The $85 Pass is Here, Be Afraid, Be VERY AFRAID!

[Mark_Husbands]

You mention maintenance, and I say what maintenance? Volunteers already do almost all the trailwork currently

I don't believe this to be true, though its more true with Wilderness trailwork all the time. But it will never be true for the person who operates the grader, plows snow, or the contracter whos hired to rebuild a bridge.

 

This thing will barely cover the cost of enforcement. If you have a popular trailhead on a weekend day in the Summer, and have say 50 cars parked, revenue at best will be $5 (daily fee) x 50 = $250. How much money do you think it costs to hire the FS Ranger, pay for signs, provide the Ranger with a Good Vehicle, provide the Ranger with all the other benefits associated with the job (health / life / disability insurance, retirement plan, etc), not to mention the cost of following up on citations, etc. The cost could easily = $250 if not more. Keep in mind that that revenue would be for a BUSY WEEKEND DAY!

This is a valid crticism and concern about fee prgrams in my opinion. As I said before, if the transaction costs are too high, the fee doesnt make sense. My understanding is that this is a basic problem with the NW Forest Pass.

I dont think all fees are fatally flawed in this way. Its context specific, and has to do with costs of issuance and enforcement.

[Alpinfox]

 

What would Muir and Thoreau think of the US Government charging its citizens to visit public land?

 

If I stay in a campground (bathrooms, tables, firepits, etc) I expect to be charged something for the goods/services I am recieving and which were constructed for my use. However, if I park my car on a road that was probably originally built using federal money to allow private companies to collect resources at below cost (mining, trees, whatever) and then head off into the wilderness, then I don't think I should have to pay anything.

 

I believe that wild lands are sacred - our national church if you will - and I don't think the government should exclude people from those places just because they don't have $85. But more importantly, I just don't think we should put ANY price on wilderness. It should be FREE and open to anyone, anytime... except homosexual couples; they should have to pay.

 

A more eloquent person than myself says:

 

In my view the essence of the Wilderness experience is the chance for solitude, spontaneity, freedom, personal self-discovery, and living unfettered for a few days in a "vestige of primitive America." I believe the framers of the Wilderness Act visualized this all-important psychological component and understood that the mental experience of Wilderness is as important as the physical. Sadly, fees are the antithesis and nemesis of all of the above. One should not attempt to place a price tag on a Wilderness experience – it transcends monetary value and constitutes the birth right of every American. Defeating these fees would be a huge contribution to preserving the core concept of Wilderness.

Edited March 13, 2004 by Alpinfox

[Mark_Husbands]

However, we are still paying taxes, but now its not free. If there is a shortfall in funding it is up to the legislature to gather taxes.

 

I'm not opposed to expanding general fund allocation. it would be fine with me to continue to fund all forest based recreation with general funds, but i would acknowledge it as a windfall, not an entitlement. my take is that some fee applications are an acceptable way to deal with the reality that there is a shortfall and the legislature does not appear to be willing to fix it.

 

Again, we still pay taxes, the politicians have just used the same money that would support the FS and put it toward PORK, because the users will pay.

I dont know, Rod, I think the PORK problem may be separate issue.

 

In effect the users are being taxed double.

Right, and non-users are single taxed.

 

Further, and just as bad, is that it is slowly creeping up to the point where “public lands” (parks are another issue) are becoming for those that can afford the fees. This is beginning to leave out a good portion of the public and is only getting worse. We still pay taxes and now they want user fees also. This is not like a “sin tax.” This is historically non-fee public land with a long history of public use for recreation.

 

i dont buy this. There is no fee ever used or contemplated that adds up to a significant percentage of the cost (individual) of visiting public lands. Low income people are denied access due to cost, but not cost of fees, but cost of gas and other travel expenses. And these groups prefernces may matteemore than cost...studies show that many low income people prefer facilities we associate more with municipal and county park systems.

Climbers and wilderness users are wealthier and better educated than the US average. And they spend enormous amounts on recreation, far in excess of the cost of fees.

I currently buy a $50 Parks pass every year. last year i bought the $35 NW Forest Pass (plus a couple $5 day passes because i forgot my Annual). I'm pretty poor these days(grad student), but even i have to admit i spend a lot more every year on gear, as well as gas, truck, and everything else that adds up during a trip to the mountains. Small fees will not reduce demand for this type of recreation to a meaningful degree.

Personally, I dont like the NWFP because I think the money never went to the areas where the fees were collected.

That's a bad fee.

But not all fees need to be this way.

 

Paying to get into, and use, the Parks is different. You are paying for the facilities. The Parks are financed differently through the Dept. of Interior. This has been the long standing tradition. If you cant afford the parks you can go to the Forests. Oh, no you cant, not anymore.

 

The NPS is in the DOI and USFS in DOA. But both are funded by general fund (among other) appropriations. There is a USFS tradition of free access, but let us consider that the USFS doesnt get the timber receipts it used to. i'm OK with that. But it also means that they cant piggyback recreation on extractive activites anymore. If the USFS is going to put the emphasis I would like on recreation rather than resource extraction, it will need to think more like NPS.

[Mark_Husbands]

remember the $85 pass is not mandatory and is not some minimum fee to access public lands. its just a package deal for places with exisitng fees that would add up to more than $85 if you took enough trips. you can be a discriminating shopper.

also, many Parks are designated wilderness (Rainier = 97%). we've paid fees for years to go to those places.

[Rodchester]

my take is that some fee applications are an acceptable way to deal with the reality that there is a shortfall and the legislature does not appear to be willing to fix it.

 

But the Fee Demo program was done when there was a surplus? Surplus. So what shortfall were they dealing with? Hmmmm.....

 

[mattp]

There is no fee ever used or contemplated that adds up to a significant percentage of the cost (individual) of visiting public lands.

 

If you want to go backpacking in Leavenworth for the weekend with two parents and two kids (one night out), and if you drive over the night before and stay in a campground so you can get an early start, and if you pay for trailhead parking and the wilderness permit, and if you do all of this with one car, it will come to something like $45.00.

[Mark_Husbands]

a shortfall in the funds provided for resource management, not fund availability.

[Mark_Husbands]

So in this example the fee is $5 for parking. i dont know about Wilderness permit fees, i think the "fee" is for reservation? so thats 11% of out of pocket expenses. now consider the money the family of four spent on equipment and the service life of the equipment. It adds up a lot. But even ignoring this that family spent less than a trip to a two hour movie. even with a fee, public lands are an incredible recreation value.

The fees we might pay add up to a small percent of what we pay to be wilderness recreationists. Whether you like or hate fees, prefer funding through taxes or fees, i think it is still not true that such small fees create an meaningful economic barrier for those desiring wilderness recreation.

[willstrickland]

Hey Mark, how would you like it if the guv-mint put a pay stall around the toilet in your house and charged you a quarter everytime you wanna shit?

 

Now you already own this toilet, it's in your house. We know you didn't request this, But that's OK because they are providing you with the "service" of a privacy screening. Furthermore, because you already spend $5 for a roll of Charmin, and $15 in magazines to read on the shitter, the $0.25 is a small percentage of your shit-related expenses, so no big deal. Oh, and BTW, all the loggers and miners in the area will be using the shitter in your house free of charge.

[mattp]

I'm just saying that these fees add up. In my opinion, $45.00 is not trivial and it may indeed pose a real barrier in some cases.

 

My main objections to the program lie elsewhere, as you point out.

[Mark_Husbands]

i should have been more cautious with my use of the term "significant". let's substitute large percentage or big part of the cost for the sake of discussion.

[Mark_Husbands]

worthless analogy.

next...

[Mark_Husbands]

Anyway,

I think there's some good arguments that have been made against fees:

1) there are many tax funded programs that benefit select groups and no fee is levied against those groups. On the other hand, there are also many tax funded programs that are supplemented by user or service recipient fees.

2) general funds are the appropriate way to fund public lands because of the essential characteristic of public lands, especially Wilderness, as free, unconfined places.

3) an argument i've made myself, that there isnt a geat track record for fee programs by the agency in questio, USFS. On the other hand, NPS has been charging fees for Park access for years, people seem to believe the fee is worth it, and i havent seen any in this forum suggest free access to Parks is workable. The idea that Forests create a lower cost alternative to Parks is pretty good.

 

i'm still not swayed by the "barrier to the poor" argument. Wilderness users arent poor, preferences seem to matter as much as cost barriers, and the barriers that do exist are primarily from costs apart from fees.

 

i orignally posted to object to the characterization of the $85 Golden eagle upgrade as a new fee, which it is not.

 

i also think that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with user fees for recreation...they have been around, they will be around, and if they are applied to a new area,let us insure that the revenues are used for those locations where they are collected. that was always my point, not to defend the Northwest Forest Pass, but to say that well structured user fees can lead to better management.

[mtn_mouse]

$85 vs. $160

 

NPS $50

NW forest pass $30

State parks $50

Oregon state parks $30

[blue_morph]

First of all I would like to request that the moderator please post some spray, swearing and meaningless catcalling, otherwise the fine reputation this website has worked so hard to develop is likely to be tarnished.

 

i'm still not swayed by the "barrier to the poor" argument. Wilderness users arent poor, preferences seem to matter as much as cost barriers, and the barriers that do exist are primarily from costs apart from fees.

Not everyone who uses our public lands is a bulletin boardsurfing, $1500 gear / year buying REI yuppy (yes I'm making fun of myself). The consequences of this mindset extend to the casual user. What about the family who goes on a once every year or two mini-road trip over Snoqualmie pass and wants to run his kids legs up the PCT for 15 minutes? The fee creates a divide, or a fence if you will, which will definitely discourage casual use. While you may think that $5 is not much for a day, it will discourage that family from pulling over and checking it out.

 

I can hear it now. "Let's pull over and check out the PCT, I've heard you can hike up it a ways right off the highway here and we can stretch the kids legs out too. (At the TH)Oh the sign says we need some kind of pass, something about a forest office or something, where do I buy this? Oh, honey, they want us to go across the highway and pay $5, lets just stop at the outlet mall in North Bend instead"

 

Ok its a dramatization but you know its true and the trails and forests / deserts wherever are theirs as much as they belong to outdoor junkies who follow access issues and buy trail passes at REI.

The creation of parking fees creates an undeniable fence which will separate the casual user from the wilderness fanatic(us). I would guess that the "casual user" group would have more people of low income than the fanatics.

[scott_harpell]

I would guess that the "casual user" group would have more people of low income than the fanatics.

 

I doubt that. Go to REI and tell me what types of people are chillin there. All the outdoor fanatics I know are broke ass trout bums, dirt bag climbers and the occasional person that i have met on this board who is middle/upper-middle class.

[cj001f]

I doubt that. Go to REI and tell me what types of people are chillin there. All the outdoor fanatics I know are broke ass trout bums, dirt bag climbers and the occasional person that i have met on this board who is middle/upper-middle class.

Get out more. There's a reason Bi-Mart has an "outdoor" section. There are plenty of lower-income users of wildlands, particularly in the Inter-mountain west (WY, MT, ID, etc.) Why do you think Larry Craig (R-ID) was opposed? In a state that's 62% owned by the government and 43rd in disposable income?

[nonanon]

The FDP was originally pitched as a way to pay for the USFS’s maintenance “back-log.” The funds were supposed to stay at the point of purchase. (Remember the 80% hype?) So say I buy this $85 pass and then spend every weekend climbing at Beacon Rock SP. Think either Beacon Rock or the Wa. State Parks will get my $68? Guess again. Even if Beacon Rock did get my money, (which they won’t) wtf did they do to deserve it? Is the WSP system replacing rap anchors now? The FDP isn’t a reasonable funding alternative. It’s a rip-off.

[scott_harpell]

I doubt that. Go to REI and tell me what types of people are chillin there. All the outdoor fanatics I know are broke ass trout bums, dirt bag climbers and the occasional person that i have met on this board who is middle/upper-middle class.

Get out more. There's a reason Bi-Mart has an "outdoor" section. There are plenty of lower-income users of wildlands, particularly in the Inter-mountain west (WY, MT, ID, etc.) Why do you think Larry Craig (R-ID) was opposed? In a state that's 62% owned by the government and 43rd in disposable income?

 

Mabe we have a different view of fanatics then. To be a fanatic, it is not necessary to buy $5,000 in gear a year. All that is needed is a love of the outdoors no? Mabe if you go to smith rocks for your wilderness experiences or the muir hut you will see richies, but the fanatics I see, on a middle of nowhere trout stream aren't exactly looking down through the glass ceiling. Not all outdoor enthusiasts are climbers nor have to fork out $1000's every year to be in the outdoors 75 days a year.

[blue_morph]

When I said "fanatic" I meant anyone who is reading this thread. People who spend every weekend at a TH. People who spend time thinking about this subject, etc. It has nothing to do with $ really. These are the people who will go to the mountains no matter what. Whether they display their Northwest Forest Pass with pride, or they park down the hill a bit in protest. It is the casual user that will be turned away.

 

The fee sucks, period. And its unnecessary. You wouldn't charge for a Library card would you?

[catbirdseat]

I think that blue_morph has made one of the best arguments against user fees. His argument is not that the fees are a barrier to entry to us fanatics, but that it is a barrier to "discovery" by those new and unfamiliar to outdoor recreation. That if it were true would be a real shame.

[mvs]

I agree. Folks like Ira Spring strongly believed that "green-bonding" was the way to get new generations to continue protecting wilderness areas. Busy parents certainly want their kids to experience the woods, but I think the majority of non-fanatic parents can be turned away by hassle and expense.

 

I have seen a family like this at the Ingalls Lake trailhead - they drove away because they didn't have a pass (I advised them to hike, but they were cautious). Disappointing...

[ken4ord]

there are lots of cases of tax revenues going to benefit specific groups. and where the transaction cost for isolating and charging that group is high, there is no justifiable reason to do so. but with many recreation cases, the cost of identifying users and the services they receive is low. it might be a better solution than to let our services and infrastructure deteriorate because the general funds just arent being delivered.

 

I actually think it might be a better idea to let things deteriorate, that was my point on not paying passes more so than wallet protection as you put. The reason I say this is because if we pay this extra user fee and fund the maintenance of parking lots and shitters, then there isn't a problem to be fixed. By accepting to pay to use a public area (in this case parking and shitters) then it opens it up for more services to charge us for. What's next, entrance fees for trails or roads, or use fee for using a picnic areas, or how about charging to maintain a veiw point. By refusing to pay, the decision makers will hopefully be forced to make some type of corrective action for funding these items and will hopefully better budget the funds that are available for maintaining public lands. By refusing to pay for these things, it is a statement that is saying it is not acceptable to charge a user fee and we are not happy with essentially the privatization of our public lands. That statement shouldn't end there though, it should be just the start of letting your elected politicians know that you don't feel it is right targeting a user group for public services and that more reasonable ways of funding these services should be researched.

[catbirdseat]

The thing I worry about is when the off roaders ask for motorcycle trails in the forest and the motorhome crowd asks for larger campgrounds complete with hookups, they'll get it because of their willingness to pay fees at licensing time. They will have the clout and we won't.

[Rodchester]

a shortfall in the funds provided for resource management, not fund availability.

 

What's the difference? The funds were there, but congress choose to not allocate the funds for management because it saw that suckers like you would let them not do their jobs and would pay at the gate so to speak.

 

That has to be the weakest argument I've ever heard. A shortfall in funds provided, but not in funds? Too funny.