Latest news with #Wenk
Yahoo
a day ago
- Climate
- Yahoo
Gaithersburg residents beat the heat with a pool day
GAITHERSBURG, Md. (DC News Now) — Thursday was the first day this year temperatures reached the 90s. And it was a scorcher as many tried to find ways to beat the heat. DC News Now talked to some families at a neighborhood pool in Gaithersburg who were staying cool by swimming. Matt Michelson brought his kids to take a dip. 'On a hot day like today, when it's 94 degrees outside, it is important to stay cool, and we have this nice pool in the neighborhood, and we brought our family to take a dip to stay nice and cool and relax as a family,' Michelson said. Summer Street Festival returning to Downtown Hagerstown 11-year-old Ellie Simpson and her friends also spent time swimming to beat the heat. 'I think the hot weather is nice, but it's so hot. I also think it's good to come to the pool because we can cool off, and it feels good to be in the pool,' Simpson said. Dr. Jonathan Wenk says that with the humid and hot conditions, people should be drinking enough water and taking breaks during the day. Wenk is the Medical Director of the Emergency Department at White Oak Adventist Medical Center. 'In general, you want to try to stay indoors where it's cool. You also need to be drinking enough water, 8-10 glasses of water per day, or more if you are going to be outside in the heat. But going to the pool or a splash pad is a good way to stay cool,' explained Wenk. Wenk also encourages elderly citizens in the DMV to stay indoors during this heat wave as a precaution. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former Yellowstone, Rushmore, Badlands superintendents say DOGE wiped out a generation of leaders
(Illustration by Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight) If Dan Wenk had been fired during his first year in a permanent job with the National Park Service, the agency would've lost his many later accomplishments. He would not have gone on to help lead a public-private partnership that raised $75 million to redevelop visitor facilities at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, or a $300 million negotiation to improve amenities at Yellowstone National Park with private funds, or the acquisition of the United Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania for a national memorial. Wenk worked on those and other momentous projects during a four-decade career that began with his first permanent job as a landscape architect at Yellowstone. Now he wonders how many potentially decades-long careers were extinguished on Feb. 14. That's when the Trump administration fired 1,000 park service employees — about 5% of the agency's workforce — who had yet to complete the probationary period for new hires. Another 700 employees reportedly accepted buyouts that were offered before the firings. 'The feeder groups are being devastated in terms of future leaders of an organization,' Wenk said. Wenk and fellow former park service superintendents Cheryl Schreier and Mike Pflaum recently visited South Dakota Searchlight to express their concerns about the Trump administration's mass firings and spending cuts, carried out largely by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. The actions have affected many federal agencies and programs, resulting in a reported 75,000 employee buyouts, 30,000 firings, and trillions of dollars in frozen or canceled federal grants, loans and foreign aid. Wenk, Pflaum and Schreier each retired in South Dakota's Black Hills after decades-long careers culminating in the leadership of major park service sites, including Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone for Wenk, Mount Rushmore for Schreier, and Badlands National Park for Pflaum. Wenk's other postings included a stint as acting director of the park service. Schreier is now the vice chair of The Coalition to Protect America's Parks, and Pflaum is the president-elect of the Association of National Park Rangers. All three started as seasonal park service employees, like some of the recently fired workers did. Wenk said starting as a seasonal worker is a common park service career path, and it's an important thing to know about the probationary workers who lost their jobs. 'They may have been in the park service for many, many years,' Wenk said, 'and had finally gotten a permanent position.' Schreier's first permanent job was working as a protection ranger, securing the Liberty Bell and other historical treasures at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Pflaum got his first permanent job at Yellowstone, where he worked as a telecommunications operator in the dispatch center. Recently fired employees in those types of positions might never get back on a career track that could have led to leadership. That includes Lydia Jones, who was fired from her first permanent park service job last month at Badlands National Park after working as a seasonal ranger in multiple parks for several years. 'I'm devastated,' Jones wrote on social media, adding 'my career is over.' Pflaum formerly worked with Jones at Badlands National Park. 'She was obviously a rising star,' Pflaum said. 'She was very good, very articulate, doing interpretive programs and managing the visitor center desk. And she got fired for 'poor performance,' which is absolutely untrue.' Pflaum said he's spoken with many current and retired park service employees in the past few weeks, and employees who were fired. 'There's absolutely an atmosphere of stress, anxiety and fear throughout the ranks,' he said. 'And that's not a good thing for mission accomplishment.' In the short term, mission accomplishment means hiring seasonal employees to staff many of the 433 park service sites that cover 133,000 square miles across the country. In South Dakota, park service locations include such well-known destinations as Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument and Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. The Trump/DOGE cuts have introduced chaos into the typically predictable seasonal hiring process. Trump ordered a federal hiring freeze in January, reportedly resulting in rescinded job offers for some seasonal park service workers. After the mass firings on Feb. 14 and a public outcry, the Trump administration said it would hire back at least 50 of the park service jobs and authorize 5,000 seasonal positions, which would've been a reduction from recent years. Then the administration relented again and authorized 7,700 seasonal workers. Wenk, Pflaum and Schreier said the confusion and delays will make filling seasonal jobs difficult. They said many seasonal workers may have been scared away or taken other jobs by now. Those that are hired could end up behind schedule with background checks and training. And they might lack permanent employees to train them because of the mass firings. Wenk said visitors could suffer the consequences. Park service sites collectively receive more than 300 million visits per year. 'I think it is going to have an impact this summer,' Wenk said, 'especially as people start arriving in parks in the numbers that they traditionally do, and they expect the same kind of experience. It's not going to be there for them.' One of the experiences that could fall away is programming. At Mount Rushmore, summer programs include ranger talks, presidential reenactors and Native American dancers. The mountain carving receives more than 2 million visitors per year, and on some days, the crowds are overwhelming. Wenk said parks could be overwhelmed more often this summer due to staffing shortages. 'If it got crowded, we used to put a sign out — 'cut the programs' — because we've got to get people through here faster,' Wenk said. 'So there aren't going to be programs available for them to take advantage of.' Other problems could range from insufficiently cleaned bathrooms to inadequate emergency response times, the former superintendents said. Pflaum worries about safety. 'Lots of people, unfortunately, become ill or injured or lost or need rescue in our parks,' he said. 'I don't think those things will be non-existent, but will they be somehow delayed because of fewer rangers? Could lives hang in the balance? I don't know, but I think those are potential impacts.' Schreier said additional problems might be less visible and longer-term in nature, but ultimately devastating to the park service. They could include reductions in the scientific research that goes on behind the scenes in many parks, on topics ranging from geology and paleontology to invasive and endangered species. 'So if you don't have those individuals who are working on that, or the inventory and monitoring of those resources,' Schreier said, 'there may be years of data, and all of a sudden they're not collecting that data anymore.' The most serious danger is to the parks themselves, Wenk said, from having fewer people protecting the treasures they contain. 'A lot of the resources in the National Park Service are fragile, whether they be natural resources or cultural resources,' he said. 'And if you don't have the people to protect them, you could lose something forever.' South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. South Dakota Searchlight maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seth Tupper for questions: info@
Yahoo
10-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former Yellowstone, Rushmore, Badlands superintendents say DOGE wiped out a generation of leaders
(Illustration by Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight) If Dan Wenk had been fired during his first year in a permanent job with the National Park Service, the agency would've lost his many later accomplishments. He would not have gone on to help lead a public-private partnership that raised $75 million to redevelop visitor facilities at Mount Rushmore National Memorial, or a $300 million negotiation to improve amenities at Yellowstone National Park with private funds, or the acquisition of the United Flight 93 crash site in Pennsylvania for a national memorial. This is part of a series on the impact of mass federal firings, funding freezes and grant cancellations in South Dakota. For future and prior reporting, see Searchlight's DOGE in SD page. Wenk worked on those and other momentous projects during a four-decade career that began with his first permanent job as a landscape architect at Yellowstone. Now he wonders how many potentially decades-long careers were extinguished on Feb. 14. That's when the Trump administration fired 1,000 park service employees — about 5% of the agency's workforce — who had yet to complete the probationary period for new hires. Another 700 employees reportedly accepted buyouts that were offered before the firings. 'The feeder groups are being devastated in terms of future leaders of an organization,' Wenk said. Wenk and fellow former park service superintendents Cheryl Schreier and Mike Pflaum recently visited South Dakota Searchlight to express their concerns about the Trump administration's mass firings and spending cuts, carried out largely by billionaire Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE. The actions have affected many federal agencies and programs, resulting in a reported 75,000 employee buyouts, 30,000 firings, and trillions of dollars in frozen or canceled federal grants, loans and foreign aid. Wenk, Pflaum and Schreier each retired in South Dakota's Black Hills after decades-long careers culminating in the leadership of major park service sites, including Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone for Wenk, Mount Rushmore for Schreier, and Badlands National Park for Pflaum. Wenk's other postings included a stint as acting director of the park service. Schreier is now the vice chair of The Coalition to Protect America's Parks, and Pflaum is the president-elect of the Association of National Park Rangers. All three started as seasonal park service employees, like some of the recently fired workers did. Wenk said starting as a seasonal worker is a common park service career path, and it's an important thing to know about the probationary workers who lost their jobs. 'They may have been in the park service for many, many years,' Wenk said, 'and had finally gotten a permanent position.' Schreier's first permanent job was working as a protection ranger, securing the Liberty Bell and other historical treasures at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. Pflaum got his first permanent job at Yellowstone, where he worked as a telecommunications operator in the dispatch center. Recently fired employees in those types of positions might never get back on a career track that could have led to leadership. That includes Lydia Jones, who was fired from her first permanent park service job last month at Badlands National Park after working as a seasonal ranger in multiple parks for several years. 'I'm devastated,' Jones wrote on social media, adding 'my career is over.' Pflaum formerly worked with Jones at Badlands National Park. 'She was obviously a rising star,' Pflaum said. 'She was very good, very articulate, doing interpretive programs and managing the visitor center desk. And she got fired for 'poor performance,' which is absolutely untrue.' Pflaum said he's spoken with many current and retired park service employees in the past few weeks, and employees who were fired. 'There's absolutely an atmosphere of stress, anxiety and fear throughout the ranks,' he said. 'And that's not a good thing for mission accomplishment.' In the short term, mission accomplishment means hiring seasonal employees to staff many of the 433 park service sites that cover 133,000 square miles across the country. In South Dakota, park service locations include such well-known destinations as Mount Rushmore, the Badlands, Wind Cave National Park, Jewel Cave National Monument and Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. The Trump/DOGE cuts have introduced chaos into the typically predictable seasonal hiring process. Trump ordered a federal hiring freeze in January, reportedly resulting in rescinded job offers for some seasonal park service workers. After the mass firings on Feb. 14 and a public outcry, the Trump administration said it would hire back at least 50 of the park service jobs and authorize 5,000 seasonal positions, which would've been a reduction from recent years. Then the administration relented again and authorized 7,700 seasonal workers. Wenk, Pflaum and Schreier said the confusion and delays will make filling seasonal jobs difficult. They said many seasonal workers may have been scared away or taken other jobs by now. Those that are hired could end up behind schedule with background checks and training. And they might lack permanent employees to train them because of the mass firings. Wenk said visitors could suffer the consequences. Park service sites collectively receive more than 300 million visits per year. 'I think it is going to have an impact this summer,' Wenk said, 'especially as people start arriving in parks in the numbers that they traditionally do, and they expect the same kind of experience. It's not going to be there for them.' One of the experiences that could fall away is programming. At Mount Rushmore, summer programs include ranger talks, presidential reenactors and Native American dancers. The mountain carving receives more than 2 million visitors per year, and on some days, the crowds are overwhelming. Wenk said parks could be overwhelmed more often this summer due to staffing shortages. 'If it got crowded, we used to put a sign out — 'cut the programs' — because we've got to get people through here faster,' Wenk said. 'So there aren't going to be programs available for them to take advantage of.' Other problems could range from insufficiently cleaned bathrooms to inadequate emergency response times, the former superintendents said. Pflaum worries about safety. 'Lots of people, unfortunately, become ill or injured or lost or need rescue in our parks,' he said. 'I don't think those things will be non-existent, but will they be somehow delayed because of fewer rangers? Could lives hang in the balance? I don't know, but I think those are potential impacts.' Schreier said additional problems might be less visible and longer-term in nature, but ultimately devastating to the park service. They could include reductions in the scientific research that goes on behind the scenes in many parks, on topics ranging from geology and paleontology to invasive and endangered species. 'So if you don't have those individuals who are working on that, or the inventory and monitoring of those resources,' Schreier said, 'there may be years of data, and all of a sudden they're not collecting that data anymore.' The most serious danger is to the parks themselves, Wenk said, from having fewer people protecting the treasures they contain. 'A lot of the resources in the National Park Service are fragile, whether they be natural resources or cultural resources,' he said. 'And if you don't have the people to protect them, you could lose something forever.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
CBS News
20-02-2025
- Climate
- CBS News
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy prepares for summer camp programs
The frigid weather outside is making us crave the summer. It will be here before we know it and now's the time to research and register your kids for camp. With costs rising across the board, know that options are out there to find the right summer camp that fits your budget. Frick Park is looking barren with snow right now, but soon enough it will be filled with kids at the environmental center's camp in Squirrel Hill. Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Director of Advancement Alana Wenk said parents should start booking as early as possible. "We're excited to bring camp back for another year. It's one of our most beloved programs that we offer here," Wenk said. "It's really important to get kids in these programs, they can continue building connections with one another, having that sense of community whenever they're not in their typical school programs." As registration opens Wednesday, spots will fill up fast, within a couple of weeks, for the sessions that start in June and run through August for kids ages four through eighth graders. In 2024, they had 300 campers. Typically, they're able to offer 30 of them scholarships called camperships, for income eligible families. The regular cost of camp ranges from $140 to $340, depending on the camp and the number of days selected. "We really try to keep our camp price accessible, but we also recognize that maybe those prices still aren't attainable for some families," Wenk said. According to Sawyer, a camp registration and management software, in 2024 camp providers increased their prices by 23 percent from 2023. The company also found that sessions book up at many camps during the first few months of the year. The American Camp Association said most camps offer some sort of financial support and recommends parents ask programs what scholarships and other special discounts they may offer. They'll want to book early for the best deals. Parents can also check to see if they're eligible for the child and dependent care tax credit and flexible spending accounts for dependent care. For Frick Park, know that tuition is a donation to the conservancy, a nonprofit, which can provide an additional tax write off. Registrations are also currently open for camps with the YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, and JCC. here.
CBS News
19-02-2025
- Climate
- CBS News
Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy prepares for Pittsburgh area summer camp programs
The frigid weather outside is making us crave the summer. It will be here before we know it and now's the time to research and register your kids for camp. With costs rising across the board, know that options are out there to find the right summer camp that fits your budget. Frick Park is looking barren with snow right now, but soon enough it will be filled with kids at the environmental center's camp in Squirrel Hill. Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy Director of Advancement Alana Wenk said parents should start booking as early as possible. "We're excited to bring camp back for another year. It's one of our most beloved programs that we offer here," Wenk said. "It's really important to get kids in these programs, they can continue building connections with one another, having that sense of community whenever they're not in their typical school programs." As registration opens Wednesday, spots will fill up fast, within a couple of weeks, for the sessions that start in June and run through August for kids ages four through eighth graders. In 2024, they had 300 campers. Typically, they're able to offer 30 of them scholarships called camperships, for income eligible families. The regular cost of camp ranges from $140 to $340, depending on the camp and the number of days selected. "We really try to keep our camp price accessible, but we also recognize that maybe those prices still aren't attainable for some families," Wenk said. According to Sawyer, a camp registration and management software, in 2024 camp providers increased their prices by 23 percent from 2023. The company also found that sessions book up at many camps during the first few months of the year. The American Camp Association said most camps offer some sort of financial support and recommends parents ask programs what scholarships and other special discounts they may offer. They'll want to book early for the best deals. Parents can also check to see if they're eligible for the child and dependent care tax credit and flexible spending accounts for dependent care. For Frick Park, know that tuition is a donation to the conservancy, a nonprofit, which can provide an additional tax write off. Registrations are also currently open for camps with the YMCA, Boys and Girls Club, and JCC.
