1st, we appreciate your input and it is not our intent to place burden on anyone including ourselves. I too resent the extra fee concept in this tax environment that we find ourselves in. 2nd, please understand that the Marine committee members are appointed, but basciallywe are "unpaid" volunteers giving up our time to improve our Marine Resources! I am diehard nearly uncontrollableredfish fisherman, another is an inshoreCharter Captain, yet another is a Commercial Captian, etc!
We welcome ideas that will allow us to provide funding formore parking and more boat ramps so that as time passes and our children grow, they too can enjoy our waterways with limited restrictions.
In order to understand,we need to separate County, State, Federal. We can only be concernd about county funding, because IF a piece of property comes up for sale that can be useful forwaterway access, we need to be ready to act quickly; that requires money or an income stream to repay a bond. I have been working on this fornearly 3years. With the exception of John Broxson's (SRC Dist 5) generous contributuion of over $200K out of his rec funds to purchase landfor addtional parking @ theOriole Beach Ramp, rec funds are almost never used for boat ramp improvments; Kudos to John for thinking out of the box! (that project took me2 years of "never give up work"!)
The only money finding it's way back to us with direct accessfrom the various taxes you mentioned is the money from the Boater Registration Funds from the decals we purchase. We considered raising the decal price, but the 1st dollar or $1.50 goes to the Manatee Fund; no help there for us! If you raise it too high,statistics tell ussome boaters willregister their boats in the next County; no help there!
So the realquestions are;
- <LI>Do we need more parking at peak times of the year</LI><LI>do we need more ramps, IE: deep water ramps</LI><LI>If you answer yes t either, how do we fund it??</LI>
If you got some ideas post them or come to the meetings, we'll take all the help we can get!
thnx for your comments.
BP
fishn4real (10/31/2007)This amounts to "Double Taxation". We have already paid taxes to build and maintain the public parks, boat launces and ramps. We've paid these taxes through sales taxes when we purchased the boat-motor-trailer, boater registration fees, fishing license, and gasoline taxes.
Why do we just roll over and say, "OK" it's only $4 or $6 bucks each time I use it, it's worth it." But WE'VE ALREADY PAID FOR IT!!!!!:banghead:banghead:banghead
I think it's time this forum got vocal with our elected officials for them to take some responsibility for proper management. I'm going to ask Chris to install some links for Commissioners, Counselmen, Reps, Congressmen, and Gov.so that we can let them know firsthand how we feel about some of their crap.