April 2017 - Parks & Recreation - 18

Community Center
Environmental Career Forecasting
A conversation with Environmental Workforce Consultant Kevin Doyle
By Sonia Myrick

L

ocal park and recreation agencies are positioned to be leaders in the environmental movement. But, given the current economic and political climate,
what does the future hold for those about to enter the field and those already
working in it? Parks & Recreation magazine recently sat down with Kevin
Doyle, a national environmental careers expert, to get his perspective about industry
trends and opportunities and the skills park and recreation professionals will need to
possess in order to be competitive and to optimize the impact they can have on the
communities they serve. Following is an excerpt of that conversation.

Parks & Recreation magazine: What
trends in environmental careers should
park agencies pay attention to?
Kevin Doyle: 2017 is shaping up to be a very
interesting year for trends in a wide variety
of environmental career sectors, including
those who work in occupations related
to parks and recreation. Let's start with a
trend that everyone will recognize: political
disruption. Environmental budget cuts at
both the federal and state level have been
proposed, and these proposals come on top
of previous underinvestments. Even if proposed cuts don't materialize, just the expectation of budget concerns is likely to put a
pause on hiring, especially for new full-time
workers. In an environment of uncertainty,
it seems reasonable to expect park directors
to adopt a status quo approach in terms of
hiring, except for larger projects that are already funded, or under way.
On the positive side, there are a number
of trends that have been growing over several years that should be good for the parks
workforce. These are work innovations generating new assignments for existing crews
that will require new skills training, and may
potentially require new hires as well. One of
those trends is the growth of green stormwater infrastructure " GSI " approaches in cities
and towns, and the growing realization that
park facilities can play a key role in the successful implementation of GSI plans.
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Parks & Recreation

Progressive city leaders understand
communities pushing for green infrastructure alternatives will achieve results
most quickly if they lead by example.
This means designing and implementing
strategies that use existing public land and
right of ways for green infrastructure projects for stormwater - especially parks.
We're already seeing this " lead by example " approach in many cities, with an accompanying in the need for appropriately
trained public workers, contractors and
subcontractors. Bringing together green
stormwater infrastructure and park design, installation, maintenance and monitoring will be an important employment
and training driver in 2017, and beyond.
On March 27, Jobs for the Future
(www.jff.org) released a major report

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about the employment and training implications of urban green infrastructure.
Among other things, JFF notes the large
number of urban water utilities - often
in collaboration with their parks departments - that are supporting a National
Green Infrastructure Certification Program (www.ngicp.org) to institutionalize
job training needs for GSI workers.
Another positive that pushes back against
the budget cutting narrative is that people
love parks. Over and over again, surveys indicate that the American public values their
local, state and national parks. Whether
they are willing to pay the freight to maintain them is, of course, another matter. But,
people in many states are realizing they can
no longer postpone some of the backlog in
maintenance and, at least a dent in some of
that backlog is going to need to be made.
I would love to say that positives outweigh the negatives this year, but I note
that even in my home state of Massachusetts, we're looking at budget cuts in the
Department of Conservation and Recreation. So, I think the best we can expect for
2017 for public workers is status quo.
P&R: What skills should park and recreation employees look to gain in 2017?
Doyle: This is a great question because
no one knows better than NRPA that the
skill sets needed to really serve the public and maintain our parks are becoming
more sophisticated. Keeping things simple, we could break them down into two
different areas. One skill set has to do
with dealing with ecological resources,
and the other with dealing with people.
Let's take people skills first. Americans
expect more and more from their parks.
They expect an experience. For some
April 2017 - Parks & Recreation

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