Jefferson County Parks

Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2011 8:33 am

I was looking through some Jefferson County Papers from this last week. Looks like in the near future it will cost $25 to place a cache in a Jefferson County park. Just a heads up.

WGA Member Joined: 2009-08-17 Posts: 126

This sounds like one of those new "tools" - think of it as a present from Walker!

Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2011 10:21 am

Just to keep everyone informed. This topic is being discussed in the community education forum and one of the WGA members will be initiating contact with the county.

Joined: 2004-07-09 Posts: 176

CodeJunkie wrote:

Just to keep everyone informed. This topic is being discussed in the community education forum and one of the WGA members will be initiating contact with the county.

Winnebago County F.P. in Illinois. did this a couple of years ago. Changed the policy...cleared all caches out without notifying owners, although they notified GC.com after the fact. We never got our ammo cans/tupperware/micros back. The FP headquarters could not tell us what happened to our cache containers. To this day we have the 10.00 fee in place and the same policy. At least you have a heads up. Good Luck.

WGA Member Joined: 2007-06-30 Posts: 1

Its unbeleiveable that they want to charge to place a cache. They don't charge for dogs to walk in the dog parks,and they leave a mess.I do not like paying for the dog parks through my taxes. Maybe if everything was user pay for the services that they use I would accept the charge for placing a cache. When the dog owners pay, the people that walk on the bike trails pay,thats when it will be fair. I don't feel that this is related to Walker,I think its just Jefferson County Supervisors trying to get money for the couny. OR else they want to keep people from coming to the county for recreation. Even though I live in Jefferson county,I will not place a cache in the county. We have gone to many states that welcome geo cachers. Just came back from Arkansas and they greated us with open arms. They have many caches in the state parks and they do not charge a fee to use the parks.

WGA Friend Joined: Sep 16, 2011 Posts: 1

I was informed of this by a friend of mine who is a county Supervisor. He was NOT in favor of this new rule and brought up several reasons against the new rule. He and 4 other supervisors were not in favor but most did not heed to their suggestions. I would advise calling the county and making your opinion known. I see this driving more use of geocaching to the city and state parks.
The reasoning behind this new rule is they want to have funding to help keep endangered and fragile areas growing if geocachers walk on them. This in my opinion would not help as when placing caches we should be observing other park rules, such were to walk and not walk.

Here is the info for contacting them, they won't know people's opinion if no one speaks up.

County Board Chairman

John Molinaro

(920) 674-8607 Office Phone
(608) 423-4743 Home Phone
(920) 675-0068 Office FAX

Mailing Address

Jefferson County Courthouse
320 S. Main Street, 204A
Jefferson, WI 53549
johnm@jeffersoncountywi.gov

Jefferson Co. ADMINISTRATION
320 S. MAIN STREET, ROOM 111
JEFFERSON, WI 53549
PHONE (920) 674-7101
FAX (920) 675-0068

Jefferson County Parks Department
320 South Main Street
Courthouse - Room 204
Jefferson, WI 53549
920-674-7260
Office Hours 8:00 am - 4:30 pm

Posted: Sat Sep 17, 2011 5:16 am

grandpa_r wrote:

This sounds like one of those new "tools" - think of it as a present from Walker!

I'm sure there is some political forum you can take these comments to.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 11:33 am

I believe Becky has been working with the county board on this, and the "rules" are essentially on hold. To be honest, I can't remember the last time anyone wanted to place a cache in Jefferson county parks. Most of the activity in that area dried up when grcarlson stopped placing a lot of caches.

Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2011 12:47 pm

Lostby7 wrote:

grandpa_r wrote:

This sounds like one of those new "tools" - think of it as a present from Walker!

I'm sure there is some political forum you can take these comments to.

*****please note that grandpa r's comment was from March. the thread has just recently been bumped up again.*****

Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 6:53 pm

Just an update on this:

First, the law was created by a handful of retired guys that don't know the first thing about caching. I know a few of the gentlemen. They are actually very nice and well meaning, but were clueless. I made sure to give them my two cents when I ran into them. They were afraid people were putting pornography and illegal items in the containers (obviously clueless). I informed them how this would mostly hurt their tourism, as most cachers just stop at a park or in an area on their way though to grab a quick cache.

Anyways, as I've been looking at placing my own cache, I viewed the Parks and Rec page to discover they are no longer requiring payment for the permit. They do however still require a permit to place a cache in any Jefferson County park. A slight pain, but at least you don't have to pay. You can find more info here: http://www.jeffersoncountywi.gov/jc/public/jchome.php?page_id=1777