We know, you hear “ranger” and think of a baseball team or a fellow chasing a bear in a tie. But the County’s proposal to place rangers in County parks and redeploy County police to other, as of now unspecified, parts of the County, made it into the County’s 2015 budget proposal.
The County would hire four full-timers to get the program off of the ground. Seasonal rangers could come in the spring but the thrust is to expand the program to the nine County parks. The park ranger division of the Department of Parks budget would be $400,000 total, with $276,000 attributed to personnel cost (personnel and fringe benefits). That averages out to $69,000 per full-timer if the personnel costs don’t include anything for the seasonal workers. The County placed the cost of a County police officer at about $100,000 per year. The Police portion of the 2015 budget for Parks Police Division shows a full-time headcount of 50, the same as 2014.
The County, while it has garnered some attention on this proposal, is not alone in embracing the idea of park rangers. The City has actually budgeted for one full-time park ranger in their section of the Parks and Recreation budget for 2015. According to the Parks Department, the ranger will be based at Schenley Park. Pittsburgh police aren’t based at City parks the way County police are, so it is not that the City’s ranger is helping to redeploy an officer somewhere else.
