[at-l] Just for argument's sake Re: Foot Bridge

[Sloetoe]

--- Felix J <athiker at smithville.net> wrote:

> If the ATC wants to throw $600,000 at a 
> dangerous situation, they should look at the
> Palisades parkway.

### I think "throw" is the operative word. "A solution
looking for a problem" by an organization looking for
justification of mission.

When "ATC" changed from "Conference" to "Conservancy",
it was the stamping out of the last vestige of the ATC
being the creature of the maintaining clubs (and their
members), and becoming the
ruler-of-all-short-of-the-NPS, and suborning the
maintaining clubs (and their members*) to footnotes
and after-thoughts for the future.

If I seem a little sensitive on the subject, it is
because I was recently reminded of the ATC of old,
which I held in the highest regard. Ready sent me some
1979 ATNs that I just finished reading through --
which was kind of funny, because these were the ones
that arrived while I was hiking, so I never had a
chance to read them before. Reading them over the last
couple of weeks reminded me of the change I saw in
1985 (while in graduate school, and writing a paper on
AT history and the looming end-game in securing the
protected National Scenic Trail corridor), that change
being away from trail activities, and towards an NGO
bureaucracy. The "ATC" name change just seals the
decades-long deal.

And so we have a $600,000 bridge, proposed by the
organization that at one time was able to secure
funding in even the tightest of budgets, because of
the bi-partisan observation that the dollars were well
and wisely spent. Anyone remember the $600,000 NPS
crapper? Was that 2001? Here now, this bridge barely
raises a ruckus.

With the trail corridor secured, I would propose the
ATC be phased out, or curtailed back to a biennial
*conference* where-in private citizens and volunteers
that actually put spade/mattock to soil get together
to compare notes, write guides and update maps, all of
this budgeted off of the existing Trust, with
memberships being pay-as-you-go reduced to the costs
of a Trail oriented Appalachian Trailway News. What of
the baggage with the NPS? Well, what of it? Just more
money that doesn't need to be spent.

Just for argument's sake.

sloetoe
(fresh back from the Cohos)