gator Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 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. Yes we groom our own trails. We are not part of the MSR Association. In the past we have also groomed part of MSR's trail that is difficult for them to get to (Kilty Switch to the floating bridge in Bracebridge) as well as helping out when they have groomers down. From your comments it is obvious that in your District there is not an Association that controls the majority of votes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 Yes we groom our own trails. We are not part of the MSR Association. In the past we have also groomed part of MSR's trail that is difficult for them to get to (Kilty Switch to the floating bridge in Bracebridge) as well as helping out when they have groomers down. From your comments it is obvious that in your District there is not an Association that controls the majority of votes.Well we kinda do in a way, Golden Triangle has enough votes with the help of 1 other club to control the show, luckily, we all get along pretty well for the most part. So far, we have never had an equalization payment, so we haven't crossed that bridge yet. Does your club get the money from your grooming hours, or does the district pay your fuel and operator wages? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gator Posted August 24, 2014 Share Posted August 24, 2014 Well we kinda do in a way, Golden Triangle has enough votes with the help of 1 other club to control the show, luckily, we all get along pretty well for the most part. So far, we have never had an equalization payment, so we haven't crossed that bridge yet. Does your club get the money from your grooming hours, or does the district pay your fuel and operator wages? We pay for everything. As I said before since the District divides the money in 11 equal shares our grooming hours and trail length does not come into the calculation. I am sure that if we were the smallest club in the District rather than the largest a diiferent formula would be used for the distribution of the equalization payment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 25, 2014 Share Posted August 25, 2014 We pay for everything. As I said before since the District divides the money in 11 equal shares our grooming hours and trail length does not come into the calculation. I am sure that if we were the smallest club in the District rather than the largest a diiferent formula would be used for the distribution of the equalization payment. Your district gets the equalization payment in a lump sum, or is it in three payments? I guess I assumed that all districts got 3 payments based off grooming frequency (actual work done) and I thought I understood that being over and above the equalization. Do you not have to submit groomer logs to your district 3 times during the season? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gator Posted August 25, 2014 Share Posted August 25, 2014 Your district gets the equalization payment in a lump sum, or is it in three payments? I guess I assumed that all districts got 3 payments based off grooming frequency (actual work done) and I thought I understood that being over and above the equalization. Do you not have to submit groomer logs to your district 3 times during the season? The equalization payments were spread over 4 or 5 payments to the district. These payments from the OFSC are based on grooming hours and trail length but the District can choose its own method of distribution to the clubs. Unfortunately our District chose to divide the money into 11 equal parts thus giving the smallest club with half the trails that we have the same amount of money that we, the largest club in the District, received. There was no additional funding given to the District. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 25, 2014 Share Posted August 25, 2014 IMO, your district could look at something a little different, my suggestion would be to ask for the 30% or a portion of the permit sales, so each club would get a portion of their actual permit sales. Ask the district to pay the fuel and groomer operator wages. They could also pay "in service oil changes". So basically each club is looked after for their costs to operate, and the district will still have money that could be either disbursed to clubs by amount of grooming hours, km of trails or what ever you decide. Or instead of that the district could set up a groomer repair account and put a portion of the money in there for repairs. There are many ways of doing it, but district representation is the only way you are going to fix your problem, and from the information you have given, I see there is a problem. Like I said earlier, I am not sure what my district actually got from actual grooming because I don't know what the final payment was, will find out this week. It should be over and above inputs, "fuel and wages", there has to be some money in there for repairs and trail maintenance "bridge repair, culvert, stuff like that". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blake G Posted August 25, 2014 Share Posted August 25, 2014 Snowcrest did get to keep the 30% of permit sales, as the club is a PSE. Thanks for your ideas, Wildman. Hopefully some things can be changed for next season. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 25, 2014 Share Posted August 25, 2014 I'm not sure if I got my point across as intended, I reread my post and it may be confusing. If the district kept the equalization payments, and paid operating costs for all clubs as the bills come in, everybody's inputs would be paid and there certainly should be money left over at the end of the season to be dispersed in some manner. The only problem with that is it may leave clubs short on money for repairs, depending on how many permits they sell and if they have not built up a repair fund for grooming equipment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faceman Posted August 25, 2014 Share Posted August 25, 2014 In the not too distant future all districts will have to re-organize their Board of Directors" in accordance with the Not For Profit legislations. I will use D9 as an example. There are 29 clubs in D9. Each club would have two represented votes at a District AGM (58). The current board would determine prior to this meeting how many "directors" would sit on the new reorganized board. The NFP legislation is very specific" there is no representation on the new board due to entitlement (i.e. permits sale, km of trails etc) . Once the number of directors has been determined the call would go out to the floor to nominate for the new board. Once nominations are received they would be voted on. If it was determined the new board should consist of 12 directors then the top twelve would sit as the new "Board. This whole process can go one way or the other . A large Association could be without a director depending on voting from the district delegates. As far as equalization payments, the monies are forwarded from OFSC to district. The district then determines payments. And Wildman is absolutely correct, proper documentation being submitted on time is the key. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 26, 2014 Share Posted August 26, 2014 We pay for everything. As I said before since the District divides the money in 11 equal shares our grooming hours and trail length does not come into the calculation. I am sure that if we were the smallest club in the District rather than the largest a diiferent formula would be used for the distribution of the equalization payment. Just out of curiosity, are you the only club in the district that is not part of the grooming association? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blake G Posted August 26, 2014 Share Posted August 26, 2014 Two independents: Snowcrest and Hill & Gully in D7. The other nine D7 clubs are in an association. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 27, 2014 Share Posted August 27, 2014 Elliotgroomer, as suspected, the federation keeps money for 3 components, insurance, administration and groomer replacement fund. Districts are on their own to work with the money given through equalization, permit sales and grooming frequency/km of trails. Blake G, from the discusion last night, the federation doesn't want to hand down guidelines, the reason is because each district has different needs and operate in different ways. One question I thought of on the way home was, where did the money go that was in the groomer refurbishment fund. Was it all used the previous year, did it get rolled into the groomer replacement fund or maybe it was put in the equalization fund. At any rate, if someone reading this is going to a ffc information meeting, maybe they can ask, just so we know. Something to watch is when they get to your districts financials portion of the meeting, there will be a $ amount of left over cash if you run efficiently. This will cause confution as you are led to believe it is in the district bank account, which I suppose in some cases it may be, but in our case it is probably spread between the district account and club accounts. It is the difference between total district money, including the 30% of permit sales and the total cost of reported operations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
02Sled Posted August 27, 2014 Share Posted August 27, 2014 The disbursement of funds under FFC as I understand it is voted on at the District level and alignment is obtained at that time by all clubs whether they are part of the grooming association or not. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 27, 2014 Share Posted August 27, 2014 yes, that is right. In most cases the assoc. has the majority of the votes. Not sure how things will work out. It won't be easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Big Pete Posted August 27, 2014 Share Posted August 27, 2014 Two independents: Snowcrest and Hill & Gully in D7. The other nine D7 clubs are in an association. And here in lies the organizational problem. The 9 clubs can do what ever they want regardless of the impact on the 2 stand alones. Assuming the Association is the PSE for the 9 clubs what if the by-laws were changed so that if clubs formed a grooming association, then the grooming association must become the PSE. The individual clubs within the association would cease to be PSEs in their own right. They could still maintain their identities but permit and trail accountabilities would pass to the association. Then you allow only PSEs voting privildges. In this case the Association has the same 2 votes and as the 2 stand-alone clubs. To me you now have a better balance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 27, 2014 Share Posted August 27, 2014 I like that Big Pete, but to change the by-laws, you have to vote on it, is the assoc. going to be on board? In my opinion, grooming associations don't serve a purpose anymore, as all money is running through the district. Lob sided districts because of grooming associations are not going to be efficient. From what I see, all clubs in the districts are going to have to open the books and accounts to each other, pool all resources, find common ground and work together. It will be a very tough sell at the club level, I can hear the screaming now. Right now is the time to start at it, and I say that because in last nights presentation, we where told there is 8.8M left over that is spread between clubs and districts province wide. That number is the difference between money paid out from the federation and the reported operation costs, province wide. The money is there, it needs to be put in place for repairs to equipment and trail infrastructure. There has been allot of talk over the years that we need more control, we have it now, can we get along to manage it is the biggest question so far. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blake G Posted August 27, 2014 Share Posted August 27, 2014 It's discouraging for our club to learn that we (Snowcrest) are grooming almost 15 percent of the D7 trails with only 9 percent of the D7 Equalizaton Funds. At this point I don't have enough information to understand why the other clubs figure we need about 60% of the amount they need, per kilometer or per grooming hour. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Viperules700 Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 It's discouraging for our club to learn that we (Snowcrest) are grooming almost 15 percent of the D7 trails with only 9 percent of the D7 Equalizaton Funds. At this point I don't have enough information to understand why the other clubs figure we need about 60% of the amount they need, per kilometer or per grooming hour. Why doesn't snowcrest join the association then. Hand in the grooming equipment, let the association take care of trail grooming. Just have to worry about signage, permission. Why countinue to struggle? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 Why doesn't snowcrest join the association then. Hand in the grooming equipment, let the association take care of trail grooming. Just have to worry about signage, permission. Why countinue to struggle?club pride, happy volunteers that love the sport and building and maintaining their own trail. Passionate people don't just whale on a keyboard, they live for their sport and club. You are suggesting giving up, that is ludicrous. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nith Valley Sledder Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 Why doesn't snowcrest join the association then. Hand in the grooming equipment, let the association take care of trail grooming. Just have to worry about signage, permission. Why countinue to struggle? You would have to be an active member of a club to understand. Kudos to the volunteers that are busting their butts to make things happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Greggie Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 Hi, In our District 1, we distributed the money on a fair way. From all clubs pse's in District 1, 90% was happy with the distribution rules we made. I was one of the FFC Equalization team member of 5. We took the forecasted equalization money, took away the cost to run the district office and this was the amount to distribute to all pse's on a fair way. We gave every club a max "paid" grooming hours based on 4 year averages. Also we paid to every club a fixed price for every km of trail. Every time the forecasted amount changed, we changed the "paid" amount for every grooming hour. So every pse received a fixed amount for every km of trail. All clubs groomed more then the "maximum" paid grooming hours. Because our forecast went up, every club received the same amount for every grooming hour and that "paid" amount for every grooming hour went up. All pse's kept their 30% of the permit sales. This way of distribution worked well for us and can imo work also for every other district. This year, we will most likely fine tune it a little. Thanks, Greg Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blake G Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 It is good to have discussions like this, to be exposed to different ways of looking at things. Snowmobiling is more complicated than it was when I was a younger enthusiast. It's better, too, though. In my first incarnation as an avid sledder, the complications had to do with starter cords and recoils breaking because of constant over-use, on machines that wouldn't start half the time. I think we changed spark plugs more often than we changed our socks. Now the sleds are fantastic, the trails are fantastic, and the social networking is fantastic. The problems are on a bigger scale now, but I guess that's called Progress. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
02Sled Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 club pride, happy volunteers that love the sport and building and maintaining their own trail. Passionate people don't just whale on a keyboard, they live for their sport and club. You are suggesting giving up, that is ludicrous. And how do you lose that? It's still your trails, you still build and maintain them. Grooming is grooming. We rerouted a trail last winter due to land owner concerns. The grooming association was not part of that decision making process. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wildman Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 well apparently the majority of Blakes club doesn't want to be apart of the association. Usually when you force volunteers to do something they don't want to do, they lose pride and they aren't very happy. I don't know the logistics of this association, if it takes control away from individual clubs, it can cause problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doogirl69 Posted August 28, 2014 Share Posted August 28, 2014 Two independents: Snowcrest and Hill & Gully in D7. The other nine D7 clubs are in an association. Hill and Gully is independent like Snowcrest. They are financially stable. The big difference is the admin costs. Its a Club issue not a District issue. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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