Looks Bad For Viney And Possibly A Few Others.

[Bill Babler]

Attended the meeting today at Viney Creek with about 30 others and listened to the Corps Brass speak on the subject.

Learned a few things I should have known. 1st. is that the Corp of Engineers parks on Table Rock operate at a loss. and any and all revenue from the parks does not go into maintenance or any of the day to day operation, but goes into the General Fund.

They operate the recreational parks on a yearly budget. That budget for the Table Rocks 14 parks dropped from 3.2 million in 2013 to 2.7 for this year of 2014.

The way they determine who stays open and who closes are judged by the number of persons using the locations, and they say Viney and LongCreek have the lowest. LongCreek has some private interest wanting to rent the faculity, and I can only guess it is Johnny Morris and Bass Pro as they would have the most interest.

My concern is the lack of any launching faculities on the North East side of the lake. They had some kind of a lame map of several ramps in the back of Owl Creek and at Emerald Beach, completely thru the subdivision, as public launches.

A very nice lady commented that the entire Emerald Beach area was maintained by land owners and that the excess traffic thru that area would have a very detrimental effect on the roads and also on safety. Pretty much fell on deft ears, as they said that all these ramps that the subdivisions had were approved by the corps to be public and that is that.

Said about the only way to change things was to write your congressman and get their appropriation upped enough to maintain the parks that we have.

Asking to keep the ramps open also did not fly as they said the parks would be trashed and the roads would still need mowded. They pretty much had an answer for everything, weather it was to answer the question, or to just say why they could not. Really nothing on how they could, just why they couldn't.

When asked if the park could be leased by a private entitity their answer was it would have to go thru the land purchase and sales department to see if it were profitable. and it would have to go out on bids.

All of a sudden making a profit was important. The other guys that were there can add the way they heard it, but it deoes not look very good at this point to me.

[Jerry Rapp]

and how much has been spent on ObamaCare? On Food Stamps, etc. Common sense must prevail. We paid for those ramps/access areas with out tax dollars.

[merc1997 Bo]

There in a nut shell is the entire problem. The corps has forgotten who actually pays their wages. Our entire government has forgotten that fact. They boss us around, and it should be the other way. I guess we all need to keep our congressmen's phone ringing off the wall. Of course, we can do just as we did over at H highway, and that is to just keep using the ramps. As far as I know private money paved H highway. Emerald Beach residents, unless you want an unwanted brigade of boats rolling down to your ramp, you better get to squawking. There are only so many parking spots on your ramp, and the rest will start parking in yards.

Bo

[Quillback]

This is BS. It's public land, if the Corps folks lack the imagination and creativity to figure out a way to keep things open, they should stay the heck out of the way and let us use OUR land. There's no reason to close the ramps, if the grass on the side of the road isn't mowed, so what?

[dtrs5kprs]

Sounds like the administration attempting to leverage our willingness to accept tax hikes.

Interesting answer about Emerald Beach and others. Have been in on a few conversations (as a listener) with folks about who does and does not have control of those kinds of ramps. My gut feeling of what is right is that if it is on a resort property, or in a yard, they in effect own and control it, even if below the take line, but that might not be the case based on that answer. Subdivision folks won't like it, but if that ramp is where the public road ends, and not in a yard, it probably should be considered a secondary public ramp.

[Champ188]

Bo had it right last week. Truck + chain = moved rock and open ramp.

[rps]

Congress, not the White House, determines the amount to be spent, and when all amounts must first past muster with some "cut the funds" politico, the funds are not spent. Really people, wake up. You have empowered idiots.

[Pepe]

Wow. I bet they never even discussed cutting their own overhead. I have extensive experience with USACE and find them, overall, to have an intensely arrogant culture.

We all have have people we need to serve. It is a shame many of those in government are only interested in serving their own interest.

[fishingaddiction]

Bo had it right last week. Truck + chain = moved rock and open ramp.

I agree with this 100%. Did they say when the projected closure would be?

[fishinwrench]

Scoot any barricades aside and use the stupid ramp. Don't leave any messes. And spend a few bucks in the little store nearby when you can.