The Superintendent of the Virgin Islands National Park must be a real optimist.
Mark Hardgrove told the annual Friends of the Park meeting on Sunday he’s asking the National Park Service to increase his operating budget from $5 million to $8 million.
In addition, he told about 100 people at the meeting at Cinnamon Bay’s Tree Lizards restaurant, there’s a $22 million backlog in maintenance projects. They include care for roads and trails, signage, boat docks, and the Visitors Center.
(A full report of the meeting was published by the Virgin islands Daily News.)
Joe Kessler, President of the Friends group, said that while he hopes the NPS will allot more money to the VINP, he intends to urge his group to do more, rtoo. While the Friends raised a record $750,000 in 2007, through fund raisers, memberships, workshops and other afctivities, he hopes to boost that number this year to $900,000.