Louisiana Officials

[Remington]

Originally Posted by Rich

We agree completely on this. I assign for 22 schools and each school has their stable of officials who have (1) been doing this for years and (2) have no desire to work varsity games. Close to home, early start time.

People think I'm joking when I say I think they should raise the varsity rates and leave the JV rates alone, but I'm completely serious.

We have a group of people the feel the same and want to stay close to home. I believe the reason for our increases is that it is hard to get officials in our area for a few reasons: (1) People don't want to put up with the BS (2) People can't sneak out of their job early to work the games (3) Many of our games over 60 miles to get to making it a late evening (4) People's children are in many more activities now than when I was a kid so they don't have the time.

I know in the last 5 years the cost of living in ND has skyrocketed due to the oil activity. My house here is smaller than friends of mine in the twin cities and theirs is much less (especially when you add in our real estate taxes and specials). An average house in our larger towns is now $350K - $400K. With property taxes of $4700 and specials of $20K added to your escrow, they payment really jumps up.

The gap is being discussed at length. I believe they will leave varsity rates the same during the next 2 year rate lock but raise the JV rates to narrow the gap a bit.