Changes Inside And Out

In 2024, effective park management will require balancing staff and visitors’ evolving needs

By Jefferey Spivey

Change management is crucial for leaders in any field. Whether it’s adopting innovative technology, navigating employee turnover, or launching new programs, successful leaders are often those who handle curveballs with ease and expertly guide their teams through unfamiliar territory.

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However, evolution becomes more difficult when there are several major changes happening at once—something many parks leaders are experiencing as they prepare for 2024.

Within California State Parks, Peter Ostroskie knows this all too well. In the latter half of 2023, he transitioned from leading education and programs in the Off-Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Division to an expanded role as Staff Park and Recreation Specialist for the Bay Area District.

“I’m not only running the education side, but I’m now learning about campgrounds and facilities, and all these other different avenues within a park district,” Ostroskie says. He’s also deepening his understanding of partnerships with local businesses, government offices, and other entities to ensure high-functioning parks.

He’s in the midst of managing a significant change in his career trajectory; however, he’s doing so during a shifting dynamic within the greater California State Parks. In his prior role, Ostroskie was an Interpreter III, a position with limited career paths. Employees in similar education roles were “camping out” in their jobs as a result, clogging the pipeline and limiting opportunities for new or lower-ranking staffers.  

In response, the department has begun shifting its educators to other disciplines in an effort to stimulate career growth for veterans and novices alike.

“[The initiative] allows more opportunities for people like myself to go higher in the state park system, as a superintendent, park planners, all these other different processes and positions that we have,” Ostroskie says. “If I remained an Interpreter III, that would be kind of it.”

Furthermore, newly trained staffers can fill vacancies left by employees who have retired—a growing concern, more urgent not only for California State Parks but for other parks agencies across the country, including the Naperville Park District in Illinois.

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In a roundtable discussion with Executive Director Brad Wilson, Eric Shutes, Director of Planning and Development, Tim Quigley, Director of Parks, and Sameera Luthman, Director of Marketing and Communications, there was concern about how to “attract more individuals to the profession.” The biggest challenges have been recruiting employees for custodial work, maintenance, food and beverage, customer service, and various trades.

To tackle this problem, the district recently launched a new careers brand called “Careers Grow Here,” which aims to show the breadth of professional possibilities within parks, such as working in finance, human resources, or marketing, not only in the field.

Generational headwinds may also be aggravating staffing challenges. Ostroskie points out that younger employees no longer face stigmas around job-hopping and are less hesitant to leave positions for higher pay or other benefits. This requires a rethink about the best ways to reach early-career workers, not only to introduce them to careers in parks but also to position those careers as desirable long-term options.

“How do we keep people who are innovative and creative, and how do we get younger generations to really love their parks?” Ostroskie asks in motivating his department’s recruitment outreach. With younger workers taking up a larger share of the workforce, these questions must be answered sooner than later.

Internal Growth Opportunities

Not all interdepartmental change is borne of these major shifts though. At Go Green With Us, an award-winning, statewide sustainability program dually operated by Tennessee State Parks (TSP) and the Tennessee Department of Environment & Conservation (TDEC), new initiatives have been launched to maintain positive momentum. (Go Green With Us was profiled in the February 2023 issue of Parks & Rec Business.)

Among the changes instituted in 2023, Go Green With Us now has a dedicated Sustainability Coordinator, a Go Green Executive Committee to implement various sustainability efforts in the Central Office and throughout TSP, a Go Green Dashboard for one-stop-shop data reporting and resources on the program, and a grant fund to help individual parks implement Go Green projects.

“We are very excited to see the creative project ideas and the positive impact they will have in parks, and even more excited to be given funding for such projects,” says Kelsey Davis, TSP’s Sustainability Coordinator.

Also new, Go Green With Us is now aligned with TSP’s comprehensive system plan, which will govern the department’s priorities through 2033. The plan includes systemwide goals for park resources, visitors, amenities, and operations.

“Go Green With Us initiatives directly support several of the objectives within the comprehensive plan, including having parks that are welcoming and inviting to all, focusing on resource-based outdoor recreation, and providing quality facilities and amenities,” says Zach Tinkle, Area Manager for TSP and co-manager of Go Green With Us, along with Davis.

Part of what’s driving the program’s continued success is recognition. Parks achieve either bronze, silver, gold, or platinum level recognition based on their completion of recommended Go Green With Us actions. Of 57 parks, 32 have already secured platinum recognition—an impressive figure, but one that suggests new rewards are needed.

Tinkle says, “We are evaluating ways to modify the existing recognition-level structure to encourage and acknowledge the continued growth in sustainability efforts exhibited by our parks. It’s a great challenge to have.”

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An Evolving Public

Already, many changes are at play within parks—there’s a need to recruit, retain, and inspire different generations to ensure the future of park leadership, and there’s also a need to keep duties fresh so progress isn’t lost. Still, some of parks leaders’ most notable challenges lie with the public they serve.

On one level, it’s a simple matter of communication—park visitors must be kept abreast of new regulations so they help preserve and protect the environment. Ostroskie points to confusion around off-highway vehicles in California. Previously, OHVs needed either a red or green sticker, with red-stickered vehicles being restricted to a specific riding season. But now the state is sunsetting the program, leading to anxiety on both sides of the issue. Ostroskie says the solution is giving all vehicles green stickers but he does expect confusion will continue even then.

Davis says the biggest challenge for Go Green With Us is educating park visitors.

“Guests may not understand the low lighting at night, the reduction in trash cans available, or the level of grass left un-mowed,” she says. The complexity of this communication is what motivated the very name, Go Green With Us, to suggest the public also had a duty to make Tennessee’s parks more sustainable. This communication need also inspired the Education and Outreach regulations in the program’s guidelines and a Go Green With Us column in The Tennessee Conservationist magazine.

Visitors’ expectations are changing, too. Tinkle and Davis point to an increased need for electric vehicle-charging infrastructure in parks, and the Naperville Park District notes the challenges of funding capital improvements for facilities and amenities that enhance visitors’ experiences. 

But perhaps more abstract than these itemized needs is a reimagining of sorts around the ways parks engage citizens and the topics they discuss.

Ostroskie details the California Adventure Pass and Golden Bear Pass programs. The former gives all fourth graders free access to state parks while the latter provides low-cost entry for low-income residents. In essence, the state is changing the narrative around who California State Parks serve.

And to address what parks staff members are discussing with its broader audience, the department is focused on two priorities. First, Ostroskie says, they’re encouraging a science-based discussion around climate change. This effort includes programs about sea-level rise and wildfire resilience, with strategies for taking action. Recent weather events, like Tropical Storm Hilary, have leant these programs greater urgency and relevance.

Second is a statewide push called “Reexamining the Past.” The initiative aims to reframe conversations about California’s history, accounting for more nuance and acknowledgement of marginalized groups. Ostroskie says certain historic events and figures—like the Spanish missions or John C. Fremont, for instance—have been romanticized, while less-flattering aspects of those legacies have gone overlooked.

Some sites across the state have been or will be renamed as a result of this cultural reexamination. In 2021, Patrick’s Point State Park was renamed Sue-Meg State Park to honor the Yurok tribe.

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There’s also a California Truth and Healing Council that’s leading conversations at Sonoma State Park in a quest to reconsider the mission and the Bear Flag Revolt site on the lands.

Not all residents have been receptive to these conversations, however, either because of personal fondness for a particular site or a rejection of the initiative as too negative.

“As educators and parks, we’re really looking at how to have those conversations the right way, how to have them appropriately, who needs to be involved in the conversations, and when do we need to step out and just listen as a department,” Ostroskie says.

What’s clear is change is afoot, even if the public sometimes pushes back in ways that aren’t productive. But at other times, residents can lead the change, with insights that point to the best way forward.

Regarding the changing OHV regulations and how best to educate the public, Ostroskie says he and his department were wary of bringing up licensing programs like those in Arizona and Utah. But at one of two OHV safety summits held this year, the conversation took an unexpected turn.

“We thought as a government agency, if we came out with, ‘hey, maybe we should do this,’ we were going to get a lot of pushback,” he says. “Surprisingly, the community came to us and was like, ‘Why don’t we have something like this in California?’”

 Jefferey Spivey is a journalist and author based in Urbandale, Iowa. Reach him at jeffereyspivey@gmail.com.