Would You Support This Legislation?

[ness]

If you want to grow old catering to drunk idiots have fun with that.

[ness]

I have said it before and will say it again that I don't (and will never) apologize for my occupation. This is a job like many others, but it is also very rewarding when people you see year after year tell you that this is the trip they look forward to most every summer. This is my 9th year and I get to see kids grow up, go to college and start bringing their own groups who have never been to the river. I have had people say they are going to Hawaii, or Cancun, but nothing compares to coming down to the river with friends year after year. It's easy for others to see the bad side of things, but I see both sides, and the good (at least at my campground) outweighs the bad 99 to 1.

As much as some of you hate to admit it, this is a way for kids to experience the outdoors instead of sitting on the couch all summer. For most city kids this is their only opportunity to go fish, or enjoy "nature" and hopefully it plants a seed that they can pass down to their kids.

You see the drunks, I see the kids with nets catching crawdads, floating down the campground on lifejackets and walking back up to do it again, people laughing around a campfire and catching up on what has been happening in their hectic lives. Sure I deal with my share of drunks, but mostly they just are annoying talking my ear off. I wouldn't be opposed to a small usage fee, but I still think it should be at a local level where there is more control of how it is utilized.

Justin, you're a class act. You're a small businessman raising a family with your hard work and your smarts. You also happen to be doing it in a beautiful place with a lot of time to 'stop and smell the roses', when you're not bustin' your azz keeping the place up. I admire and respect you for all that. We haven't met face-to-face, but I have met Amy a couple times when I was down with Gavin. I think you guys have got it figured out.

I can tell you this -- I bust my hump too, but the results of what I do can only be seen on a computer screen or a report. Over the last couple years, the layering on of new rules from all different sources has made my job even more CYA and less (financially) productive things. I'd venture a guess that the majority of people reading this have pretty unfulfilling jobs they have to do just because. You get to see the results of your work. You're a lucky guy.

[Addicted to Creeks]

Ness you have just become my hero

[Justin Spencer]

That made me laugh out loud. This job is one you better do because you enjoy people and to an extent even the drunks, otherwise you will go crazy and die of exhaustion in the summertime. It still makes me smile as I see all these people coming to my home and camping in 100 degree heat because they enjoy being down here that much. This job is all about attitude and stopping to enjoy your surroundings every once in a while.

Most of the time you won't see water patrol as they are hiding hoping to see people smoking pot. Might be more of a deterrent if they had a few guys more visible. When water patrol merged with the highway patrol they forced the water patrol officers to work the highways in the winter whereas before they put much of their time in in the summer on the lakes and rivers, and used that as comp time in the winter. I think that has hurt their presence this year, while now they might have a saturation weekend with many officers, they might only work a few days a week on the rivers and lakes in the summer.

[Wayne SW/MO]

No way I could go with this considering Family and Friends that are having a hard enough time making ends meet in the Float Business on the Niangua River.

oneshot

Oneshot in my opinion its because there's an outfitter behind every bush. I don't doubt that it is hard, but who are you going to support, the guy with a base up on the highway or one the river, or the one with a gas station or a trailer of canoes in the driveway.

Good grief, even the state is the business of renting canoes!!!

[zander]

I am fortunate enough to have a little land within a couple of miles to Bennett Springs and the Niangua. I have yet to take advantage enough of that as I would like to. That being said, the Niangua is a beautiful river. I understand struggling to make a dollar, but with a better product it may be a little easier. There are thousands of people who do not go out on these rivers because of the crap that goes on out there. Imagine you have to get a cab. You see two: one that is a '92 Buick LeSabre with 2 out of the four hubcabs on it, surrounded by a group of loud drunk twenty somethings or a '12 Chrysler 300 sitting in a nice quiet parking lot. The new cab costs $3 more to use on top of the fare. Which cab do you hire? Which cab driver would you rather be? A lot of a little bit can go a long way. There are many of you who are so cynical and jaded that it will never be "spent right." Well it is a good thing that there are some optimists out there who wonder what might be done to conserve and improve a resource.

I saw the arguement that these rivers are like public sidewalks. Try doing some of the stuff that happens on the river on a public sidewalk and see how fast your name is on a sex offender registry or drunk tank. Don't want to single out the outfitters- fine. Like Al said maybe a small yearly sticker for each floatable watercraft (excluding inflatables or something). The status quo of this is not ok. I do not think limiting numbers of watercraft is a good thing, but we should certainly be doing more to protect the resource. We can't count on local governments. Dallas county can hardly keep their roads up much less anything else.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I might go along if the "tax" was guaranteed to put a LEO on each of the threatened rivers. Clean-up is already being addressed by Stream Teams.

Zander I don't know if you are familiar with the river 30 or 40 years ago, but the difference in the experience then and now doesn't seem to me to allow any other solution then cutting back on the numbers. It's standard on so many rivers and the only reason it isn't here is just another reflection of a DNR that doesn't protect the natural resources and instead is more interested in building resorts for financial gain.

[KCRIVERRAT]

ZACKLEY!

[Al Agnew]

Look, I wouldn't be advocating just throwing money at the problem and seeing if it sticks. Which is why I made sure in my other posts to say that any such new "tax" would have to have an ironclad guarantee that the money goes to where it's supposed to go. Politicians hate earmarked taxes because they can't get their hands on them to divert them to their own pet projects, but that's precisely why I like earmarked taxes, and any "user fee" should absolutely be earmarked to go the protection and maintenance of the resource that is being used.

And I also wouldn't advocate doing such a user fee UNLESS it could be shown that the cost of administering and collecting it wouldn't use up most of the money collected.

But...I get tired of people who use the excuse that the government wastes the money one way or another, so therefore we shouldn't give the government the money. We should be insisting not on less government, but BETTER government. A well thought out user fee with those ironclad guarantees that the money would actually be used for what it was intended would go a long way toward better government. I'm not holding my breath that it will happen, but if we don't try to make it happen it surely won't.

I also, as I said before, would like to see everybody with skin in the game. A small fee for renters, AND a yearly sticker for private watercraft. Since liveries don't KNOW, from one day to the next let alone one year to the next, how many rentals they will have, it wouldn't be very fair to have them pay a set yearly fee based upon number of watercraft they have to rent, which is why their end of things shold be a per person charge.

I totally understand Justin's job satisfaction. I don't begrudge him the money he makes in the least. And I think most livery owners are like him, or at least they start out like him, going into the business because they love the river and want people to enjoy it. But with apologies ahead of time to One Shot, had there been a sane limit to the numbers of rental watercraft on these streams back when they first started getting crowded, his family members either wouldn't have been able to get into the business at this point, or would have gone into it knowing how much money they could make if all went well, and knowing the upper limits of how much competition they'd have. Either way, they might have been better off, and so would the Niangua. At this point, because nobody acted proactively two or three decades ago, any sane limit on rentals will mean the weaker businesses will be big time losers. And given the political climate in this state, I don't see it ever happening, anyway.

But nearly any business model is based upon growth, and when it comes to a finite resource, unlimited growth just doesn't work. Eventually the resource is trashed or the whole industry collapses, or both.

[Feathers and Fins]

Al, I love the resources as a whole besides buying lifetime license in the 4 states I have lived and being a member of conservation groups I also pay my taxes my boat fee’s ACE entry fees and so on. Why should I be asked to do anymore or any of us on here to do anymore in the way of fees?

Look how many people here don’t like the idea and you think when people who do love the resource are against it you will get the ones who are trashing it to agree to it? That pig don’t fly!

Yes our waters need to be taken care of yes I agree it needs to be preemptive instead of reactive, but a tax or user fee is not the answer, not to mention as I said before the enforcement issues. People who live on the river and own the bottom of it at least would be impossible to force on them on their own land a new tax or fee. This thing if not dead from the start would die as soon as the media got hold of it and those people who trash the waters raise all heck!

We already have the clean water act, we have laws against drunken in public and nudity in public and littering, I hear stories about 30 and 40 years ago and how nice it was back then. So what has changed in those years? Find what’s changed and we might be able to come up with common sense solutions.

It is not about just the floats but our lakes as well, all the waters need to be protected! And the problem is present on all of them look at the post about all of them on here. I can tell you most of the problems I see are lack of respect for others and common decency to others.

You can place any tax or user fee on it all you want but until people learn to be decent to others and respectful to others it won’t matter what you do it will still come down to someone enforcing the law! And as I have pointed out before, we already have them on the payroll and we already pay for them! Why should I pay another tax/fee for a service I am already paying for?