Acadia group’s grants top $1 million Friends organization says endowment for carriage road care has increased

ACADIA NATIONAL PARK – The advocacy organization Friends of Acadia said Wednesday that grants from its first Acadia National Park endowment – a fund dedicated to the care of the historic carriage roads – have surpassed the $1 million mark.

In the same six-year period, the endowment’s principal has increased from $4 million in 1995 to $5.3 million, said Ken Olson, the organization’s president.

A decade ago, the Friends group began its fund-raising campaign for the 44-mile network of carriage roads, which was financed primarily by John D. Rockefeller Jr.

The crushed stone roads – used today by horseback riders, joggers and cross-country skiers, as well as the local horse-drawn carriage ride business – had fallen into disrepair and needed a major influx of cash.

Between 1990 and 1995, Friends raised the $4 million endowment, which was matched by $6 million in federal funds for rehabilitation projects.

“The partnership between this park and its Friends group is innovative, effective and exemplary,” said Acadia Superintendent Paul Haertel in a statement Wednesday. “The endowment will keep on giving beyond our lifetimes.”

A volunteer development committee invested the endowment money, acting on the advice of financial professionals, and began donating returns to the park almost immediately, Olson said.

In 1995, the endowment gave $100,000 to fund carriage road maintenance. The annual grant has incrementally grown as the endowment’s value has increased, and the donation for 2001 is expected to reach a high of $220,000, he said.

“It was accumulating during the gangbuster time for the market,” Olson said.

In the past six years, the Friends organization has donated the equivalent of 20 percent of the endowment’s current value, “and we have increased the principal by a million dollars to boot,” said development chairman Charles R. Tyson Jr. in a statement released Wednesday.

Each year, the group calculates the endowment’s average value over the previous four quarters. Four percent of that figure is donated to the park, while 1 percent is moved to Friends accounts to cover operational costs, Olson said.

The annual grants are sufficient for salaries and equipment for a six-person maintenance crew, which labors through the spring, summer and fall to keep the roads from deteriorating, said Jim Vekasi, chief of maintenance at Acadia.

Simple projects done by volunteers, such as the trimming of vegetation, also go a long way toward protecting the resource from runoff, he said.

But the park’s spending on carriage road rehabilitation and maintenance still often equals or exceeds the Friends’ contribution. “While the crew is wonderful, we do need to add to it to complete the job,” Vekasi said.

Last year, the Friends contributed $215,000 for carriage road work while Acadia kicked in $312,000 from user fees and other sources of park income, Vekasi said.

Large projects, such as rehabilitation of bridges, stone walls and ditches, require more time and equipment than the endowment-funded crew can manage. But park administrators have attempted to budget the major projects – for example, a $3.4 million initiative to repair 17 bridges in 2004 – so endowment funds may be spent as they were intended: for day-to-day care.

“It’s a big job, but when you put the pieces together, there’s a chance that we can do it,” Vekasi said of the perpetual maintenance.

Recent instability in U.S. financial markets has caused slight losses to the Friends’ many endowment accounts, however. If dismal economic forecasts are realized, the group may be forced to reduce its yearly grants in order to protect the core endowment, Olson said.

Friends see 4 percent as an upper limit for the yearly grant, he said. “If things went to hell in a handbasket, we could go to the park and offer a lower percentage,” Olson said.

But the yearly grants should at the very least be able to match inflation rates.

“Because of the nature of our investment policy, we feel protected from the ups and downs,” Olson said.

The endowment will achieve its promise of perpetual maintenance, he said. “We feel pretty confident in our ability to do this forever.”