Trump Officials Want Big Changes at Alcatraz. The Presidio Is a Different Story

After wrapping up an early morning boat ride to Alcatraz, where he touted President Trump’s plan to once again put people behind bars there, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum took a stroll on Thursday around another famed San Francisco national park site that Trump has had his eye on: the Presidio.

His take? The former Army base-turned-park should be an inspiration for the National Park Service as a whole.

“This is a model where they’re using private sector tools and market tools with no subsidy and they’ve achieved profitability,” he told reporters outside the Presidio’s visitor center. The Presidio Trust, the federal agency that manages the space, is financially self-sufficient and relies on revenue from leasing historic buildings.

“I think they’re a great example of how we can do a great of job of collaborating with the tools to help manage federal resources,” he continued.

Though earlier Thursday he advocated for turning Alcatraz back into a federal prison — a move that would require transferring it out of the park system — Burgum had praise for the Presidio’s 1,500 acres of hiking trails, green space and restaurants on the northwest edge of San Francisco.

It was a far cry from how Trump described the park’s operation in an executive order he penned in February, which could have made the midday tour with the CEO of the Presidio Trust pretty awkward.

“This order commences a reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the order reads. It applied to the Presidio Trust and three other agencies that Trump’s order suggested were causing government “waste and abuse.”

But as Jean Fraser, the Trust’s CEO, guided Burgum around the fire pit, picnic area and low-back lounge chairs that look out on the Presidio’s premier view of Crissy Field, the secretary seemed to disagree with Trump.

When asked if he would be reporting his positive experience back to the president, Burgum didn’t give a direct answer but said that within the Department of the Interior, the model the Presidio uses to fundraise and function “is something we have to look at.”

When Congress created the Presidio Trust in 1996, it provided federal money to aid the property’s transition from an Army base but required it to become financially independent by 2013. That public-private partnership lessened the financial burden on the Department of the Interior, helping it garner bipartisan support.

Burgum said the National Park Service has a lot of deferred maintenance that needs to be addressed and could benefit from private sector support to do so. The park service manages 85 million acres of land across the U.S.

On the 15 or so minute walk through the Presidio, he complimented the red, movable chairs that tourists and locals sat in drinking coffee, gave the park’s landscape designers kudos for the trees and native plants lining its gravel walkways and applauded the recently debuted expansion of the Tunnel Tops picnic area.

“National parks have been called America’s best idea, and we need to invest in that,” he said as the tour wrapped up.

The current administration, however, has overseen a shrinking National Park Service as it takes a hatchet to federal agencies. Since Trump took office, the NPS has lost 24% of its permanent staff.