from Workboat Magazine today
[B]President’s budget would cut funds for inland waterways, other maritime programs[/B]
By Pamela Glass
3/11/2014
Less than two months after signing a 2014 omnibus spending bill that gave a big boost to spending on federal maritime and waterways programs, President Obama has proposed a fiscal 2015 budget that would cut back just about all of these gains.
Taking big hits would be funding to support the nation’s inland waterways infrastructure, U.S. ports and the Title XI shipbuilding loan guarantee program.
-snip-
Also in the president’s request:
*Full funding ($186 million) for the Maritime Security Program.
*$3 million for administrative costs of running the Title XI shipbuilding loan guarantee program, down from the $38.5 million Congress provided in the omnibus funding bill to provide new loan guarantees.
*$11.3 million for state maritime academies, and [B][I]$16 million for the US Merchant Marine Academy.[/I][/B] This compares to $17.7 million for state schools in 2014 and $79.4 million for USMMA.
*No money to deepen the harbor in Savannah, GA, which had been promised by the administration.
Maritime and waterways interests, as in the past, will look to Congress to reject these cuts and restore funds.
only $16M for KP! How can this be seen in any other fashion that someone, somewhere in the Obama Administration can see clearly that the place’s time is OVER and it must GO!
well I should have known better…pure dreaming on my part and to quickly grabbed onto Workboat’s mistaken numbers which are not even close to the budget I found for the DoT at whitehouse.gov. There it shows $80M to operate KP in FY’15 albeit down from $105M for FY’14.
Oh well, it was nice while it lasted…
[QUOTE=c.captain;132757] There it shows $80M to operate KP in FY’15 albeit down from $105M for FY’14.
Oh well, it was nice while it lasted…[/QUOTE]
KP has about 1000 kids. SUNY Maritime has about 1800. SUNY Maritime’s budget is about $40 Million. So Maritime manages to educate almost twice the number of students for less than half of what KP spends. I’m guessing that the other states schools are a lot closer to Maritime than to KP.
It’s worth noting that KP has no training ship while SUNY Maritime (as well as Maine, Mass. and Cal) does. KP does not incur any of the costs associated with the ship and the summer sea term and still manages to spend gobs more money.
[QUOTE=Rich Bogad;132769]KP has about 1000 kids. SUNY Maritime has about 1800. SUNY Maritime’s budget is about $40 Million. So Maritime manages to educate almost twice the number of students for less than half of what KP spends. I’m guessing that the other states schools are a lot closer to Maritime than to KP.
It’s worth noting that KP has no training ship while SUNY Maritime (as well as Maine, Mass. and Cal) does. KP does not incur any of the costs associated with the ship and the summer sea term and still manages to spend gobs more money.[/QUOTE]
KP is your standard, run of the mill, very typical, federal government money pit. It’s no different than any other government bureaucracy that spends too much and produces too little. The industry knows from experience that the production quality at KP is egregiously substandard, none of these facts are secrets, nor do they lack general acceptance from the vast majority of people who are informed about such things. The only people who are pro-KP are those who have, for far too long, been suckling at the bloated tit that is the federally funded USMMA. Refer to Crowley’s upper management for just one painfully obvious example.
Not only does that cesspool on Long Island cost far too much and produce far too little but it also no longer serves any useful purpose, even if it could produce. The 6 state academies are more than capable of meeting the demands of the industry. They are all growing exponentially, and the word from Seattle is that we may soon even have a SEVENTH fully recognized state maritime academy. There simply isn’t any case to be made for the continued existence of Kings Point and the longer its walls stand, bloated with the fresh warm bodies of poor misguided midshipmen, the more of an insult it becomes to the rest of the industry, both academy and hawsepipe alike. If the representatives of the industry at the recent MARAD symposium were serious about the future stabilization of our industry then near the top of their agenda would have proudly stood the closure of that most dangerous nuisance known as Kings Point.
[QUOTE=Rich Bogad;132769]KP has about 1000 kids. SUNY Maritime has about 1800. SUNY Maritime’s budget is about $40 Million. So Maritime manages to educate almost twice the number of students for less than half of what KP spends. I’m guessing that the other states schools are a lot closer to Maritime than to KP.
It’s worth noting that KP has no training ship while SUNY Maritime (as well as Maine, Mass. and Cal) does. KP does not incur any of the costs associated with the ship and the summer sea term and still manages to spend gobs more money.[/QUOTE]
the nub of my entire argument now for several years…KP costs too much for the product it generates. The state based schools are up to 4 times more cost effective and a vastly better use of the taxpayers money except all the KP leeches will lose access to all that tasty gravy they have grown to demand out of all the bullshit they spread about how critical the place is.
I am bitterly disappointed that Workboat got it so wrong. I thought drastic change was in the wind but not to be with this administration. Purely wishful thinking.
To Paddy West and C Captain
You might not know this, but the feds had KP slotted for closure back in the 1990s. Of course the NY senators and representatives went nuts and closure went away.
If the feds wanted to close the place now, I can assure you that you’d see Chuck Schumer and a whole lot of Long Island Congressmen go nuts.
[QUOTE=Rich Bogad;132777]To Paddy West and C Captain
You might not know this, but the feds had KP slotted for closure back in the 1990s. Of course the NY senators and representatives went nuts and closure went away.
If the feds wanted to close the place now, I can assure you that you’d see Chuck Schumer and a whole lot of Long Island Congressmen go nuts.[/QUOTE]
No arguments with that logic here. Chuck Schumer is dangerously unintelligent and it scares me every morning when I wake up and realize that he is still in Washington making laws that affect my daily life. I haven’t trusted a single politician from the state of New York since Rudy Guiliani. They’re all just as guilty of government tit suckling as those bloated bureaucrats from KP. To hell with all of them!
The Workboat Academy is 100% tuition funded, has over 40 Partner Companies that take our Cadets and our incoming class of Deck Licensed Officers is about 1/2 of the Maritime Academy incoming classes and growing. The tuition is also lower and we pay our instructors considerably more.
In no way would we promote shutting down any maritime school that produces quality mariners. However; it seems they could certainly be a bit more efficient.
[QUOTE=Workboat_Academy-Guru;139046]The Workboat Academy is 100% tuition funded, has over 40 Partner Companies that take our Cadets and our incoming class of Deck Licensed Officers is about 1/2 of the Maritime Academy incoming classes and growing. The tuition is also lower and we pay our instructors considerably more.
In no way would we promote shutting down any maritime school that produces quality mariners. However; it seems they could certainly be a bit more efficient.[/QUOTE]
How many deck cadets are in your incoming class? How many engine cadets?
How long is your program?
Should the US support the Maritime Industry? If the answer is yes; how do you attract people from [B]all[/B] 50 States and its Territories to a Deck & Engineering license program?