Just as the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore budget was about to break, it grew.

A final 2008 budget recently signed by President George W. Bush provides the Lakeshore with a nearly 14 percent increase in base spending, according to assistant superintendent Tom Ulrich.

The Lakeshore budget, which guides spending in a fiscal year that actually started on Oct. 1, 2007, will increase from $3.6 million to $4.1 million, Ulrich said. The wave of new federal money is a godsend considering that the 2002 Lakeshore budget was $3.4 million, and increased just 5.9 percent over the next five years.

“We’ve done well through the years on (grants) we’ve competed for,” said Ulrich. “But the thing that keeps the bathrooms clean and the kids’ programs going . . . that base funding has been what we’ve been lacking.”

The surge in funding was included in Bush’s budget proposal of almost a year ago as part of a National Centennial Initiative in anticipation of the National Park Service’s 100th birthday. The Park Service was created by an act signed by President Woodrow Wilson on August 25, 1916. Yellowstone National Park was established by an act signed by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, l872, as the nation’s first national park.

Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore users will notice more personnel cleaning the bathrooms and providing interpretation programs starting this summer. The 2008 budget provides for:

• Some $244,000 to create and fill new full-time positions. While law enforcement — deputized park rangers — will get a “good chunk” of the funding, it will not be alone. “Every division will benefit from it,” said Ulrich. The park’s bountiful resources will also benefit with the hiring of biology technicians who will help control invasive species and protect the piping plover, among other resource-driven missions.

• Another $176,000 was provided to fund seasonal positions in a wide range of fields, including maintenance, interpretation and law enforcement, Ulrich said. He estimated that 10 positions could be created.

• Sleeping Bear Dunes was aided by the donation of 30,000 volunteer hours in 2007. “That’s a substantial amount compared to other parks,” said Ulrich.

The high volunteer level was used to leverage funding for a new “VIP” coordinator — standing for Volunteer In Parks. “Now we’ll have a more cohesive program, which the volunteers deserve,” said Ulrich.

Park users will also notice several projects underway this year, including:

• Parking lots at the Maritime Museum in Glen Haven, Loon Lake in Benzie County and employee housing at the former Empire air base will be repaved.

• Roofs will be rebuilt on the farmhouse and outbuildings at the Dechow farmstead on the east side of M-22 at the corner of Port Oneida Road.

• Work to clear farm fields of encroaching trees and brush in the Port Oneida Historic District will continue this summer, Ulrich said. The Burfield farm along the Lake Michigan shoreline at the end of Port Oneida Road will be targeted. In a related request, the Friends of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore volunteer group is seeking a grant to purchase a tractor and mower to maintain historic farm fields as grasses.

Ulrich also mentioned two projects planned on South Manitou Island by the Manitou Island Memorial Society.

Society members and volunteers led a program to rebuild the foundation on the Haas house last year. They plan to renovate the house’s interior this summer.

The organization also led work to renovate the interior of the South Manitou Island schoolhouse. It has applied for a grant to reroof the schoolhouse.

Ullrich said he has not heard word if grant requests to operate the light at the top of the South Manitou lighthouse and to begin an aggressive campaign to pluck invasive baby’s breath plants from Lakeshore lands have been approved.