A few weeks ago, the citizens of Paterson learned of the abrupt resignation of the Project Manager of the National Park Service’s Great Falls National Historical Park.  This is not good news.

By way of background, President Obama signed legislation in 2009 that designated the Great Falls in Paterson, already a State Park, a part of the National Park System contingent upon meeting certain conditions, including the creation of an agreement between the city and the Department of the Interior.  Making our beautiful waterfall and surrounding park a national treasure?  Priceless.  Leaving it to the hands of local policiticans to finalize?  Possible in theory, challenging in practice, frustrating to us city dwellers.

We don’t do “process” well in Paterson.

Project Manager Bill Bolger, a 28 year veteran of the National Park Service, was leading the negotiations for the past two years and did not present a public reason for his departure.  It has been suggested, by close observers of this process, that there was tension between the two sides, with a great deal of the blame for this outcome being placed at the feet of Mayor Jones and the Municipal Utilities Authority.

The Mayor’s charged reaction at a meeting with the city committee that oversees the MUA does not help his cause.  ”This is our last most precious resource,” the mayor said at one point. “We aren’t giving it away to nobody. It’s a negotiation.”

Okay, Speaker Boehner.  Let’s settle down. 

Bruce Lowry of the North Jersey Media Group said it perfectly:

“The level of arrogance, or perhaps flat out stubbornness here, is astounding, echoing perhaps the sort of resistance Bolger himself ran up against.

Silly me. I thought the issue was settled. I thought the city, and its stakeholders, from Washington to Passaic County, had decided that the Great Falls was this uniquely magnificent, important place in U.S. history, and that making it into a national park to be better enjoyed by all was a net positive for the city.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe there’s some angle here I’m missing. If the mayor or his representatives are getting in the way, though, and we’re already two years down the road, then they should move to the side and let the Park Service do its thing.”

The Paterson Great Falls National Historical Park is already confronting serious challenges.  Cuts to federal discretionary spending is going to greatly affect the already diministed budgets of the Department of the Interior and the National Parks Service.  Let’s not add to these challenges with silly squabbles and unnecessary tension over process.  We cannot afford to wait another two years to begin.