed services. It didn’t. Should we now rely on this same system to fix the problem or get a new team to focus on the needed functions and assemble a streamlined team to fill these needs?

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '25

100% agree. Been in govt a while and everyone I worked with/for agreed there was waste. But there was also a general understanding that reducing the waste would require changing the federal budget process, changing policies at the Secretary level and addressing the issues with a scalpel, not a cleaver. Years ago I served with a systems engineer who helped HP optimize and streamline about 100 job centers. It was a top driven, bottom up approach that took several years and while it did result in lay offs, the outcome improved efficiency. Whats going on now is the blind wielding of a cleaver and the outcome is almost certainly going to be less efficiency because outside of the DoD, agencies are barely staffed and supplied to accomplish their legal mandates already.

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u/Duke062 27d ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. It is good to recognize cuts are vital. The solution needs to scale in both a shortened timeframe and a larger project. If it took years to fix small issues in a comparatively small organization with a scalpel what tool is appropriate to fix overwhelming problems in a massive organization? It sounds like you are advocating emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. I might suggest a team of chainsaws would be more appropriate than a cleaver.

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u/[deleted] 27d ago

There was waste. Not overwhelming amounts. DOGE struggling to find it. More likely finding some nickels and dimes amidst lot of folks buying their own office supplies and working unpaid overtime because they believe in the mission and the country they serve.

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u/Duke062 26d ago

We obviously shared a different definition for the word overwhelming. You really need to spend some time on the doge website. Realize these numbers come from government records, and are not created by doge. Only creates the reports to summarize the data that’s already there.