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Location: minocqua, wi. | Steve ... could you please start invoicing me for the use of Muskiefirst ... i mean, it's worth $15.00 ... he!! i pay that much driving back and forth to work in a week.
please make this a paid site ... it would make me feel much better. |
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| Ya gotta hit em when their willing to pay for anything Steve even if it isn't better fishing  I think MN Muskie anglers would be very unhappy with their Muskie harvest stamp by the time the legislature got done dealing the death blow to the fishery.
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Location: Rhinelander, Wisconsin | I do believe you are right. Way more politics in this than anyone wants to know. |
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| Pointerpride102 The problem is, there is a very limited amount you can do to "improve" musky fisheries. I think you could get a lot more done but improving the fishery as a whole as opposed to having a designated musky fund. I think you'd get a lot more bang for your buck if you increased license fees by $10 dollars as opposed to offering a stamp for $10. A+
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Location: The desert | sworrall - 5/2/2012 3:40 PM
I do believe you are right. Way more politics in this than anyone wants to know.
Unfortunately some of us have to know some of it.......  |
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| Perhaps a franklin mint collectable muskie coin! |
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Location: The desert | BenR - 5/2/2012 7:54 PM
Perhaps a franklin mint collectable muskie coin!
Will there be a strict limit of 20 per customer? |
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| Embossed with Seal Team 6 holding a Muskie and on the reverse the ghost of Luis Spray reloading his .32 for another run at the WR.
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| Pointerpride102 - 5/1/2012 3:49 PM
That money cannot be touched. There is no guarantee of that with a stamp.
Uhh, what's stopping "them" from touching it? (You were referring to $ generated by a $10 fee increase.)
How much money of that hypothetical $10 increase goes to muskie fishing? Who decides?
What are we going to tell the other 75% of anglers that they're paying an extra ten bux for? What will they get? Who's gunna sell it? (figuratively) Are we to convinced 3 out of our 4 friends who don't muskie fish that they should go along with it, for us?....so we get what we want?
Just for the record, you're talking about a 50% increase of the cost of a resident fishing license in WI. That would be just great if the 75% who don't muskie fish now refer to us as "those #*^@ muskie fishermen who convinced the DNR to increase everyone's license fee."
Back to the point....Why cannot a stamp rule be written as so to earmark the money? |
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| jonnysled - 5/3/2012 6:04 AM
muskie-addict - 5/2/2012 11:48 PM
....Why cannot a stamp rule be written as so to earmark the money?
read that one 3 times fast and tell me what he's asking.
Nobody's perfect, I read that it time though and understood exactly what he meant. |
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Location: minocqua, wi. | i got dizzy
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Location: The desert | muskie-addict - 5/2/2012 10:48 PM
Pointerpride102 - 5/1/2012 3:49 PM
That money cannot be touched. There is no guarantee of that with a stamp.
Uhh, what's stopping "them" from touching it? (You were referring to $ generated by a $10 fee increase. )
How much money of that hypothetical $10 increase goes to muskie fishing? Who decides?
What are we going to tell the other 75% of anglers that they're paying an extra ten bux for? What will they get? Who's gunna sell it? (figuratively ) Are we to convinced 3 out of our 4 friends who don't muskie fish that they should go along with it, for us?....so we get what we want?
Just for the record, you're talking about a 50% increase of the cost of a resident fishing license in WI. That would be just great if the 75% who don't muskie fish now refer to us as "those #*^@ muskie fishermen who convinced the DNR to increase everyone's license fee."
Back to the point....Why cannot a stamp rule be written as so to earmark the money?
There is nothing to say it can't be written that way. But, there would be no penalty in the event the legislator decided to say screw what was written and divert funds.
You clearly don't have a clue where your license dollars go or what would happen if "they" touched them. I'm not going to do your homework for you. Go figure it out for yourself.
The other anglers would likely be an easy sell. It is the musky fisherman that are generally the most difficult. |
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Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Pointerpride102 - 5/3/2012 8:47 AM
There is nothing to say it can't be written that way. But, there would be no penalty in the event the legislator decided to say screw what was written and divert funds.
You clearly don't have a clue where your license dollars go or what would happen if "they" touched them. I'm not going to do your homework for you. Go figure it out for yourself.
The other anglers would likely be an easy sell. It is the musky fisherman that are generally the most difficult.
In your words Pointer you apparently have no clue what the "other" anglers in WI think. Musky anglers don’t have a problem buying a $30 bait, and suggesting fee increases as is being discussed here. “Other” anglers for the most part have a hard time justifying buying a rapala bait at $6:00 let alone a license fee increase. When was the last CC meeting you attended in WI where you get a true pulse of the “other” anglers attitudes? Musky anglers are a pretty open bunch in my opinion.
Pointer have you done your homework on stamps? It doesn’t seem like it when you say “But, there would be no penalty in the event the legislator decided to say screw what was written and divert funds.” By law it CANNOT happen that way. It happen back in 2005-2006 timeframe (don’t remember exact year now) with the turkey stamp, and the courts were all over it and corrected the situation. I also believe they changed the law a bit after that to make sure it didn’t happen again the way it did then.
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My question is why water down your money by getting the state to collect it and distrubute it??
Fund your local clubs and get your donated money to be 100% put towards what you intend it to go for.
JS |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | As I understand it, there would be a statutory requirement (at least in WI) that any monies generated from the sale of such a stamp, go into the conservation account, specifically ear-marked for use in the musky management program in the state of Wisconsin. Ergo, it could not be touched. But I'll admit that I was just provided with the working documents for the WI stamp this morning, and have only read through them once now. I haven't had the time to make some calls to verify these things, but it seems quite clear that anyone would have a very difficult time successfully raiding those funds. Not that they couldn't try mind you, but they'd have a problem keeping the funds.
There is some precedence in Wisconsin that I am aware of, for protecting ear-marked funds against those trying to raid them. Non-fisheries case-in-point: The Wisconsin Patient Compensation Fund. This is a special fund set up in WI to cover the cost(s) associated with a malpractice claim against a health-care provider. Every practitioner in the state of Wisconsin is required to make an annual payment into a general fund of money. Then, any malpractice claim in excess of that practitioner's insurance limit won by a plaintiff is covered by this fund. For example, my malpractice insurance limit is $1 Million. I get sued and lose, and the jury awards the plaintiff $2 Million. My insurance pays $1 Million, and the patient compensation fund pays the rest. It's a pretty good system as I understand it, and one of the main reasons it's easy to get affordable malpractice insurance here in the state. This has resulted in *good* doctors wanting to practice here in Wisconsin. But as you might imagine, a LOT of money accumulates in the account, especially since we don't have all that many malpractice suits in this state. So the fund was targeted by Governor in 2007, and he basically "reallocated" about $200 Million of those funds. Oops. The Wisconsin Supreme Court ordered the State to pay that back, with interest. Here's some more info:
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/senate/olsen/PressReleases/Pages/A-BILL-...
The point of this is that there is indeed a precedence in Wisconsin to protect special funds from raids. While the Patient's Compensation Fund is (as near as I can figure) somewhat different than a potential fund established for management of muskellunge in the state, I think there would be significant disincentive to attempt such a raid...simply based upon the precedence already established.
Bottom line: I really don't think we'd see much of a problem keeping the money where it belongs. In principle anyway, I think the musky stamp would be very good--we would just need to work out a few issues, many of which have been mentioned and discussed in this thread.
TB
Edited by tcbetka 5/3/2012 9:49 AM
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Location: minocqua, wi. | Guest - 5/3/2012 9:30 AM
My question is why water down your money by getting the state to collect it and distrubute it??
JS
Yup!! |
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Location: Oconto Falls, WI | JS good point. However if you are part of a club that isn’t motivated and ambitious in what you do your money may just sit, or get spent on something that you don’t want it spent on. Also as I mentioned before there are some things I think the DNR can accomplish that a club just can’t tackle. The DNR has the resources to be able to get larger projects done. Also being assigned a project to do in the DNR would result in a much different commitment than if a person from the DNR is “helping” a club to accomplish a project.
It’s just my opinion but I feel clubs are good at accomplishing some projects, usually small, but larger projects that would cost more money are better off in the hands of the people with greater resources. That being the DNR. I could be wrong since I haven’t been part of a club yet that tackled some large projects, and am currently not part of any. Maybe just me being naïve but it seems most clubs concentrate on stocking in terms of improving a fishery, and has been mentioned here that isn’t what would be needed currently in WI.
I am sure there are some great clubs out there that accomplish some great things. Kudos to them. However I bet there are many more that don’t get too much done outside of stocking and being a great social group. Nothing wrong with that either. So how do you go about finding the “correct” club for you to join based on your motives???
Also by doing a stamp, and making it mandatory for musky anglers to get it, you can generate a much larger sum of money than you can in any individual club. Thus allowing you to tackle projects that would cost more.
Edited by CiscoKid 5/3/2012 10:10 AM
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Location: The desert | I guess I was getting at the point that there could be an attempt to divert the funds. It has happened before and will likely happen again. At some point it will be successful. Maybe it would never happen with the musky stamp. It would all depend on how the law was written. I believe Minnesota had problems with their Clean water, land and legacy act that was passed.
Who is going to implement these large projects, Travis? What are these large projects? Is the DNR going to increase their staff with these funds, or are we going to ask the biologists to do even more on top of their "normal" work load?
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Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Pointerpride102 - 5/3/2012 10:34 AM
Who is going to implement these large projects, Travis? What are these large projects? Is the DNR going to increase their staff with these funds, or are we going to ask the biologists to do even more on top of their "normal" work load?
Fair questions.
I would think they could possibly increase staff, paid for by the stamp fund, that would work the musky projects. That is a good point in that without staffing projects couldn’t get worked on. Also means a limited amount of projects could be worked on dependant of course on staffing. Again the trout stamp could be used as a model and in how that work gets done. I doubt anyone knows but does anyone know if there were additional staffing made available when the trout stamp went into effect and started doing projects? Does this mean that some staffing that works the trout projects may be re-allocated to work on the musky projects?
Wouldn’t those that already spend time on the musky management with the DNR already be part of your staffing? It would just be a matter of they would have more money to work with versus what they have now. So rather than that staffing that may look for, I’ll say little things to do, they would be working on larger more significant projects that could have a larger impact? I’ll use the example of a workplace. Work too fast and to run yourself out of work so you either find some little things to do, or are given some $hit work to do. However if you know you have a hefty workload you aren’t concerned with the little pittily work that just keep you busy.
I don’t know anything about how the DNR operates. Is everyone of the employees up to their eyes with work do to short staffing, or is it just certain departments within it that are short staffed and there are others that are not always overly busy (like most workplaces)? Does the DNR operate with the basis of if they can prove they have the work to increase staff that they are allowed to, or under the basis of under no circumstances can they add any warm bodies.
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Location: The desert | Problem with adding staffing is you start digging into your funds. So now you have to cover the administration costs of the stamp, enforcement of the stamp, hire workers/technicians with the stamp, buy supplies with the stamp, charge truck miles to the stamp, monthly truck costs to the stamp, gas for said trucks to the stamp........
The common theme in most DNR agencies/biologists I've talked to is "do more with less". Which is fine. I don't mind a heavier work load as we are always busy with something interesting. But we also have to pick and choose what are the most important projects that need to get done. Some stuff doesn't get done. Sometimes extra bodies could help, but sometimes they need extra training and babysitting as they don't know what to do. |
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Location: Green Bay, WI | Well like anything, there HAS to be a budget. And there HAS to be a priority list. And they have to both be followed...
We're not talking about an infinite, never-ending stream of money here. We're talking about a few hundred thousand dollars per year, maybe more. If you start hiring a bunch of people and paying their salary and benefits, you're going to burn through that very quickly. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't make the effort to procure the funds through the stamp--it simply means you need to have a good plan as to what work you need to do with it, and also the best way to get the work done.
To some degree, this is a "if you build it, they will come" affair. As I understand it, we have a good idea as to the types of things the money would help pay for. But we don't yet know how many of those things we could get done...or even how much money we'll be able to raise. However once we start to get that information, the plan can be refined to suit the level of available funding. As to the degree that plan is completed now though, I am not sure.
But I certainly intend to find out.
TB |
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| Pointerpride102 - 5/3/2012 12:07 PM
Problem with adding staffing is you start digging into your funds. So now you have to cover the administration costs of the stamp, enforcement of the stamp, hire workers/technicians with the stamp, buy supplies with the stamp, charge truck miles to the stamp, monthly truck costs to the stamp, gas for said trucks to the stamp........
Going off on a slight tangent here related to staffing costs. The salaries are one thing but when you start hiring people for positions like this it's not just the paid salary that will be coming out of the funds generated by a stamp. You also have to take into consideration the cost of benefits and those are not cheap.
A bit of irony with the cost of benefits....I'm working on a seven figure grant proposal and when we were putting together the budget for this thing we overestimated the cost of filling two new positions. I can't believe I didn't pick up on this but we were using figures based on an older, pre Act 10 grant. Now with public employees paying more into their retirement and insurance it freed up a ton of funding that we can use as indirects for other departments associated with the proposal. It was a win-win.
Back on point....regardless of what a biologist would be paying in for his/her benefits, those things still cost quite a bit of money and if a position is created to oversee this type of a program the state costs associated with that will have to come out of that pool of money raised by the cost of a stamp. |
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Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Mike it doesn’t matter to me if truck gas money is taken from the stamp as long as it is because it is a cost of musky fishery work. Thus the reason for a fund…to aid in the cost of the projects. Simple balancing of the budget, and determining what projects can get done with the money like you mentioned. Like Tom says a stamp doesn’t mean all of a sudden you have infinite funds and resources to use. Once again look at the trout stamp and work done. The projects may be different, and there may be challenges in staffing, but the system works.
All those things you listed may be a reason under current budget certain projects don’t get addressed. However with the supplemental funding of a stamp it may just be enough to start tackling projects they cannot under the current budget.
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Location: minocqua, wi. | ulbian - 5/3/2012 11:31 AM
A bit of irony with the cost of benefits....I'm working on a seven figure grant proposal and when we were putting together the budget for this thing we overestimated the cost of filling two new positions. I can't believe I didn't pick up on this but we were using figures based on an older, pre Act 10 grant. Now with public employees paying more into their retirement and insurance it freed up a ton of funding that we can use as indirects for other departments associated with the proposal. It was a win-win.
wait a minute, did you just say that Wisconsin has a budget surplus with available funding without the need to increase any revenue streams?
how in the he!! did that happen??
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Location: Green Bay, WI | Right. And you also have to remember that our biologists *might* be able to take on more projects, or fund some more graduate students (more or less cheap labor, by all accounts), if they simply had some more funds. So while you might need to hire full-time staff at some point...maybe you wouldn't. That would have to be all part of the plan developed before the effort to implement a stamp was undertaken.
TB
(Edited after I realized I had forgotten to quote Sam's last post...lol)
Edited by tcbetka 5/3/2012 11:45 AM
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| jonnysled - 5/3/2012 12:40 PM
ulbian - 5/3/2012 11:31 AM
A bit of irony with the cost of benefits....I'm working on a seven figure grant proposal and when we were putting together the budget for this thing we overestimated the cost of filling two new positions. I can't believe I didn't pick up on this but we were using figures based on an older, pre Act 10 grant. Now with public employees paying more into their retirement and insurance it freed up a ton of funding that we can use as indirects for other departments associated with the proposal. It was a win-win.
wait a minute, did you just say that Wisconsin has a budget surplus with available funding without the need to increase any revenue streams?
how in the he!! did that happen??
; )
Easy there Sled....the money is there but you have to know how to ask for it. It isn't simply given out anymore. You want to fund things in this economic climate start brushing up on your grant writing skills. And yes, within those grants it is a little easier to create positions because of the costs saved, but those are inside of those grants and not in the general tax revenue that is taken in by the state.
The grant writing thing....the money is there. Build the partnerships and go after it. You might be surprised at what some of us might be able to pull in for the WDNR to work with as long as it's justified correctly and you provide reachable outcomes and goals. But nope, a problem here is that here we are bickering over a stamp issue. When we aren't doing that we're bickering over a world record, tournament trails, benefits of MI membership, etc., etc. We, the muskie angling community is small in numbers. It seems much bigger than it is if all you do is spend time interacting with one another on this website. |
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Location: The desert | CiscoKid - 5/3/2012 10:37 AM
Mike it doesn’t matter to me if truck gas money is taken from the stamp as long as it is because it is a cost of musky fishery work. Thus the reason for a fund…to aid in the cost of the projects. Simple balancing of the budget, and determining what projects can get done with the money like you mentioned. Like Tom says a stamp doesn’t mean all of a sudden you have infinite funds and resources to use. Once again look at the trout stamp and work done. The projects may be different, and there may be challenges in staffing, but the system works.
All those things you listed may be a reason under current budget certain projects don’t get addressed. However with the supplemental funding of a stamp it may just be enough to start tackling projects they cannot under the current budget.
I get what you are saying. I guess my point was that once you start adding on expenses, the size of the fund diminishes rapidly. What happens when none of the waters you fish ever see a dime of the stamp money because there simply isn't enough to go around? |
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Location: Oconto Falls, WI | ulbian - 5/3/2012 1:08 PM
The grant writing thing....the money is there. Build the partnerships and go after it. You might be surprised at what some of us might be able to pull in for the WDNR to work with as long as it's justified correctly and you provide reachable outcomes and goals. But nope, a problem here is that here we are bickering over a stamp issue. When we aren't doing that we're bickering over a world record, tournament trails, benefits of MI membership, etc., etc. We, the muskie angling community is small in numbers. It seems much bigger than it is if all you do is spend time interacting with one another on this website.
Touché!
Now that I know another “connection” of those in the know I will know whom to contact when in need! The problem is when you don’t know where to start you spin your wheels! So if a club would like to get a project going, but don’t know where to start, Bob sounds like you are a good resource to ask?
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Location: Oconto Falls, WI | Pointerpride102 - 5/3/2012 1:22 PM
I get what you are saying. I guess my point was that once you start adding on expenses, the size of the fund diminishes rapidly. What happens when none of the waters you fish ever see a dime of the stamp money because there simply isn't enough to go around?
I am fine with it. If I don't like my fishery as it sits I will look to another. Perhaps one that has gotten the help. I am not married to any one waterbody.
The more lakes you fish the more difficult it will also become to directly impact "your" lake of choice to get improved if you go the route of a club as well. If I join a club in Green Bay the chances of it helping a fishery in Sawyer county is probably pretty low. So I join a club in Sawyer county, and lakes in Vilas county I fish may be very low on getting improvements. Of course this is just hypethetical, and something that I wouldn't encounter as I just care that fisheries get improved and maintained. However there are lots of people that just care about "their" lakes. |
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Location: The desert | CiscoKid - 5/3/2012 12:31 PM
Pointerpride102 - 5/3/2012 1:22 PM
I get what you are saying. I guess my point was that once you start adding on expenses, the size of the fund diminishes rapidly. What happens when none of the waters you fish ever see a dime of the stamp money because there simply isn't enough to go around?
However there are lots of people that just care about "their" lakes.
I think this is a problem you would run into quite a bit. |
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