Letter: Government actions don’t make sense

To the community,

After reading yesterday’s article on LTN of the USFS closing all of its parks and concessionaires, I thought it necessary to respond. I am a volunteer and on the board at Tahoe Tallac Association (Valhalla).

This move by the government agency is about as political as it gets and is just another ploy to try to get the American public to put pressure on congress to do their job and by doing so, our political leaders can shrug off their responsibility. The president has, I am sure, told all his department heads to shut down everything to make a point, and they are doing it quite literally ignoring anything that is self sustaining.

Bob Sweatt

I would also speculate that our local USFS leaders have their hands tied and are only following directions from above. The old adage “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you” I think would be an appropriate response to the current decision to shut down Valhalla and other self sustaining concessionaires.

Valhalla, a nonprofit, is totally independent of the USFS. We operate under the auspice of the USFS, caring for, providing access to and maintaining the site facility for the USFS. This is just the surface — we are here for the public, running the summer festival which includes affordable theater and music venues at the boathouse not to mention the free music on the lawn concerts. There is no paid USFS staff at the facility and we run the site on the income that is generated by the events that are put on here.

All maintenance and upgrades to the site are done by that income. We also pay the utilities and staff that are necessary to run the site. By cutting our ability to generate income for the site, the USFS is diminishing our ability to properly take care of the historic site we all love.

Now, we have to tell the wedding parties, etc., who have had reservations for no doubt a long time, sorry you can’t come here. Does this make sense?

Bob Sweatt, South Lake Tahoe