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Saturday, May 3rd, 2008 at the Sherman Volunteer Fire Hall. Open at 4:30 pm, dinner at 6:00 pm, DJ for music. All clubmembers and Landowners are invited. No cost for Landowners. Please $5 at the door for the rest of us. Kids under 12 are free. Friday-Sunday April 11-13 at the Conference Center in Niagara Falls. (Some topics below. More of the good stuff coming soon.) STEP Program: Safe Trails Education Program Signing: We sign each trail for those unfamiliar with the trail. We provide information regarding turns, blind hills, hazards, directions, and where they are. Signing needs to be done consistantly so that the rider is not mislead, or confused. As of 04/11/2008 there are three open lawsuits in New York State. All involve signing (a lack of signing or a bad job of signing). A good job of consistant sign means we would have a defendable case in court if something went terribly wrong. New Club Trail Signs coming. New shape, new color (blue), new numbering scheme (3 digits). Buy easements when you can to guarantee that your trails stay where they are. Insulate your trails from Landowner changes. *ALERT* Paid for a New York State Snowmobile Registration? *ALERT* The New York State Legislature was apparantly having cash flow problems (among all the other problems in Albany lately) and passed leglislation that allowed the budget folks to raid any and all sources for money to the tune of 100 million dollars! A lot of groups had the "touch" put on them a couple weeks ago and are just now beginning to find out about it. The environmental groups, the groups for helping the mentially challenged, on and on, just about everybody's pockets were lightened. And guess what? OPRHP's (Parks) Snowmobile Trail Fund (our Snowmobile Registration money for the trails) was raided for $1,000,000.00 (that is exactly one million of our Trail Fund dollars) back on March 12th. Park's Snowmobile Trail Fund is where our Snowmobile Registration money goes and it is where our trail money comes from. To quote one our new found friends in Albany, they were really "pissed" to see that money simply stolen by the Legislature. They obviously felt stabbed in the back too. Parks is actively working to get it back. What are we going to do about it? Please keep reading! 1) NYSSA's lobbyist group (The Capital Group) is going to get to the bottom of who, what, when, where, and why. During the next couple of weeks, they will politely and respectfully, but very firmly, remind the powers in Albany that the Trail Fund money is not taxpayer money, but Snowmobile Registration money collected from snowmobilers via DMV. Snowmobile trails are self funded. And obviously to return it with to Park's Trail Fund Account for us (or else!). 2) While The Capital Group works to convience them of the errors of their ways, they have asked us to be cool and give them a chance to do their job. Snowmobiling's economic impact was over 800 million dollars several years ago and is probably over 1 billion today. We have over 65,000 family memberships in NYSSA, and that makes us one of the strongest organizations within New York State. 3) If our lobbyists are unsuccessful, then we may have to get in the face of all of our representatives in Albany with: letter writing, e-mail, telephone, etc. campaigns. 4) The Capital Group has asked that you and I will play nice for now. Let OPRHP, NYSSA, The Capital Group and our leglislature work it out calmly. But if all else fails and we exhaust our options, we can get out the cattle prods and brass knuckles. The Capital Group, OPRHP (Parks), NYSSA, and the Snowmobile Clubs of New York State will win this fight by any means necessary. Some budget folks in Albany do not yet realize that they are in a "steel cage match" with a couple hundred thousand very capable snowmobilers. Albany will learn not to mess with our trail money! Be cool, be calm, do not lose any sleep over it. We will let you know if we have to take the gloves off and get a little rough with them. Thanks |
