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0 dollars for refurbishment


Elliotgroomer

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We were told this week that there will be NO groomer refurbishment money from the OFSC. So if it needs repairs you are on your own.

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That's ok, groomers aren't important anyways...

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So it would seem the important thing is infrastructure. 10 million for trails and nothing to groom with.

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Hi Elliotgroomer, have you had a look at the agm data with the condensed financials? Is d13 having a district information meeting on ffc in the next couple weeks?

D5 is having one next Tues. , l am attending and will ask about this, all I see is the replacement fund. We may be expected to fund repairs out of the payments we recieve for grooming. I don't recall anything being said about abolishing the refurbishment fund with ffc, but anything is possible.

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From what I understand this goes farther than groomers . Clubs and Districts will be on there own as far as trail repairs . If you have a emergency problem like a washout or bridge repairs there will be no funding from the ofsc , we are expected to set aside money for such things from with in each district from your equilization payment.

If this is true I do not agree with this , so every district puts away some money but it may not be enough to fix a  big problem like wind damage or a bridge wash out like we had in dist 6 a few years ago, If thats the case trails will  suffer and close.

Again Iam not 100 % on this I was not able to attend our ffc meeting last week , but this was my take from our last district meeting

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From what I understand this goes farther than groomers . Clubs and Districts will be on there own as far as trail repairs . If you have a emergency problem like a washout or bridge repairs there will be no funding from the ofsc , we are expected to set aside money for such things from with in each district from your equilization payment.

If this is true I do not agree with this , so every district puts away some money but it may not be enough to fix a  big problem like wind damage or a bridge wash out like we had in dist 6 a few years ago, If thats the case trails will  suffer and close.

Again Iam not 100 % on this I was not able to attend our ffc meeting last week , but this was my take from our last district meeting

 

It may be the tough reality we will have to face... if the money just isn't there it isn't there. Those new bills are really tough to do on the photo copier.

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We were told this week that there will be NO groomer refurbishment money from the OFSC. So if it needs repairs you are on your own.

Thats always been the rules with gov money. Its for trails only---no groomer expenses. I guess we could tell them to stick it.

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Thats always been the rules with gov money. Its for trails only---no groomer expenses. I guess we could tell them to stick it.

 

I'll take whatever money they want to give me regardless of what restrictions they want to put on it.

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From what I understand this goes farther than groomers . Clubs and Districts will be on there own as far as trail repairs . If you have a emergency problem like a washout or bridge repairs there will be no funding from the ofsc , we are expected to set aside money for such things from with in each district from your equilization payment.

If this is true I do not agree with this , so every district puts away some money but it may not be enough to fix a  big problem like wind damage or a bridge wash out like we had in dist 6 a few years ago, If thats the case trails will  suffer and close.

Again Iam not 100 % on this I was not able to attend our ffc meeting last week , but this was my take from our last district meeting

if we look at it from an other angle, the federation takes money for insurance, administration and groomer replacement. If the rest goes back to the districts, then that means we need to create our own accounts in our general ledger and put money in them from each payment from the federation. It makes sense, and there is government money for infrastructure, it is allot of work to get and yes we must have money up front to get it, but it is there. I'm not sure it is all bad, it will definitely curb spending and force everybody to be more efficient.

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I would not count on any provincal funding past this year. Was told the province has no plans to put any money towards snowmobiling for the next four years. :icon_doh:

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ya, no doubt, and they should probably cut back in places where they get no return..........13% of 1B + ain't no chump change. No politician has ever struck me as being overly bright or really worried about the well being of anybody else, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they won't put a little into something that has substantial returns, also keeps many employed.

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Not sure why your guys are already complaining about refurbish money. Last year was a very good year and all payments to the districts under FFC was great. If your club still can't survive, maybe it's time to look at your clubs expenses. In my opinion, if there are clubs who were in the red, it's time to reorganize because it will not become better in the future.

Thanks

Greg

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Does anyone actually know how many clubs were in the red after this past winter?

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All fine and dandy Greggie but getting back on track...where do clubs come up with $200k for a groomer ( or a large part of) How much "fat and waste" would a club have to trim to save for a groomer...and a low snow short season kills equalization payment?

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From what I've heard it sounds like Haliburton was very tight on funds last year. From the sounds of things we may see less grooming this year at a lot of clubs.

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If the district is the pse, it is imperative to have good club representation at district. All the money flows through the pse. Every pse should have been paid for their grooming last year, if the information was submitted properly and groomer logs where filled out properly there should have been very little loss. I don't know what we at d5 got for a final payment based off groomer logs as that payment was after our final district meeting, but that is the only one that may have been short, and it should be no different for any other district.

If clubs came up short this past season, you better get to district and find the problem. Or if the said club is it's own pse, you better figure out where the shortfall is. I would imagine it would be in data submission.

I did hear that groomer logs where a problem province wide, I am hopefull the logs will be revamped to give the operators more room to fill out the required info.

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If the district is the pse, it is imperative to have good club representation at district. All the money flows through the pse. Every pse should have been paid for their grooming last year, if the information was submitted properly and groomer logs where filled out properly there should have been very little loss. I don't know what we at d5 got for a final payment based off groomer logs as that payment was after our final district meeting, but that is the only one that may have been short, and it should be no different for any other district.

If clubs came up short this past season, you better get to district and find the problem. Or if the said club is it's own pse, you better figure out where the shortfall is. I would imagine it would be in data submission.

I did hear that groomer logs where a problem province wide, I am hopefull the logs will be revamped to give the operators more room to fill out the required info.

If the club is its own PSE they are guaranteed 30% of their sales. The district receives equalization payments from OFSC which is to be distributed to the clubs. OFSC bases the equalization payment on grooming hours and trail length but the district can set up its own rules for distribution within the district. In our district they decided to split the money evenly amongst all the clubs even though we are twice as large as the smallest club.

 

It is also tough to go to the district to rectify the problem when a grooming association has the majority of votes and votes as a uniform block.

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If I understand this correctly, that is why our club would really like to see the OFSC "guidelines" that were supposed to be created, to ensure that districts distribute the money to clubs according to grooming hours and trail distances, which, as I understand it, are the measures that formed the basis of the payments from OFSC to the districts.

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I'm not sure how it works. I assume every club functions somewhat differently in terms of how they run their offices, marketing, equipment repairs, fund raising, partnering with businesses, working with towns regarding staging yards, etc. But I thought the equalization payment was earmarked for grooming costs. I was under the impression that "guidelines" were supposed to be created, but as far as I know this has not yet happened.  I'll be the first to admit, though, that I still have a lot to learn about how things work in this fun sport of ours.

 

 

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Does it not depend on what the Club's expenses are including grooming fuel, wages and Administration costs? 

There is an administration component (part of the equalization) for the district but not a club. There are limits on what a club can spend on administration but no funding. The idea of taking groomer hours and trail length into consideration basically is taking things like fuel and wages into consideration. Of course when a district divides the equalization payment into 11 equal parts it throws grooming costs as a determining factor out the window. Based on grooming hours and trail length within our district we should get 14.5% of the equalization number (this is also what we received prior to FCC) but we only received 9.09% (a short fall of $19,000).

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Grooming hours and trail length makes sense for a payment basis. It is a fair and equitable means of distributing available funds. Clubs with more trails or more grooming get more than clubs that don't groom much or don't have many trails. Then it's up to the individual clubs to use these funds efficiently. A club with volunteers doing most things will do well under this senario, whereas a club that pays for all functions will be in trouble. An inefficient club with out of line expenditures and costs compared to other clubs in a district shouldn't be rewarded with additional funds, they should find ways to control their disproportionately high costs.

 

EDIT: From what I've read here and on other online sources it sure sounds like D7 didn't distribute their funds equitably and Snowcrest got screwed.

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If the club is its own PSE they are guaranteed 30% of their sales. The district receives equalization payments from OFSC which is to be distributed to the clubs. OFSC bases the equalization payment on grooming hours and trail length but the district can set up its own rules for distribution within the district. In our district they decided to split the money evenly amongst all the clubs even though we are twice as large as the smallest club.

 

It is also tough to go to the district to rectify the problem when a grooming association has the majority of votes and votes as a uniform block.

Does your club groom, or does the association groom your trails?

There is no doubt that there will be learning pains for some districts. You still have to have good club representation or the issue will never get rectified. All I know is if your voice isn't heard, change to help your club won't happen. I am sure things will probably change in most districts as this whole thing is a learn as we go. I still think this will be a good way of dispersing money, as long as the districts work with all their clubs.

One of the biggest things I have picked up from being involved with this stuff is, you get way more responce from asking questions and being involved in debates at the district meeting then you will ever get from a phone call to any director from the district. If you have valid points, people are going to back you.

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Our club (Snowcrest) grooms our trails. We thought it would be fair if we were to receive a percentage of the district equalization payment that corresponded with our percentage of the district's grooming hours and trail distances (around 14.5%), but that was not how it worked out (9.1%). We also groomed portions of the association's trails a few times last winter, when they had issues. I am fairly new to this type of sledding politics, and there may well be other ways of looking at this situation that I don't know about, but let's just say that some members of our club felt it was not right. In any event, we want to get along with our neighbours, and  I assume they must have had good reasons for dividing up the money equally among the 11 clubs. It's just that it did not work out they way we thought it should. In my novice opinion this type of disagreement probably happened in other districts also, and it might be better if the OFSC was more explicit about how the equalization money is supposed to be distributed.

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