Employees considered ‘non-essential’ at Grand Canyon National Park have been furloughed amid the federal government shutdown.
The last one, six years ago, left staff without pay for close to a month.
Now, social services in Grand Canyon Village are gearing up for increased need as hundreds of park employees face uncertainty.
Heather Lapre moves empty milk crates in the two-room Grand Canyon Food Pantry on the first day of the shutdown.
“I’ll have all this filled up by tonight, but I’ve got diapers and feminine hygiene products,” Lapre says, gesturing towards the shelves. “I have limits on things that are limited, and I like to always keep my produce and bread as unlimited as possible.”
For 11 months, Lapre has been the pantry's only full-time employee, coordinating volunteers, taking in food deliveries, and distributing food to the residents who visit the pantry.
It’s a small building, formally the park jailhouse; several large refrigeration units sit behind bars in the old lock-up, and it’s well away from the bustle of tourists at the rim.
"I love that a jail, a place that was once, you know, for a very different purpose, is now a place of generosity and security," Heather Lapre says.
It’s already been a busy year but with the shutdown, she’s bracing for more.
“I'm ready for an increase. I'm thinking about my delivery I'm expecting next week and how I might augment that just in case because that'll be 11, 12 days in,” Lapre says.
The pantry is part of Flagstaff Family Food Center, which is emblazoned on Lapre’s shirt, and serves residents in Tusayan, Valle and north Williams in addition to Grand Canyon Village.
While most park staff are now furloughed, essential employees like law enforcement and search and rescue personnel continue to work without pay.
This isn’t Lapre’s first government shutdown.
She’s lived at Grand Canyon Village for 16 years and has clear memories of volunteering at the pantry during the nearly month-long shutdown during Trump’s first term.
“It was exhilarating to see people help each other, and it was a tremendous amount of work too,” Lapre says.
But Lapre worries this time, an extended shutdown could mean a drop in visitation.
So far, third-party concessionaires at the canyon haven’t been impacted, but if tourists stop coming, it would put employees of hotels and restaurants in a tough spot.
“Once that starts to happen, then their hours get cut, then they don't have what they need to meet their needs,” Lapre says.
Lapre says, if this shutdown lasts a month or more as it did last time, the effects could be dire.
“It fills me with slightly a little bit of dread to be honest. I don’t. I’m not used to thinking in terms of that long,” Lapre says. “I've never had to utilize emergency food boxes in my role here. I'm thinking what I'm going to do is: request them for next week, just in case. Those are basically like a pantry in a box, you know, rice, pasta, sauces, canned goods, dry beans, everything you need to just keep going.”
The green and gray
A half-mile away, Aubrey Labarre sits on the low stone wall on the rim of the canyon.
Her feet dangle over the edge.
“We can try and make assumptions about how things are going to go but it's this unknown I think that's scarier right now,” Labarre says.
Just two days before the shutdown, Labarre’s seasonal job with the park ended. In the coming days, she’ll head back home to Montana.
Labarre makes clear that she’s speaking as a private citizen.
“I don't like seeing my friends, my coworkers, struggling to make ends meet, worrying about whether or not, when they're going to get their next paycheck. Who knows how long this is going to last,” Labarre says. “Park Service employees a lot of times don't make a ton of money, especially if you're lower on the rung.”
The Trump administration has threatened to fire employees rather than furlough them.
“I’m very anxious that, not only are people I know and care about are going to lose jobs, some of them that they’ve had for over a decade, but I’m also worried about my prospects. I do seasonal work. I’ve been working seasonal for the park service for years, and I’m worried there might not be anything to come back to,” Labarre says.
But Labarre says those anxieties mean she has mixed feelings about the government shutdown overall, which occurred after Congress has so far failed to pass a new budget.
Senate Democrats say they won't support a budget unless it extends tax credits that make health insurance cheaper for millions of Americans.
Those tax credits are set to expire at the end of the year.
“As someone who knows people on Medicaid, as someone who knows some people who have been greatly impacted by these budget cuts, I understand why there's this holdout,” Labarre says. “I don't necessarily blame any sort of opposition to wanting to strike a deal right now, because that could mean cuts for millions of people, including people I love and care about too.”
Bill Wade leads the Association of National Park Rangers.
He’s also concerned for park workers.
“It's certainly another threat that's hanging over the heads of, you know, the employees that have already been jerked around and, you know, badly treated and are fearful and scared and anxious and stressed about their jobs,” Wade says.
Wade was superintendent of Virginia’s Shenandoah National Park during the 1995-96 shutdown.
“I think that one lasted over two pay periods, so there were two paychecks that didn’t come in,” Wade says.
He saw firsthand the difficult position staff were put in.
“Some of the lower-paid employees who were living, like a lot of other Americans these days, paycheck to paycheck, started having real financial problems and finding it hard to take care of their families and so forth,” Wade says.
Wade worries the shutdown could discourage young people from pursuing careers with the National Park Service and the federal government.
Wade says it’s been a difficult year for the parks, even before the shutdown.
He says parks were already understaffed before the Trump administration attempted to lay off employees and encouraged others to retire early.
“The permanent staff has been reduced by something like 25% since January,” Wades says. “That probably means, even after the shutdown ends, there's still not going to be enough staff to perhaps operate visitor centers in some places. And custodial maintenance is going to suffer, and trail maintenance is going to suffer.”
