Would You Support This Legislation?

[zander]

I doubt the Riverkeeper system would drive our states deeper in debt. Remember that it would be user-fee funded. So thankfully the FED won't have to print up any more money or borrow it from China in order to protect our Ozark rivers. So now that we have done away with that objection, what is a legitimate arguement against protecting our Ozark rivers with a user based fee?

Now I know some of you like to complain about have to pay for something like this. How much did you spend on your last fishing rod? Answer: likely more than 2-3 times than the proposed cost of this fee. You could have cut yourself a stalk of cane and made your own pole (to save that money), but instead you dedicated your hard earned money toward a product that you felt would enhance your fishing experience. It may stay in your garage most days out of the year. It may get dropped right off the side of your boat into the water (if you have my dad's luck) on its first trip out. The user fee for the Riverkeeper system works all year to enhance your Ozark river experience. It doesn't get lost after it's first use.

What is the argument against this? Why and how in good conscience can you think that our children do not deserve the best that these Ozark rivers can give them? I do not have Al's eloquence, but I think that if we Ozarkians do not value this enough to implement a system like this, as more and more people move in from elsewhere the risks for them grow greater and greater.

These rivers have been my nanny at times. My mom worked the summers at Silver Dollar City and my dad was at work. I was in the feeder creeks of Table Rock chasing darters from stone to stone. They were my teacher. They were my entertainer. Likely many of you can say the same thing. We are disagreeing over a $3 proposed user fee to fund without going deeper in debt a system which will allow local agencies to give more of their attention to these rarer and weakened rivers. Go back and read some of Al's posts. He lays it out there very well.

[tjulianc]

Our goverment is broke and so are many states, They do not know how to allocate money to where it needs to be. I know i wouldnt be buying fancy office furniture when my clients are not getting the work done. We are not only the employers ( suppose to be anyway ) but the clients of those whom we put at task of protecting out resources. The DNR's must and should address the protection of them long before buying furniture. I can go to a yard sale and for a fraction of the cost of new buy a desk and chair. Why cant they?

Wait a minute. How do you know its "fancy" office furniture? And how do you know they aren't getting their work done at the Jonesboro office?

You can't spend all the money allocated to the AGFC just to buy guns and badges to catch the bad people breaking the law. More than likely this is money well spent, and if its not, please demonstrate it with facts, not made up fancy modifiers. And you want people to sit and work in some broke down POS chair that won't last a minute bought at a garage sale. Talk about wasting money....

In no way does the AGFC buying office furniture, moving it, and renting a place for some of their employees to do their work in the meantime, delineate what the AGFC is.

[Feathers and Fins]

Wait a minute. How do you know its "fancy" office furniture? And how do you know they aren't getting their work done at the Jonesboro office?

You can't spend all the money allocated to the AGFC just to buy guns and badges to catch the bad people breaking the law. More than likely this is money well spent, and if its not, please demonstrate it with facts, not made up fancy modifiers. And you want people to sit and work in some broke down POS chair that won't last a minute bought at a garage sale. Talk about wasting money....

In no way does the AGFC buying office furniture, moving it, and renting a place for some of their employees to do their work in the meantime, delineate what the AGFC is.

Because I know when our company was in finacial hard times we made do with stuff that worked, it may not have been pretty or fancy or even current but it worked. I know when my family was facing hard times we didnt spend money on new we used what we had. Seen way to many goverment offices with furniture much nicer than many home offices. If a person cant afford it in their house why should our goverment be better off than we are at home? You go to work to get a job done not live in luxury doing it.

[tjulianc]

Because I know when our company was in finacial hard times we made do with stuff that worked, it may not have been pretty or fancy or even current but it worked. I know when my family was facing hard times we didnt spend money on new we used what we had. Seen way to many goverment offices with furniture much nicer than many home offices. If a person cant afford it in their house why should our goverment be better off than we are at home? You go to work to get a job done not live in luxury doing it.

Fair enough. My point is, lets at least examine something before we condemn it.

And I understand where you are coming from. I rarely buy anything new, except soft plastic lures, these days.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I wouldn't mind paying a $3, but unfortunately these kinds of fees have a problem of getting dissolved in administration, equipment and eventually some rep sees a need elsewhere. I'm often amazed that the 1/8 MDC tax is still going, but I think the only reason it is still alive is that fact it isn't permanent.

I'm a believer in the word getting out and I also believe the patrol could find bodies, recruits, instructors, desk drivers, etc to set up sting operations on the rivers that have notable problems. It's only weekends and more likely Saturdays and holidays during warm weather that could use some attention. Once the troublesome ones realize they might actually get caught and fined, or worse, and that they will get no warning hopefully they'll find some other place to party.

Riverkeepers, river patrols etc are 12 month positions to address a 4 or 5 month, 8 or less days a week problem.

Couldn't you call The Stream Teams riverkeepers?

[Al Agnew]

Well I could say arguing that the government needs to spend more money will solve this and every other problem isn't getting us anywhere either. Sorry, but I can't see what is wrong with asking government to properly allocate the money it has to address issues such as drunken river canoers. Just because YOU think it's a good idea doesn't mean it is. Our nation and many of the states are burdened with huge debt because thoughtless people like YOU think the answer to every problem is to throw money at it. That attitude isn't getting us anywhere except deeper in debt.

Wait a minute. I just told you why I don't think "asking government to properly allocate the money it has" will work. What got us into the mess we're in is not simply people throwing money at problems, but way too many constituency groups sucking off money that we willy nilly toss into the whole government pot through our income, sales, and property taxes. I would suggest that it's a far different thing to have what amounts to a user fee that is paid by the people who use the resource and which goes specifically and entirely to protecting that resource. You want to make AFGC spend money more wisely? Get in line, because there are a whole bunch of other people who have totally different priorities than you do who want them to spend it on what THEY think is wiser. So you're battling against a whole lot of other people for money that basically AGFC can spend however the heck they want. But in this case, you would be paying a small amount of money for a specific set of purposes, and if it was set up right, it would also mean that those other agencies are going to be spending a little more money and manpower on that same set of purposes as well. Because if they don't spend enough time and effort on it now to even properly identify the problems, having somebody independent of their agency pointing out the problems and asking (demanding) help in taking care of them should mean that they have a better justification for spending more of their resources on it.

And here's the kicker, as was pointed out a couple of times above. This is not throwing money the government doesn't have at a problem. This program would have to pay for itself as well as be funded entirely by the people who use the resource. If you want to fight the battle that our government is wasting money and could be getting a lot more bang for the buck, I"ll be right behind you, so please don't characterize me as being for more taxes, more programs, and more debt. I'm for people paying their own way, people paying for the things they use, and government being responsible for what needs to be done. I think this idea could accomplish those things, without adding to state fiscal problems, and it's imminently fair because the people benefiting from it would be the only people paying for it.

Finally, if you are going to accuse "people like me" of being the cause of the massive debt and fiscal problems our federal government and our states have, you oughta have a better example of evidence for that than this idea. How about I don't characterize you as a knee jerk anti-tax anti-government far right winger, and you don't characterize me as a typical tax and spend big brother nanny state far left winger?

[Al Agnew]

I wouldn't mind paying a $3, but unfortunately these kinds of fees have a problem of getting dissolved in administration, equipment and eventually some rep sees a need elsewhere. I'm often amazed that the 1/8 MDC tax is still going, but I think the only reason it is still alive is that fact it isn't permanent.

I'm a believer in the word getting out and I also believe the patrol could find bodies, recruits, instructors, desk drivers, etc to set up sting operations on the rivers that have notable problems. It's only weekends and more likely Saturdays and holidays during warm weather that could use some attention. Once the troublesome ones realize they might actually get caught and fined, or worse, and that they will get no warning hopefully they'll find some other place to party.

Riverkeepers, river patrols etc are 12 month positions to address a 4 or 5 month, 8 or less days a week problem.

Couldn't you call The Stream Teams riverkeepers?

I know where you're coming from, Wayne. Which is why if something like this is ever made into law, it will have to be pretty ironclad that the legislature keeps their hands off the money and that administration is held down as much as possible. I'm not naive enough to believe that it could just come into being and work perfectly forever. And as far as the money getting drained in administration and equipment, maybe it would. Maybe there's no way of having a government agency where that doesn't happen. But dang it, if the people appointed as commissioners really want to do the right thing, and if there is true transparency in how the money is spent, then it should work. And what's the alternative? Just throw up our hands and say that no government agency can do a good job so fire them all?

And as I've pointed out before (again and again) this isn't JUST about drunk canoers, or poachers, or meth heads on the river, or illegal and destructive gravel diggers, or some guy that builds a cabin and sneakily dumps his sewage directly into the river instead of building a proper septic system, or some industry that puts in a secret pipe to dump chemicals in, or some unethical waste hauler that does midnight dumping at an access, or some industrial chicken farmer who lets his chicken crap run off into the river...it's about ALL those things. Sure, the drunk river dorks are mostly a problem on warm weather weekends, but that would be far from the only responsibility of a riverkeeper. In the "off season", the riverkeeper would still be looking out for all those other problems, and in addition could be doing outreach programs to work with landowners to improve watershed protections as well as actually working on habitat improvement projects. Like I said, I'm talking about somebody being responsible for all kinds of river protection and river problems....including those which may not even be a problem right now, and maybe won't become a big problem in the future because somebody was really watching and noticed it when it first appeared. Yep, all those things I listed above are some agency's responsibility right now, but they aren't doing a good job of it partly because they don't have enough resources, they have other constituencies clamoring for them to use their resources somewhere else, or they are only looking at their own little fiefdom and not seeing the big picture.

[Chief Grey Bear]

Also, Chief, I'm not saying we need a riverkeeper for each and every little creek. The sensible way to do it would be to figure out how many miles of streams a single riverkeeper can do a good job of patrolling and policing, based partly upon the number of users and the extent of existing problems.

So it will be more for the most popular streams and we all pay whether we float those waters or not????

I am all for cleaning up the waters and I know you really stand behind this. I just think we have bigger fish to fry at this time for the health of our rivers.

[gotmuddy]

So it will be more for the most popular streams and we all pay whether we float those waters or not????

I am all for cleaning up the waters and I know you really stand behind this. I just think we have bigger fish to fry at this time for the health of our rivers.

Sounds like New york state. Everyone in the state pays taxes to prop up New york city. No thank you

[Feathers and Fins]

After re-reading this thread the only viable option I see that may have a chance is heavily complaining to the local politicians to force some type of enforcement of the current laws on the books and also the least expensive option and most fair option. There are just to many user groups from weekenders to fishermen to land owners and business owners to think a fee would stand a chance and if it did more than likely the administrative side of it would eat up any type of enforcement.

There are laws on the books that can be enforced to lesson the problems brought up BUT again requires a officer to be present to enforce them. Even at best case scenerio Missouri has a population 2011 est of 6,010,688 lets say 1/2 of them use the lakes rivers and stream and are charged 3$ for a tag rounded 9 million in generated money. You would have to have dedicated offices and staff for them you would need boats cars trucks and so on. 9 million sounds like alot of money but by the time you pay for those offices, staff salary vechicles, maintenance and so on it is not that much money. In personal you would probably need a minimum of 150 people at about 4million in salary so you are left with 6 million, ooppss now you have to buy the cars, trucks, boats, trailors gas. I think you get the idea. More realistically you probably only have a million people and still have the same logisitics and staff requirements.

In complete honesty I have ot go back to we have officers on salary now and they can be used, so why pay for something I am already paying for.

A big part of the problem is Missouri's Lax liquor laws which promotes much of the acts talked about in this thread.