Annual resident park entrance pass

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Feb-25-06 AT 04:25PM (EST)[/font][p]No I am not saying that we should not have to pay. What I am saying is that we should only have to pay the the bare minimum without anything extra to provide the budget to give us the service. More and better service require more payment sure.

I don't fish lakes that have entrance fees very much these days. I found some lakes that are within 10 min of my house and I save money on gas by fishing them these days. These are state lakes but there is no charge to lauch or visit the lake. Our tax dollars funds these lakes.

I fish the state fish and recreational lakes that are free. I'll bet that more peole start fishing them in the future too.

I pay my taxes and every time I buy a fishing license or register my boat I support the DNR here in IN. I do my fair share and I am not asking for a free lunch.

Is this the same thing that is in this link below?

[url]http://www.ai.org/dnr/parklake/publications/Lake%20Permit%20FAQ%2012_05.pdf[/url]



Regards,

Moose1am

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Feb-26-06 AT 08:49AM (EST)[/font][p][font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Feb-26-06 AT 08:43*AM (EST)[/font]

Moose1am- I realize that the majority of people who like the outdoors, hunting and fishing, are pretty solid citizens and don’t really want or expect that free lunch. But having been involved in these issues now for almost 34 years, I can tell you that most of them also have no idea of how all those favorite places came to be, or how they stay favorite places. In your post for example, you made the statement that you felt sportsmen should only pay the bare minimum for the service you receive. I obviously agree with that; but we may disagree on what the bare minimum is.

This thread began because several people here seem to be bent out of shape over one of IDNR’s fees that is raising from $24 to $36. Now that may or may not be too low or too high or about right. I don’t have nearly enough information about what costs that fee is supposed to be covering. But the people who are saying it is too high don’t have any information either, other than that it “seems” to high. I’m sure when it is all said and done we’d all rather that DNR make sound, reasonable business smart decisions about how to manage our various resources, rather than resort to voodoo, tarot cards or just hunches. I dare say that if they were to set the fee rates by asking everyone what they wanted to pay, they’d be out of business in a year or two.

That bare minimum you are willing to pay has to include the direct cost of the service you receive, the paper in the restroom near the ramp, the cost of someone to clean that restroom, the cost of the secretary that keeps track of the wages of the person who cleans the restroom, the blacktop road on the way into the restroom and ramp, the water and sewer bill for that restroom, the electricity for the light you want to help load your boat after dark, and on and on and on. And 100% of the infrastructure in all those public properties you visit will have to be replaced, remodeled, or refurbished every 10 or 20 years. That cost is also part of the bare minimum in a responsible management plan.

There is no free lunch. Period. Those stories about how it is free to get into a park in Ohio is a misperception. If you get in without paying it’s only because someone else was forced to pay those costs for you. That shouldn't make any of us proud. Taxes are not the state’s money. That is our money that the state decides how we are going to spend. If you get a free lunch it can only be at someone else’s expense, and if a person doesn’t understand that they can’t really expect to be listened to very much when they talk about what the “gumit” should do to make fishing better or cheaper or easier.

I’m sure this is going to tick some of the guys here off and cause more comments about the Mike Axsom show, etc., but it really gets old listening to people rant and run down some of the very best, most dedicated people I know, who work in resource management; when the complainers really don’t have any answers either. As someone smarter than I once said, “Any damned fool can be against something. What are you FOR?”

Why dont we get the sales tax on the boats,tackle,bait,etc. to go towards the dnr?These are all things used for the recreation.It should go back into it and that would lower fees for everyone who spends the money to do these things.

I don't like paying higher fees any more than anyboby else. But one has to look at the big picture. Fishing (and any other outdoor activity) is strictly recreation for 99% of us. Nobody is going to starve if they can't fish or get that deer. If you compare the annual cost of admission (park entrance and lake fee $56.00)) to other forms of recreation, it is still cheap. Heck, it cost my wife, son, and myself, $27.00 to get into the movies the other night. Look at the cost of Pro-sports tickets, concert tickets, race tickets, etc. And in this case, like Slowretrieve said, the more you go, the less it is per trip. The increasing costs of doing business affects the state just like it affects us on a personal level. Therefore, the state has to offset those costs by increasing fees in order to maintain the same level of service. I'm going fishing, and not gripe about the cost.

YAZ- Thanks for jumping in. It's nice to see someone speak up that really gets it.

I don't know why we don't do that. Probably because those dollars are already committed somewhere else and moving them would cause some else's ox to be gored. The idea is a good one though and has a lot of precedent elsewhere; although it normally works as a form of excise tax rather than a sales tax. The best example might be the Pittman-Robertson Act which was a sportsman initiated bit of federal legislation several decades back. P-R places an excise tax on most firearms, ammunition and archery equipment some in America. The tax is actually placed on the items at the manufacturing level, and passed on in the purchase price. If you ever bought a box of .22 cartridges, or a new bow, or a shotgun, you paid that tax and probably didn’t even know it. P-R funds are distributed by the federal government back out to the states, and are the revenue source for a great many state wildlife management programs, including the hunters education program. This came about because responsible sportsmen in our fathers’ and grandfathers’ generations were determined to make sure the outdoor heritage did not fade away from our penny pinching human nature. It is my belief that some of those fee increases that drive some sportsmen nuts today are also responsible and necessary for the future of the pursuits we all love.

There is an excise tax on fishing equipment, gas, and other fishing supplies, all this money goes to fishery restoration. It is called the Dingle-Johnson Act.

I think that most people don't mind paying the entrance fees to get into the parks or resivors. My biggest concern is camping fees. Particular this new reservation system. For every reservation that is made a company in Maryland gets 4 dollars off of the top of the camping fees. so if it costs 25 dollars to camp a nite, the state is only getting back 21 dollars if a reservation is made.

Before the reservation system, say at summit lake people would pay from wednsday to sunday so they could have a spot for the weekend. this would be for 15 dollars a nite. 60$

Now with the prices raised you can rent for the weekend for (last year)46$ and the campground sits vacant all week for the most part.

This also cuts down on say Retired RV Club members who like to rent 10-15 sites for a week. Now they only stay for 2 or 3 days.

I believe Missouri has a quarter % sales tax that funds either their DNR or their State Parks. I'm not sure which it is. This was voted on by a referendum. The only problem with this is whether or not the powers to be can keep their fingers off the money. I have no problems if professionals manage a certain fund and determines what is spent and where it is spent. But this never happens. I think that if money goes into a fund and is only used for that purpose then you might not have a problem when these funds are raided to shore up a budget or something else.

catfish

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON Feb-27-06 AT 07:59AM (EST)[/font][p]The Dingle-Johnson Act, also called the Sport Fish Restoration Act, is a very simlar program to Pittman-Robertson, and has been a major funding source for fisheries work since 1950. An amendment to D0-J in the mid-1980’s, also added a small portion of the federal fuel tax to the same fund, which has been a major factor in state agencies being able to acquire and develop public fishing access sites. Modern fish and wildlife management would be very different without all these plans; and we’d all be paying much, much more for licenses, gate and launch fees, etc. This all goes back to the argument about what really is the bare minimum that is the right amount for those fees to be. That figure is a great deal higher than most of us ever realize.

As for the idea of funds getting siphoned off before they get to the projects for which the money was intended, sadly that does happen way too much in our government. But it has been my observation over the years that it happens far less in special funds set up for parks and recreation and natural resource work. I know that the Indiana DNR fisheries staff is very much tuned to the interests of anglers; from which their funding is derived. At the county owned facility where I work, our local agency owns and operates the lake and park facilities. The state, realizing that such a lare body of water provides a great opportunity for public fishing, provides fisheries management expertise for the lake. This is a sometimes strained relationship, in that our local Board tends to view those visiting anglers like outsiders that could be charged more for access. But the DNR folks keep a close eye of the rates that are charged for boating fees and park entrance fees. They always make know their intent that if those fees get higher than what seems to be the average in the region, such as on the state reservoirs, they will withdraw the fisheries management support. Their stance on this is based on the fact that some of the money they use in that management comes from license sales, and that licensed anglers deserve not to be plucked like chickens. I happen to agree with IDNR on this and we have managed to get along quire well. Some of the lakes that people on this board complain about having high fees no longer or never have received fisheries services from IDNR, so someone is looking out for you there. Some of you guys should thank them sometime instead of knocking them.

Finally, and I’m going to back out of this thread and get back to work, here’s a humorous, but mabe pretty true twist on an old saying that I ran across recently.

“If you give a man a fish, you will feed him for a day; but if you teach him how to fish he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.”