Yes, I’m guilty of not making the deadline for last months newsletter. I was out in Colorado skiing and celebrating my 50th birthday with friends from Minnesota. Had a great time but there was more snow in Jo Mary Country than there was on the slopes in Summit County. Debbie had to plow on six of the seven days that I was gone….can you say, “Unhappy Camper”?
One of the things that struck me (while on one of the chair lifts) was the huge disparity between skiing and snowmobiling. A lift ticket at any major ski area will cost you between $75 and $90 for ONE DAY of skiing. A resident snowmobile registration is $34 and non-resident is $68, FOR THE ENTIRE SEASON. The people that sell you the lift ticket, that scan your ticket in the lift line, the lift attendant and the groomer operators are all PAID employees of the ski area. No reasonable person would expect them to work for free.
Compare this to the current snowmobile “industry” in Maine…… the people who cut the brush along the trails, the people who put up all of the signs, the people who build the bridges and the people who groom the trails at night are all UNPAID VOLUNTEERS. Does this sound reasonable to you??
It has reached a point where the status quo is in danger of failing. Regular readers of my “letters” will recognize that I often talk about the problems associated with an all volunteer labor force being the foundation of Maine’s trail system. The number of volunteers available to any club is diminishing every season. The raw truth is that the old guys who got us to where we are now are no longer physically capable of maintaining the trail system. And young (or middle aged) volunteers are almost nonexistent. So who’s going to do the work???
Everybody wants and/or expects good trails. But everyone is fairly busy with the business of running their lives and making ends meet. And with the price of fuel going up and up, who can afford to use their vehicles even occasionally to do trail work?? Volunteerism is one thing, taking money out of your own pocket to support an industry that makes the State Of Maine millions of dollars in tax proceeds is quite another matter.
The bill that is currently being considered by the legislature is not the answer….making people join a snowmobile club IS NOT the way to put more money into the trails and into the hands of the clubs. Granted, only about 30% of the riders in Maine belong to clubs. Making all riders join clubs (if they want a discount on their registration) will put money into the coffers of the clubs statewide. My fear is that “urban” clubs close to population centers will benefit greatly and “rural” clubs like the JO Mary Riders will see hardly any increase in available monies. To even the playing field and to insure that the money is available where it is needed throughout Maine, we need to double the registration fees for both residents and nonresidents alike. We also need to make sure that the rules concerning the disbursement of the funds (municipal and club grants) are updated to realistic levels AND that they are revisited on a regular basis. Current municipal grant rules have been in place since 1984, 24 years with little or no change. Some rates have been adjusted upward but overall, the reimbursement rates are totally inadequate. Somehow, someway, something needs to be done to put more dollars onto the trails and it needs to be done yesterday. Remember, you get what you pay for.