NW FOREST PASS

[CraigA]

Bottom line: It cost money to keep up the parking lots, roads, toilets, etc., etc. BUT until they get there f-ing checkbook balanced I DO NOT feel like depositing more money in it. Let's face it, they (politicians) spend and spend and when they run out of money they raise taxes. Cut out the pork fat, get shit down to what is truly needed and start living off what they make; we have to!!!

 

I really wouldn't have a problem with paying $20 or $30 a year IF I knew the money was staying here, was not going to build a "trailer park", and was not going to blaze a new road through the backwoods that I enjoying "getting away" in! But for right now I think the government in general and the NFS waste, I mean WASTE, way too much money.

 

The answer cannot always be "let's raise taxes" and this is just another tax. Not an excise tax, "sin tax", or sales tax, no, they're calling this one a Fee Demo!

 

Craig

[Attitude]

quote:

---

Originally posted by jon:

Jesus christ allsion I don't care about the boats and the bridges it doesn't bother me that when I'm standing by the bridge waiting for it to close at 3pm on a Wednesday because some guy with a 80 foot mast needs to get through, good for him that he can afford a boat that big and go sailing while I'm working. That kind of shit doesn't bother me. I was just using it as an example for my arguement that tax dollars are often allocated towards specific uses that aid only a small fraction of the tax paying population. In the case of Montake bridge there are probably only a handfull of people who own boats that require there being a bridge there, yet it is still there and maintained and tended. If you noticed I also looked at the counter arguement about why 80 foot mast dude wants his tax money so I can get literally a free ride to work everyday while only a small percentage of the public actually uses it. I think I offered a pretty fair analysis.

 

So how does what your trying to say relate to the fee demo arguement?

---

Ummm...

 

Motorists use the bridge. It goes down to allow cars and peds to cross the cut...

[jon]

You know I meant draw bridge don't be an idiot Attitude. The cost difference of building and maintaining a dynamic stucture versus a static one is enormous and has to be burdened by someone. You guys can nit pick my example all you want, I don't care.

 

I'm with Craig, I could care less about the fee, it's the principle behind it, privitization of public lands and the failure of an agency that very well could be self supportive from tax payer money by proper management of it's renewable natural commodity, timber, and other natural resouces like ores.

[Fence_Sitter]

i care about the fee! damn you guys may be rich, but i am a university student and i wish that there was at least ine free and enjoyable activity to do in this country besides masturbating...but alas i am sure that that will be taxed shortly as well... orgasm tax perhaps?

[Retrosaurus]

This is Mrs. R,

 

Here's a Fee Demo Public Response speech from Alasdair Coyne.

 

Public Response to Forest User Fees

National Fee Demo Meeting, Covina, 2.24.99, Alasdair Coyne, KSWC.

 

The successes of the Adventure Pass program are easily recited - repaired facilities, cleared trails, more staff out in the Forests, nearly 200,000 passes sold and about $2.7 million raised over the first two seasons. Nobody objects to this. But this is only the bright side of the program.

The dark side of the Adventure Pass is a timebomb of protest that is very largely of the Forest Service's own making, as I will explain.

In brief, Forest fees are now clearly understood to be the agenda of major corporate recreation interests with their greedy eyes on opportunities to make money from the public's use of its own lands.

The smokescreen has been declining recreation budgets, which are now widely perceived as an orchestrated strategy, as an excuse to start up fee programs.

The Fee Demo Program has not been a Demo at all - the push is clearly to sideline public protest and to make it work at all costs. It has been straightforward for the average American to put together the corporate commercialization agenda and the manner in which fee programs are being implemented full steam ahead, regardless of widespread protest.

The main problem facing you, then, is the public perception that, as fee program staff, you are acting not as public servants, but as corporate lackeys.

Derrick Crandall has been carefully putting together many of the pieces of this commercialization agenda, for the past few decades. But perhaps he should have heeded the July '88 Outdoor Recreation Policy paper from the Domestic Policy Council, which recommended that "the cost of basic access to federal lands should not be included in fees," as that has been, by far, the most unpopular aspect of Forest fee programs.

That this commercialization agenda exists is without question. The Recreation Roundtable claims direct responsibility for Fee Demo. That the ARC represents a membership almost entirely composed of recreation corporations, is a matter of public record. We do not question the ARC's right to lobby Congress for money-making opportunities on our public lands - but we do not believe that this should happen in a vacuum. The cosy Private/Public Ventures, the Cost Share/Challenge agreements - none of these reflect the interests of the majority of Forest visitors who are quite content with a non-commercial Forest.

But, Fee Demo is only the tip of the iceberg. The ARC's current big push is for the Visitor Infrastructure Improvement Act, which they themselves produced. It is designed to enable private enterprise funds, the big money, to construct and maintain major visitor facilities such as marinas and lodges on public lands.

Fee Demo has come as far as it has for two reasons - (1) that nobody representing low-impact Forest visitors was paying enough attention to recreation budgets and issues and (2) that it came out of nowhere, as a stealth rider to the 1996 Appropriations Bill. That Fee Demo came about by rider was the warning shot. That it was further extended by another rider last fall is testament to the care one must take, if one is to engineer the privatization of management control of public lands.

What the Forest Service has been ignoring, at its longterm peril, is the steadily-growing, articulate and very reasonable opposition to Fee Demo. Last fall the Sierra Club took a nationwide position against Fee Demo, against the further commercialization, motorization and privatization of our public lands and in favor of increased recreation budgets. Many, many other organizations will be taking similar positions this year. The Feb. 99 Senate hearings on Fee Demo will likely be the last, at which one or more national opposition voices are absent.

The big question is, how far does the commercialization agenda move forward, now that the spotlight is on it? The spotlight of media and public interest attention is set to change all of the ARC's best-laid plans. Marketing wizard Robert Shulman's efforts notwithstanding, the going will no longer be easy for Fee Demo.

The good part is that a broad debate on the future of Forest recreation is now underway. For too long, this has been taken for granted by the American public. Access to our Forests - what Derrick Crandall regularly describes as a free lunch - has been widely understood as a public service, paid for out of federal tax dollars. Imagine a Forest Service where, once again, recreation dollars from Congress are adequate to the task of maintaining our National Forests' recreation facilities. Where the public conservation and recreation communities, nationwide, act as watchdogs to ensure that the budgets are sufficient to the needs. Where staff like yourselves no longer need to issue parking tickets when you're out in the field. Which Forest Service did you sign up with? Which do you want to see?

In Southern California, the emphasis has been on ignoring the protest and counting the money flow, contrary to the Adventure Pass Orientation Guide's statement that Project success will be determined "by public support for paying a fee to recreate in National Forests," not "by the amount of revenue generated."

No amount of communications plans will make everybody accept the Adventure Pass. It has been a terrible mistake to believe you can somehow sell the public on paying a fee. If you'd been paying attention to the important issues raised by the papers on Alan Watson's website, you could be addressing those issues, but you're not. Surveys of comment cards are meaningless to understand the views of all those protesting fees, who'll never hold a comment card.

While focusing myopically on the sale of thousands of Passes, you've ignored the determined and lasting voices of disagreement. This is important because these are the voices that will shut down Fee Demo. This is exactly how the Forest Service has created Fee Demo opposition - by sidelining it. If the idea was to push Fee Demo down our throats, of course you can't listen to us, because our views get in the way. But the results of seeing report after report that make Fee Demo seem like the only future for Forest recreation, have been the dozens of critical newspaper stories, the thousands of letters to Congress, the public protests and the growing network of Fee Demo opponents around the nation.

In Southern California, for those of you from further afield, one protest group alone has fairly easily persuaded over thirty Adventure Pass vendors to quit selling tickets to public Forests. Congresswoman Capps (D/Santa Barbara) has asked her constituents to stop writing to her, complaining about the Pass. At least four newspapers have taken editorial positions against the Pass. And there is the Bono/Capps bill, introduced by two Southern California Congresswomen who have heard so many constituents complain about the Adventure Pass Program. Still the Forest Service is behaving like an ostrich with its head in the sand. How can you marginalize protest, when elected Representatives have been stirred into action, with now two bills to end Forest fees? And with more to follow?

Yet not a word of this in Forest Service reports. No wonder the protest is getting stronger! Derrick Crandall's July 29, 1998 letter stating ARC's "plan to work with the federal agencies to help identify and eliminate the reasons for strong localized opposition to the program" only makes the opposition work harder. It also makes it impossible to deny the ARC's close involvement with Fee Demo.

The Enterprise Forest's position is that citizen protest is centered around a handful of opponents in Los Padres Forest. This is a highly dangerous claim for the Forest Service to make. It can only serve further to undermine the Forest Service's credibility with regard to the Adventure Pass.

How can you have a Demo program, if only one outcome, permanent fees, is to be permitted? How can you have a Demo program if the voices of major segments of the Forest-visiting American public are prevented from influencing the program? The results of this imbalance, which could truly be devastating to the Forest Service for a much longer timespan than that of Fee Demo, have been to strengthen and unite those user groups opposed to fees. How will the Southern California Forest Supervisor's claims of project success look, when mass protests with TV news cameras visit the trailheads in Southern California this summer, to protest the Adventure Pass? When many thousands more protest letters flow into Congress from around the nation, how can you say the program is successful and well-received? No, the public relations campaign has already slipped beyond your grasp. You can continue the press releases which show how much money is going to Forest facilities, but as long as you sideline the protest, you can never engage it. And it's not going away, it will only get hotter. It may involve ripping up the Adventure Pass program by the roots, in order to begin afresh with a totally new look at the future of orest recreation, one that includes all interested parties, not just the corporate ones. Have you considered what happens to your longterm working relationship with the Amercian public, when you are so blatantly in cahoots with the ARC?

The future of Fee Demo is, of course, in the hands of Congress. I promise you that there will be many thousands of Americans who will fight permanent fees. I believe their campaign will prevail. Isn't it time for you to at least consider, publicly, that Fee Demo may fail and begin to ask what happens next?

This is what democracy is all about.

 

Thanks,

Betty

[Retrosaurus]

This is Mrs. R,

 

 

 

SAY NO TO ‘FEDERAL LANDS RECREATION FEE AUTHORITY ACT ‘ (S2607)

 

RECREATIONAL FEE DEMONSTRATION IS:

 

· UNDEMOCRATIC—SOCIAL INEQUITY--- IF YOU CAN AFFORD TO PAY THEN YOU CAN PLAY. THIS IS A REGRESSIVE TAX THAT TARGETS THE POOR AND WORKING AMERICANS.

· FEE DEMO IS NOT A SOLUTION. IT CREATES MORE EXPLOITATION OF OUR PUBLIC LANDS, EXPANSION, NEW FACILITIES, ETC. ETC. ETC. OUR PUBLIC LANDS BECOME NOT PUBLIC.

· FEE DEMO TARGETS LOW IMPACT USERS: CLIMBERS, HIKERS, CAMPERS, ETC.

· COMMERCIALIZATION. THE FOREST SERVICE RECREATIONAL FEE DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM WAS DEVELOPED IN PARTNERSHIP WITH (ARC) AMERICAN RECREATION COALITION THROUGH A CHALLENGE COST SHARE PARTNERSHIP. WHY SUCH INTEREST FROM CORPORATE AMERICA? ARC’S EFFORTS WILL INCLUDE EXPLANATION OF THE FEE PROGRAM TO RECREATION INDUSTRY AND ENTHUSIASTS, AS WELL AS EVALUATION OF DEMONSTRATION PROJECTS.

 

STOP FEE DEMO AND SAVE OUR PUBLIC LANDS NOW:

Write: Senator Jeff Bingaman, Chair, Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, 364 Dirksen, Washington, D.C. 20510. A brief handwritten letter makes the most impact. Ask him to vote for the Forest Access Immediate Relief Act, H.R. 908, and Forest Tax Relief Act H.R. 1139. ACT NOW!

 

Thanks,

Betty Merriman

[Retrosaurus]

I am proud to pay fees to the forest service so that they can provide sensitivity training because some bulldyke got her feelings hurt while burning up firefighters instead of training them in fire science.

[Guest]

No one enjoys paying the parking permit fee, but for a measely $35.00 it's not worth the time and effort to avoid it.

[Guest]

STFU cowering dog

[ScottP]

quote:

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Originally posted by upperdecker:

No one enjoys paying the parking permit fee, but for a measely $35.00 it's not worth the time and effort to avoid it.

---

It's not about the fee, but what it represents (see Mrs R's highly cogent posts.)

 

Besides, an extra half mile (1/4 mile x 2) per trip is really that much effort? It's 10 to 15 extra minutes added to your day to park outside the fee zone.

[Guest]

Crazy ScotPeter is right. Better to walk a bit farther than suck Larry the Tool's 3 inches.

[Guest]

Shaddup, Wydonsha

 

Page Top Perhaps

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by MF206er:

Shaddup, Wydonsha

---

i sting your ass and genitals!

[Guest]

Yea right Scott P, every trailhead included in the parking fee area has a turnout 1/4 mile away for those who protest the permit.

[Guest]

so find one at 1/3 mile you tool

[allison]

Mitch,

 

That woman is an idiot, but using the term you did is extremely offensive, on par with the 'n' word and the 'c' word. Please consider a different choice of words next time. Thanks.

[Guest]

Hey Wood, You suck my ass and genitalia.

 

What is the "C" word Allusion?

[Retrosaurus]

quote:

---

Originally posted by upperdecker:

No one enjoys paying the parking permit fee, but for a measely $35.00 it's not worth the time and effort to avoid it.

---

For a great many people $35.00 is not a measely amount. For a young family with children just barely making it, or prehaps just barely not making it, they have had their public lands effectively taken away from them, or made a criminal for trying to use them. Is this right? And do you really want to support this theft of land that the FS had been managing in the public trust?

[Retrosaurus]

quote:

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Originally posted by allison:

Mitch,

 

That woman is an idiot, but using the term you did is extremely offensive, on par with the 'n' word and the 'c' word. Please consider a different choice of words next time. Thanks.

---

Allison,

Politcal Correctness is usually no more than a mechanism to obscure the lines between what is right and wrong. Get over it.

[allison]

Sorry, Mitch, it's really offensive. I'm serious.

[ScottP]

quote:

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Originally posted by upperdecker:

Yea right Scott P, every trailhead included in the parking fee area has a turnout 1/4 mile away for those who protest the permit.

---

Perhaps try a more positive attitude.

Most places I go, I can find a way to park out of the fee zone that is pretty darn close. Those I can't, I walk a little further, ride my bike, or take my chances.

[Retrosaurus]

quote:

---

Originally posted by ScottP:

Perhaps try a more positive attitude.

Most places I go, I can find a way to park out of the fee zone that is pretty darn close. Those I can't, I walk a little further, ride my bike, or take my chances.

---

This puts you in the non-voting category. You have not voted for the fee program but have not voted against it either. What if you are in my family's situation: My wife and I work opposite work schedules because we can't afford to pay for day care for out 5-year old. To take him camping we have to take two cars because of the work schedule thing. ($11/car/night.) If I want to take him for a scenic hike it costs $5/visit to a trailhead or $35/year. Should my 5-year old have to walk an extra 1/4-mile? And what about the hassels and inconvenience to use something that is being "managed in the public trust" and is mine to begin with? The forest service does not own the land. It is yours and mine. Do you really want more services provided at the expence of paying for all use? Another paved campsite? A solar powered water pump? More signage to tell you where to play for how many $?

 

I want less services from the FS.

Especially when I have to bend over to get serviced.

[Retrosaurus]

quote:

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Originally posted by allison:

Sorry, Mitch, it's really offensive. I'm serious.

---

What is really offensive is for public dollars to pay for "training" otherwise moral people to be "sensitive" of some queer's degeneracy.

[Fence_Sitter]

bulldyke is not offensive unless you are one...but hey who's gonna admit that?

[Guest]

quote:

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Originally posted by allison:

Mitch,

 

That woman is an idiot, but using the term you did is extremely offensive, on par with the 'n' word and the 'c' word. Please consider a different choice of words next time. Thanks.

---

STFU wench. go regulate the nerds at nwhikers.com and quit trying to moderate this bbs. your shit don't fly here chicka.

 

[ 08-31-2002, 03:43 PM: Message edited by: Heywood Jablowme ]