Changes to National Park fees
Just saw an article from CNN claiming that the National Parks have announced the final fee increase decisions for this year. Day use fees will increase by $% Annual Passes for single parks will inc...
Forum Discussion
DallasSteve wrote:westernrvparkowner wrote:
The argument will be to use volunteers. Well, to staff every park concessionaire job would take a whole lot of specialized, trained volunteers. While it might be easy to get a volunteer to be a camp host, it will be much more difficult to find a volunteer to wash the dishes, bus the tables and mop the floors of the restaurants.
Yes, those are difficult jobs. I didn't learn how to do those jobs until I was 15 and got my first job at Mrs. Heath's Steakhouse, with no training, just "Here's the mop." OK, they gave me 5 minutes of training on the industrial washing machine.
I think his point is that there will be far fewer people volunteering for a job of mopping floors then there are volunteering for camphost. In most places, there will be far fewer people volunteering for such jobs than are needed to perform those jobs.
In addition, when the government "makes a profit" in any sector it's very frowned upon by the public. So not using concessionaires and keeping the profits themselves is not acceptable to many.
And then there is the "government is not supposed to compete with private business" argument. By using concessionaires, they aren't, as it's the private business concessionaire running the operation. If they eliminate the concessionaires, they are now in direct competition.
Again, no matter what way you look at it, someone IS going to yell foul because they don't like that solution. The government can't appease everyone and still do its job.
