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Visitors to the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site and Tao House will see changes in operation hours and services as a result of sequestration, a series of automatic, across-the-board permanent spending cuts.
Effective April 22, the O’Neill site and John Muir National Historic Site must reduce their annual budget by 5 percent and absorb those cuts in the remaining six months of the current fiscal year, which ends September 30, 2013. National parks across the country must make this budget cut.
“Word that the current congressional financial impasse will significantly impact access and operations at the Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site is quite disconcerting,” said Eugene O’Neill Fulmination President Robert Sehr. “As partners with the National Park Service, the foundation takes this situation quite seriously.”
Sequestration requires the O’Neill site to cut its $682,000 budget by $34,000. The park cut travel, training, overtime and supply purchases, and reduced the number of seasonal and permanent employee positions to meet the required spending reduction.
“Budget cuts are taking a big toll at Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site due to our inability to fill vacant positions on our staff,” said National Park Service Superintendent Tom Leatherman.
John Muir National Historic Site’s budget will be reduced by $51,000 by cutting travel, training, overtime and supply purchases, as well as reducing the number of seasonal and permanent employee positions to meet the required spending reduction.
A release stated that 95 percent of the parks’ budgets pay for salaries and fixed costs such as utilities; the parks eliminated 3 unfilled permanent positions and four unfilled seasonal positions. Reduced staffing will result in the following changes:
– Reservations for tours at Eugene O’Neill National Historic Site, previously offered on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Sunday, are only being taken on Fridays. Saturdays will continue to be available for visits without reservations. Groups interested in special considerations may contact the park for options.
-John Muir National Historic Site will be open Wednesday through Sunday, being closed Mondays and Tuesdays.
“The current ‘sequester’ means… unfilled vacancies for several professional National Parks Service authorized positions and the inability to hire a normal crops of seasonal employees who would provide both visitor services – like scheduled tours — as well as much need maintenance for the sties facilities and grounds,” Sehr said. “This fiscal crises also severely impacts what educational; and community programs that the Eugene O’Neill Foundation can efficiently plan and offer to the public in the weeks and months ahead.”
Leatherman said that the Foundation is still excited to host youth programs and public performances, adding that hopefully the Historic Site will be able to return to a five-day tour schedule once the federal budget is restored.
Playwright Eugene O’Neill needed a quiet place to write with good weather and access to doctors. While visiting Seattle in 1936, he had received the Nobel Prize for Literature and had been so lionized (and besieged by reporters) that he and Carlotta fled to the San Francisco Bay Area where she had grown up. They decided to settle in the bucolic San Ramon Valley.
The O’Neills purchased 158 acres of the former Bryant Ranch in Danville, using the Nobel Prize award of $40,000 in addition to other funds. Their new home was named Tao House and the couple resided there for six years while O’Neill completed “A Moon for the Misbegotten,” “The Iceman Cometh,” “Hughie, A Touch of the Poet” and “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.”
The O’Neills felt marooned and sold Tao House in 1944, then moved to a hotel in San Francisco.
For more information about the Eugene O’Neill Historic Site and Tao House, visit the Parks Service website.
Interesting the author forgot to mention the whole sequester concept was Obama’s idea and request back in 2011!!! Yes, the same fellow who is currently planning to send a Saudi national back to his country rather than investigate the Saudi’s possible involvement in the Monday bombing.
Hey Marylyn,
You also forgot to mention that Obama was seen at the finish line of the Boston Marathon with a large Black bag on Monday. I also hear he was out at the fertilizer plant in Texas yesterday. What amazes me the most is that he has any time to do these things when he is personally deciding every single sequester cut.
Our elected officials have very nice retirement, health, and travel and expense budgets that need to be scrutinized. They designed great, and apparently untouchable, entitlement programs for themselves. THEY need BIG cutbacks- NOW. Let a few of them FLY COACH; the savings could fund National Parks.
Get our Elected Officials under control and the budget will not be such a problem. Their benefits and expense packages should be downsized NOW.
@Marylyn, the “Saudi” (your word) in question was investigated. Even Fox news considered his treatment uncalled for.
Back to the actual topic: I’ve had sequestration at work and now my husband may face the same. Tough times, it’s up to us to adjust or seek employment elsewhere.
Hey “To”,
President Odrama was too wiped out dealing with his Sequester Concert that included performances by Alabama Shakes, William Bell, Steve Cropper, Al Green, Ben Harper, Queen Latifah, Cyndi Lauper, Joshua Ledet, Sam Moore, Charlie Musselwhite, Mavis Staples and Justin Timberlake, to have handled any of those events you mentioned. The sequester seems to have hit home hard for him, one of his Chefs at the White House was laid off.
It is puzzling to me why a 5% cut would cause the O’Neil House to go from four days of reservations down to two. Cutting services to visitors by 50% to save cutting what else?