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Funding a grooming program
Topic Started: Mar 2 2008, 08:26 PM (295 Views)
drmiller100
Advanced Operator
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I live in a resort town in the middle of Idaho. We have a lot of tree hugger nature nazis that want snowmoibles gone from the area.

The Idaho State Snowmobile Association funded a research study from the University of Idaho which found that snowmobiles bring 6.2 million dollars annually to our local economies.

We get some grooming moneys from state sticker sales. Last year we requested the state raise sticker sales from 22 bucks a year to 33 bucks a year, which means we will get another 50 percent increase in funds next year.

LOT. McCall, a local town put in a tax on hotel and condo rentals of like 2 bucks a room a night. This turned into 300,000 bucks a year which is supposed to go towards tourism. The grooming program gets 19,000 bucks a year of that.

Adopt-A-Trail. A local prominent businessman started a program he called Adopt-A-Trail. Each business can buy a sign that is put on the side of the trail. The signs cost 500 bucks each. The Chamber of Commerce "sponsors" it, collects the funds, and guarantees the money gets collected and disbursed appropriately.

We put the signs down teh sides of the trail and maintain them. Twice a year is a big thank you to the sponsors in local newspaper.

Local rental companies, resturants, bars, rich people, excavation companies (?), and hotels are our biggest sponsors. It is really critical that this money be accounted for, adn we try like heck to buy our fuel out of these funds first. The Adopt-A-Trail program is good for 20,000 to 30,000 a year.

Our area last year got about 60,000 bucks from sticker sales, and about 50k from the other two programs, so it is significant.
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drmiller100
Advanced Operator
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One more way to find additional funds.

We had a situation. To make a very long story short, I'd recommend the following.

Call the state and find out how much sticker funds go to the local program every year.
Call the county/operating agency and ask for an accounting of how much money was spent on the program locally every year for the past 5 years. Specifically, look at fuel expenditures. Fuel should be OVER 25 percent of your annual operating budget, and if I were to hazard a guess, if you use volunteers it should be most of your annual budget.

If those three sets of numbers don't add up, go talk to the local newsppaer, and they'll be glad to help you figure out what is going on.

For instance. Lets say the state sends the program 35,000 bucks a year. Fuel is 8,000 bucks a year. This is highly suspicious.

We found 50,000 bucks a year using this method.
It turns out we had a year round, full time mechanic on staff we'd never heard of.
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