COST COMPARISON OF BUILDING MAINTENANCE

Mr. HARTZOG. We not only looked at our maintenance requirements in terms of our standards, because program standards such as we have developed are relatively new to Government, although they have been used in business for a long, long time, but we then went out and compared our maintenance with other agencies, what they had and what we received. And interestingly, these are the five agencies: General Services Administration, Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Tennessee Valley Authority, the National Gallery of Art-that manage buildings and maintain buildings, that resemble and are similar to the buildings we manage in the national park system.

You will observe from this that GSA gets $1.50 a square foot for its maintenance and operations, Smithsonian gets 77 cents a square foot, Bureau of Indian Affairs gets 85 cents a square foot, Tennessee Valley Authority gets $1.67 a square foot, the National Gallery of Art gets $1.30 a square foot, and the National Park Service gets 64 cents a square foot.

(A chart follows:)

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I would invite the committee's attention to the fact, Madam Chair-t man, that many of these buildings that are lumped in that 64 cents a square foot are fragile, irreplaceable, historic structures, such as Custis-Lee Mansion, Independence Hall, which require an extraor dinary amount of care and yet over all these irreplaceable parts of our national inheritance are receiving less per square foot than we are putting into ordinary Government buildings.

Mrs. HANSEN. Will you place in the record at this point the visitation increase for the Custis-Lee Mansion and Independence Hall? Mr. HARTZOG. I certainly shall.

(The information follows.)

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VISITATION FOR INDEPENDENCE HALL AND CUSTIS-LEE MANSION, 1963-68

Calendar year

1963.

1964.

1965.

1966.

1967.

1968.

1 1964 and 1965 visitation affected by people en route to the New York World's Fair.

2 Affected by visitation to President Kennedy's gravesite.

* Fee increased from 25 to 50 cents on Apr. 1, 1966.

4 Reduction in 1968 was brought about by a change in the method of counting visitors. $ Affected by civil disturbances in Washington, D.C.

LAW ENFORCEMENT WORKLOAD

Mr. HARTZOG. We also took a look at our park rangers, who are responsible for law enforcement, because as you will note from my general statement, there has been a continuing rise not only in minor offenses, but in major crimes in the national park system during this past year.

And we found that while the workload in 1964 as a base was 100 percent, it increased to 140 percent in 1967, while at the same time the available

(NOTE.-A chart was provided to the committee.)

Mrs. HANSEN. What are the basic ingredients of the workload increase?

Mr. HARTZOG. All right, Madam Chairman. It is an increase in numbers of areas, increase in numbers of visitors, and the consequences of this have been that by reason of these resources not having kept up with the workload, minor offenses and major crimes have increased in the national park system.

Resources have been impaired, and we simply have not been doing the job of protecting the people's inheritance that ought to be done.

MAINTENANCE AND PROTECTION OF FACILITIES

Mrs. HANSEN. Isn't it true that without proper maintenance, your roads and trails can deteriorate to a point where major construction is needed to repair the roads?

Mr. HARTZOG. Absolutely, Madam Chairman. I have some photographs here that show you what is actually happening. Whereas the Bureau of Public Roads and most State roads commissions suggest

that roads comparable to the major roads in the national park system be resealed on a 6- to 10-year cycle, our major park roads are being resealed on a cycle of every 18 years.

Mrs. HANSEN. Last summer, I visited some roads in Olympic National Park in the Lake Crescent area, and I doubt that they have been touched for 30 years.

Mr. HARTZOG. I have these photographs which show some of the consequences of not only inadequate maintenance, but inadequate protection. You can see there the litter, the destruction of physical properties, the defacement of our Nation's monuments, and sometimes obscenely, as well as the destruction and slaughter of wildlife.

One of those pictures shows a freshly skinned grizzly in McKinley that had been poached and skinned and left to rot.

Mrs. HANSEN. Isn't poaching a major problem in the Everglades? Mr. HARTZOG. It is, indeed. They have almost wiped out the alligator population there.

To give you an idea of what happens in terms of some of the consequences of inadequate funding of visitor protection, while the average crime rate was going up 16 percent in the Nation, in the national park system the crime rate was going up 29 percent.

Crimes against property went up 18 percent, and major crimes against persons-rape, armed robbery, and so forth-increased from 15 in 1966 to 95 in 1967.

(Chart follows:)