New Hampshire lawmakers will consider two bills this session designed to improve state parks and historic sites.
One bill would infuse 10 million dollars into the system over the coming biennium.
Another creates a strategic plan to try to make the parks more profitable and creates a bureau for historic sites.
But as New Hampshire Public Radio’s Amy Quinton reports, some preservationists say the legislation still leaves historic sites in jeopardy of shutting down.
The Wentworth mansion's exterior paint is flaking badly.
Visitors who tour the residence of New Hampshire’s first royal governor, Benning Wentworth, are likely to be stunned…not by the mansion’s display of five different types of architecture or it’s rare French stewing kitchen... but by its state of disrepair.
Kate Greenleese is Director of the Wentworth Coolidge Commission.
Despite her love for the mid-1700’s Portsmouth mansion, she calls it an embarrassment.
"It’s heartbreaking, I feel like the house is like a Dickens street urchin, it just needs so much attention and love and it’s getting none, and it’s because there’s no money"
Sitting alongside the picturesque Piscataqua River, the Wentworth Coolidge mansion is a bit of an eyesore.
Its yellow and green paint is flaking badly, leaving bare wood exposed to the elements.
And that’s just the outside.
Inside, the sun has faded the rare original 18th century wallpaper.
It used to be bright gold and fuchsia, now it's white and brown.
Through a grant, the mansion received mylar window shades to protect the wallpaper and other fragile furnishings.
But instead they sit unused.
Sun-damaged wallpaper and antique furnishings at the Wentworth mansion.
"in a closet in the kitchen we have boxes full of these mylar shades but the man who is supervisor of this region just had his entire staff laid off except for one person at the end of the calendar year, so there’s no one to install them"
Silverfish have eaten wallpaper in other rooms; moisture has loosened plaster to fail from the ground floor to the attic.
As Greenleese gives the tour, she continually apologizes.
"The closer we get to the water the more the paint fails, its unacceptable that I have guides that are having to take visitors here from all over the country, they choose a couple of things to do, this is what they see, it shouldn’t be like this there’s no reason"
But the Wentworth Coolidge Mansion isn’t the only historic site in such need.
To repair them all would cost millions of dollars.
New Hampshire is the only state in the nation whose historic sites are self-funded, relying entirely on visitors’ fees without any help from the general fund.
State Architectural Historian Jim Garven says it’s a system that’s set up to fail.
"Without friends groups I think we could say that basically the whole historic site system would essentially close down, it just simply couldn’t be operated without these outside groups helping the state of New Hampshire do its job."
But volunteer and friends groups like the Wentworth Coolidge Commission can go only so far.
A legislative study commission agreed that historic sites don’t generate enough money to cover costs and are a drain on the entire park system budget.
It’s not that the state parks division doesn’t care about its historic sites, but Parks and Recreation Director Allison McLean says that even the state parks haven’t seen major upgrades in 50 years.
"If I have to make a decision of spending what little money I have to take care of a safety issue at a large developed park, or dealing with a smaller issue at say the Robert Frost farm, which only gets 4,000 visitors a year I only have so many resources and I have to deploy them where its going to have to have the most and greatest effect on the public."
The Wentworth mansion.
McLean says it would take 20 million dollars to solve the most pressing problems with the state parks.
House legislators have drafted a bill that would allow the parks to bond 10-million dollars this biennium.
But even if that’s approved, most of the money would go to upgrade one of the system’s largest income producers: Hampton Beach State Park.
"The main bathhouse facility which we call our seashell is not large enough to accommodate the numbers of people that come there so that whole facility is really becoming a situation where not only is it not large enough, it doesn’t offer what we need it do to, it’s starting to fall apart, it’s very symptomatic of what’s happening to the entire system"
Republican Senator Bob Odell of Lempster – along with most of the legislative study committee – believes the state needs to create a bureau for historic sites.
Odell has crafted legislation that would create the office and give it almost 300-thousand dollars in proposed general funds in the next fiscal year.
"There’s not a lot of money involved, but I must say that there will be 300-thousand dollars if the budget passes as proposed by the Department of Resources and Economic Development that 300,000 is relieved from the amount of money that would have had to be used from the park system to fund historic sites, so there’s some real value in that new budget item."
The goal of the proposed bureau would be to hire experts in the fields of historical architecture, historic preservation and most importantly, grant writing.
Parks and Recreation Director Allison Mclean.
"If we put the right staff people in who have the ability to leverage dollars, to go after federal monies, to work closely with our friends groups to go after the nonprofit organizations, we can turn every dollar we get from the state general fund into five, eight or ten more eventually"
But not everyone agrees that creating a bureau is the best way to solve the problems.
Republican Representative Pam Price of Nashua sat on the parks study commission.
"The concern is that you increase the bureaucracy without actually putting money towards the things that need to be done, you’re not putting money towards shingles, siding, wood and repairs."
Price says she’d rather see one person put in charge of writing grants and exploring public-private partnerships to keep the historic sites afloat.
Even if that means having businesses sponsor a site.
Wentworth Coolidge Commission Director Kate Greenleese says she’s not completely opposed to that sort of arrangement if it helps the Wentworth Coolidge Mansion.
But she just hopes something is done before it’s too late.
"Something’s got to give because the way the system is now it’s not working at all, and something like this will not continue to stand, you don’t want the Royal Governor’s mansion to end up being condemned, I mean, shame on us."
A hearing is scheduled next week for the Senate Bill that would create a historic bureau -- as well as provide two million in funding to create a strategic plan for the park system.
For NHPR News, I’m Amy Quinton.
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Does anyone who offered insight into this article realize that a bureau that "hire(s) experts in the fields of historical architecture, historic preservation and most importantly, grant writing" already exists? Its called the Department of Cultural Resources. Why duplicate this agency when you can work within the established structure? What was this not mentioned by Ms. Quinton in the article?