New Foundation to Help Montana State Parks Amid Rising Popularity and Stagnant Funding

In recent years, Diane Conradi ventured from her home in Whitefish to visit the vast collection of state parks across Montana. She quickly discovered that each and every site was distinctive in its qualities yet similar in its connection to the Treasure State’s grand identity.

“They represent the fabric of Montana. The state parks are so unique to me because they reflect the diversity of Montana. They range from places for people to teach their kids to swim to unparalleled dinosaur fossils in eastern Montana,” she said.

“These parks are gateways to the heritage of Montana. They are the portals to hunting, fishing, boating, swimming, hiking, watching the leaves change, biking and history.”

Indeed, Montana has a wide variety of 55 designated park sites, all as uncommon as the next, and their popularity is higher than ever. The state is on pace to break an overall visitation record for its parks for the fifth year in a row, with nearly 2.5 million visitors.

In this corner of the state, visitation is up 6 percent over last year’s record total through September with over 500,000 visitors, according to the regional office.

Yet in light of increasing popularity, a lingering problem only continues to stand out even further, according to state parks managers.

Funding for the Montana State Parks system has stagnated and remained the same since 2000.

Montana’s park budget is $7.5 million annually, the second lowest in the region behind only North Dakota, which has 13 state parks and an annual budget of $6.7 million. Idaho manages its 30 parks on a $16 million budget; Utah manages its 43 parks with $28.2 million and Wyoming manages its 40 parks with $10.8 million.

The budget constraints have kept staffing at a minimum and led to millions of dollars worth of deferred maintenance, according to state park officials. The Montana State Parks division commissioned a study of its sites to determine just how badly capital improvements are needed.

This summer a Great Falls firm released its review of 14 sites that showed $8.8 million to $9.2 million in needed repairs. The firm reviewed another 20 sites, including a pair of local parks, and found similar deferred maintenance.

Lone Pine State Park in Kalispell has an estimated $234,000 in recommended maintenance projects, according to the firm. This includes a high priority item — $86,000 for a water supply vault upgrade — that would address safety concerns. The firm found $667,000 in deferred maintenance at Whitefish Lake State Park, including a high-priority need to address electrical issues.

“There are significant concerns,” said Conradi, an attorney in Whitefish who is a regional member of the Montana State Parks and Recreation Board, which oversees the statewide system. “We have had trouble getting money for infrastructure improvements and we don’t have a capital budget. Our parks are suffereing from not-so-benign neglect.”

Conradi, who was involved in the development of the Whitefish Trail, is taking matters into her own hands by helping establish a new nonprofit organization that can support the state’s park system.

She has co-founded the Montana State Parks Foundation, a group that will take on advocacy and fundraising in a way the government agency can’t, similar to how the Glacier Conservancy supports Glacier National Park as a nonprofit partner. Conradi co-founded the foundation along with Jeff Welch, a fellow parks board member from Bozeman, and Stephanie Ambrose Tubbs of Helena, who has supported historical sites across Montana along the tradition of her late father, Stephen Ambrose, an author and historian who wrote “Undaunted Courage.”

Conradi said the foundation has already begun reaching out to communities to better understand the role state parks play in each region.

“These front country places, like parks and trails, like the Whitefish Trail, are incredibly important economic drivers,” Conradi said.

“State parks are important community anchors. How do we take care of those and then with the foundation, how do we pivot off those?”

At the same time the foundation is coming together, the state agency has been reviewing ways it can deal with budget constraints and growing demand and deferred maintenance. The agency is proposing a new system for classifying and prioritizing park resources that would be used for allocating staffing, funding and capital development resources at sites across the system.

The agency is accepting public comments on the proposal through Nov. 20.

The new policy would create a proposed classification grouping of current parks, and the agency would then manage the sites based on this setup. For example, state parks around Flathead Lake have been deemed highly valuable, and more resources might be devoted to those sites than to smaller parks that are in a lower category.

“We keep moving hours around to target the greatest need for maintenance and visitor services, but that gets harder and harder to do. That’s a big concern,” Dave Landstrom, regional manager for Montana State Parks in Kalispell, said.

“At what point do we stop providing a good service?”

There are 14 state park sites in this corner of the state, including some of the state’s most popular, such as Wayfarers near Bigfork.

For example, the six parks on Flathead Lake, which have attracted over 376,000 people this year, have one full-time park ranger and one full-time manager overseeing daily operations year-round, as well as a variety of seasonal volunteer staff that ranges in size depending on the influx of regional needs.

“The best way to put it is it’s skeletal,” Landstrom said.

Collectively, the 14 sites in this region have 18 paid camp hosts and up to 30 volunteer hosts each summer to provide visitor service, basic custodial and grounds keeping services. Staff also manage the state snowmobile grant program, which includes working with six snowmobile clubs and close to 600 miles of groomed trails.

“We’re not complaining. We’d rather be busy because that means people are using the sites. But there are times when you wonder how you can maintain that,” Landstrom said.

For more information about the Montana State Parks system, visit http://stateparks.mt.gov.