Details on the FY2008 NPS budget

I just received an e-mail through regular NPS channels with details (finally) on this year's National Park Service budget. Since many of you following this blog find such topics of interest, here's a few exerpts, especially the sections of relevance to our volunteer program.

"In December 2007, Congress passed the 2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act. The Act contained many changes to the Administrations’ Request for FY 2008 and to the House and Senate Committee mark-ups. The Washington Budget Office devoted much time and effort in reviewing the massive bill and report language to assess the precise impacts on the FY 2008 budget. On February 4, 2008, PWR Budget and Financial Management provided the Park and Program Summary for our parks to initiate the planning and programming of the anticipated FY 2008 ONPS allocation.... An [abridged] explanation of changes is as follows:

"Seasonal Employees
The full amount of $40.6 million was provided in the FY 2008 budget for the 3,000 Centennial seasonal employees. It is important for each park to keep its commitment to hire the additional number of seasonal employees identified in the President’s Budget. The seasonal program will be closely monitored to document success....

"Volunteers-in-Park Coordinators
$3.4 million was provided to selected parks [including Mount Rainier] to hire VIP Coordinators that are dedicated to the VIP program. As part of the Centennial Initiative, it is imperative that the 12 PWR parks receiving VIP funds for full-time or part-time coordinators demonstrate an improvement in the management of their volunteer programs and a commensurate increase in the number of volunteers and associated volunteer hours. This will contribute to the centennial goal of doubling the number of volunteer hours to 10.4 million hours by 2016. The coordinators must be hired in FY 2008 as specified in the FY 2008 Green Book. The 12 parks in our region will be asked to prepare a special performance report at the end of FY 2008 for submission to the WASO Interpretation and Education Division....

"Youth Conservation Corps (YCC)
For many years, the Appropriations Act language has directed the National Park Service to commit not less than $2 million from within available ONPS Park Management allocations for high priority projects to be carried out by the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC).... However, in the FY 2008 Appropriations Act, the directed amount to commit to YCC projects has increased to $3 million."