New Hampshire Senate may sink new raft rule

Oh, dear. Now there's a kerfuffle over swimming rafts. The folks who think permits should be required think they are just being helpful and thoughtful and thinking ahead, of course...

From a New Hampshire Union Leader article June 2, 2005, by Paula Tracy (use title link for full article):

CONCORD — Swim rafts would not require permits and would no longer be regulated by the commissioner of safety under an amendment headed to the state Senate.

State Sen. David M. Gottesman, D-Nashua, said the new requirement this summer by the Marine Patrol to register rafts on all public bodies of water "is ridiculous and an unnecessary administrative task that has already been defeated two times in the House."

[snip]

"My take is it's a power grab to get done through the back door what they cannot get done through the front door," Gottesman said of the Department of Safety.

But David Barrett, director of the department's Marine Patrol Division, disagreed. He said the intent is to get people to put their names on rafts, so if they break loose from their mooring chains, the Marine Patrol will know where to return them.

[snip]

The permit application includes a three-page questionnaire that asks for a diagram, dimensions, material of construction, distance from shore, depth of water, shorefront property address, lot and tax map number and a list of abutters.

Barrett said Marine Patrol's experience is that people have been supportive of the regulation once they have found out there is no fee involved. More than 600 applications have been processed, with no rejections. He said he finds it odd that legislators are getting complaints.

[snip]

I have a dumb question. If the goal is to get people to put their names on rafts so the rafts can be returned if lost - why not skip the intermediary stuff and hand out tags to be attached voluntarily if folks feel like it? Or permanent marker pens. Whatever. Or, here's a shocker, why not just tell folks that owners' names on rafts would be nice, and leave it at that? (No muss, no fuss, no expense, an excuse to introduce yourself to the folks you're there to serve, and all that...) Not that virtually every kid in the place, and probably half the adults, can't recognize every raft in the vicinity anyway.

Besides, isn't half the fun of rafts moving them around? (Surely that's not just a Westerner thing?) I suppose if one set of grandkids decides to reposition the raft to annoy another set of grandkids, grandma gets in trouble for no longer having matters exactly as described in that harmless three-page questionnaire? For pity's sake, doesn't government have something better to do?

I'd like to point out, in case you missed it (like I did on first reading), that the fellow who is objecting to this regulation, State Sen. David M. Gottesman, is a Democrat.