State is being dumb about Ft. Yargo bike fee

It’s not that the fees are excessive; $2 a day or $25 per year on top of a $5 per day parking fee.

It’s the principle of the idea.

The state didn’t build those mountain biking trails. Those trails were built and have been maintained by biking enthusiasts and volunteers.

Now under the guise of an overall funding shortfall, the state wants to charge for access to something it didn’t create at Ft. Yargo and that it has no cost to maintain.

But it gets worse. The fee being proposed would not be used to maintain the trails or build new ones; the fees would go to the park general fund.

All of which is about as dumb of an idea as I’ve heard from state officials recently.

If the state charges this fee and runs off a regular clientele of bikers, not only will it not get the new fee, but it will also not collect the daily parking fee it would have gotten from park patrons.

Dumb.

But this is bigger than just the state screwing up. Ft. Yargo has become a mountain biker’s haven in recent years, bringing a large number of people to the Winder area for races. If the state runs those people off, not only will that impact the state, but it will also impact Winder businesses.

So the City of Winder has a stake in this issue. The town’s leaders should take an active role in this discussion and encourage the state to change its plans.

For too long, Winder leaders have pretty much ignored Ft. Yargo, which is literally in the town’s back yard. Given the right kind of city leadership, Ft. Yargo could become the town’s focal point for economic growth and tourism. But doing that will require the city to engage the park and state leaders on a consistent basis, something that in the past has been inconsistent.

The state, of course, is complaining about its own financial problems. But the state’s problem isn’t a lack of revenue, it’s a mis-allocation of the revenue that it does get.

The state’s system of higher education, for example, is a virtual black hole into which is sucked vast amounts of revenue to only be squandered by inefficient departments and overpaid employees.

So when the state says it has to raise fees on bikers to make up a shortfall, it grates on the public’s ears like long fingernails on a blackboard. The state wants to charge bikers so its bureaucrats can stay comfy in their jobs? Ugh!

As it happens, I have a little passing knowledge about this. On several occasions, I’ve taken Boy Scout groups to Ft. Yargo to bike and hike. It’s a great resource for the area.

Oddly, the state isn’t proposing to charge hikers to use those trails, only bikers. The logic in that escapes me. If you’re going to charge for one activity on the trail, why not the other?

State parks are part of a system of resources that’s designed to provide amenities to citizens.

So if the state wants to generate more revenue for the park, then raise the parking fee a dollar. That would generate more money overall.

But picking out one small group of park users — bikers — and charging them to use something THEY built and that THEY maintain is nuts. Heck, the biking group has helped the park by creating a new resource that acts as a draw for others, like our Boy Scout troops, all of whom pay the parking fee.

The state would be wise to view this relationship as a trade-off; as long as a private group of volunteers maintains the biking trails, then there should be no fee. If sometime in the future the state has to take on that duty, then fine, charge a fee.

The truth is, the state can’t replace the free labor it’s getting now in trail maintenance. No miserly $2 fee will generate enough income to hire the people necessary to do that.

Dumb. Dumb. Dumb. Just another example of how the state mismanages its resources, both financial and human.

All of which proves the old adage: No good deed goes unpunished when government gets involved.

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of the Barrow Journal. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnewspapers.com.