I must agree with the other posters, this is not right. On another subject I recently heard a person say "It is real hard to march to the drummer when the drummer don't know how to drum", and I find that true here.
On the State Parks subject the State runs off a lot of volunteers. For several years a group of 8 or 9 people tried very hard to start and maintain a Friends of Lake Wapello group. The IDNR and some other State agencies increased regulations and insurance requirements to the point where we just could not function. We would hold a couple of fund raisers every year, a pancake breakfast on the free camping weekend and a soup supper and haunted trail at Halloween time, all in the Park with volunteers. All the funds went to purchase equipment for the Park, such as a new pole saw, and fire rings, and beverage can cages, and we hopped to build a fish cleaning station. The State made us obtain outside insurance for these events and eventually the insurance premiums were as much or more money than we took in, so what was the point? I also hosted a Buck Skinner Rendezvous for 10 years at the Park and turned over any profits in the form of buying feed for the Swan program that they were running then. The same thing happened, the required insurance made it unworkable. All of these events brought several thousand people to the Park who might not have other wise been there and at that point the Parks managers were trying to find ways to increase Park visitors. I mowed grass and trimmed weeds in the area of our events and cleaned up after wards but then it got to where I couldn't even do that because of the liabilities involved, so I quite. I know that the DNR personal running the Park welcomed any and all help and they became friends over the years, but they could only do what the higher ups would let them do, which wasn't enough.:thrwrck:
I would support some kind of user fee or volunteer work in lieu of for the State Parks but am not sure how to do it equitable, especially with some of the lower income families who use the parks for family entertainment. I know that the last time a fee was tried that Park usage fell dramatically and there were many complaints. Two years later the fee was dropped and more people started using the Parks more.
We definitely got to fight this one. Good post
