8872-R1_MSA_October2024_Newsletter

From The Executive Board Secretary’s Report - Betsy Watson Directors Meeting - RT 11 Streakers - Limerick, Maine - September 17, 2024

up. People are getting started. Trail work is getting done. But the most important things that Mark mentioned are getting your grants in order. If you’ve got questions on those, reach out to someone in a neighboring club or your regional director, regional VP or Joe’s office to make sure you’re clear on what it is you are doing. Make sure you get that in because you’re not going to get paid back for any work unless you get in your grant in. Eastern Region Vice President, Eileen Lafland: I have my first Eastern Regional meeting set up for October 9 th at the Glenburn Lakeside Riders. More information coming for those clubs in that area. I’m going to try and do at least four different regional meetings this year. That’s the first one. With 75 clubs, it’s kind of hard to do them all in one spot. Charlie Hannington is working on one up in the Millinocket area. And we’ll also have another one in the Dexter area, so those three for sure. As far as Eastern Region goes, clubs are just getting started. There’s been membership drives, there’s been suppers. They’re on a roll. The November Directors’ Meeting will be at the Eastern Maine Snowmobile Club. And it’s going to be President’s Night. We’re bringing back President’s Night. It’s a great time, a great way to honor some of the presidents in our 285 clubs. And they’re the ones that get things done. Northern Region updates: A bunch of clubs did bridge work over the course of the summer, taking advantage of the dry weather to get some of those projects done. All but a couple of clubs have their packets in hand for membership and are starting to get going on that. Some of the northern clubs are waiting to get out in the fields once Potato Harvest finishes up. Clubs hosting events all across the county. The Caribou area has a pretty big event going on weekend after next, the Dust Bowl. Some new equipment starting to roll in from the grants. I know Prinoth was up here this weekend doing a display in Ashland and he’s starting to move gear out and get it in front of the clubs, get ready for the season. Central Region VP, Ron Nunes: In the Central Region, some of the clubs are out working. We’ve been doing some procurement on parts and pieces and that sort of thing. We’ve been selling Super Raffle tickets out of control right here in our area. We just had a local fair over here where it worked out nice. We had three snowmobile clubs from our local area all working at the same fairgrounds and displaying the Super Raffle sleds. All in all, everybody’s getting revved up. Western Region, Jerry Major: I attended two cookouts this weekend, Andover on Saturday and South Paris on Sunday. We’re going to have the trailer and sled down at a car show to sell Super Raffle tickets, then off to Bridgton the following day. Then to the Fryeburg Fair after that. The raffle sleds will be well-traveled. October 17th, we’re sending out our email blast. We’re going to have a Western Region meeting at the South Paris Fire Station for all the clubs to start working more closely together, coordinate our events, and that’s real work. The clubs are working hard on the trail to get the bridges going. Coastal Region VP, Matt Barron: Hey, everyone. I just want to welcome everybody here. I want to make a motion to accept Joe Walsh as one of my directors. Those of you that don’t know, Joe is always going above and beyond for the club. He’s always been my right-hand man. So, welcome, Joe. We’ll have fun. We’ve got some packets to deliver this weekend. I’m a little behind on packets. I do have some more left when I get out there, but I’ve been in the hospital. We were able this year to raise $2,500 from our annual T-bone BBQ cook-off, to

give to the MSA for the scholarship program. Everybody from the scholarship committee come on up here, Al’s going to take a picture. On behalf of the MSA Scholarship Committee, it gives me great pleasure to present this plaque to the Robert T. Lippincott Jr. family, Rt. 11 Streakers, on behalf of the generous and successful support and donation to the MSA Scholarship Fund, dated September 17, 2024. So thank you very much, Matt, Cheryl, Joel, the family. We voted on the way down the majority rule. We’d like to name the scholarship award this year in the name of T-Bone for the scholarship this year. So thank you again very much. Director of Operations, Al Swett: Super Raffle is doing really well. We ordered a bunch more tickets because we’re selling out fast and we’re giving out a bunch to the clubs. Along with the tickets, we have some posters also. So if you need any posters, let us know, we can make that happen. The show is coming along really well. Talked to a bunch of the vendors, which are coming to the show. They are all set, Talked to a bunch of other vendors, and waiting for them to get back to me. The vintage show is going to be bigger than ever. We just outgrew the space in the Civic Center. So we’re looking to fit at least 100 sleds or more in the back west wing. Chris Ring with the St. Albans Club is in controls of that. We still get calls through the office, and I just send them up along to him. If you’d like to be a volunteer at the show, we still have some openings. Give us a call, email us, call the office and we can make that happen. We’ve got all of our prizes now. We got the Alcom Trailer on Friday. Nitro Trailers is located In Pittsfield, Maine. In 10 years, they’ve quadrupled their business; He started out with a two-bay garage. Now he’s one of the largest manufacturers of utility snowmobile trailers, in at least the Northeast. Then you have Alcom Snow Pro, which is manufactured over in Pittsfield. They’ve just snowballed like a blizzard on a February day. It’s just incredible what they’ve done. Like Jerry said, those sleds are going all over the place. They’ve been in Lexington, they’ve been at Dover Foxtrot, Ashland, they’ve been, put some miles on them trailers... Safety Chair, Al Swett: So safety stuff, just be aware of what you’re doing when you go out there and groom your trails and build your bridges, wear the right proper gear. Pay attention, be cautious, look out for the other guy, make sure the other guy is right where it should be and don’t be throwing those branches down on him and cutting trees and so on and so forth. Wear the right stuff. Hopefully we get some snow this year so we can go out and do some on-trail safety checks. Those really worked well in the last few years where we did have a good amount of snow. We did a few of them. Safety classes in schools like, Millinocket, Midway, and Greenville. Funding committee, Matt Stedman: As Mark alluded to earlier, we’re going to go after funding in a couple of different fashions this season. The first one I’ll speak to is the Trails Bond. So this year in November, question four on your ballot will be, do you support the Trails Bond? And it’s $30 million over four years. So seven and a half million dollars of grant money available per year if it passes. 50% of that funding would be for multi-use trails. 25% of that funding would be for motorized only trails and 25% would be for non motorized only trails. The way that it’s written and structured as of now, the grant would be a 90% grant, 10% match. So a little different like your municipal grants that we do for trail work are a 70-30. This one is set up as a 90-10. So a lot less cash upfront for clubs to be able to put up. So as Mark said, James Cody, our lobbyist is on the steering committee for the campaign.

So he’s helping shape and fashion how they’re going to market that to people and helping with fundraising. Our association, as we talked about last month, has donated $5,000 towards that campaign to make sure we get the message out. We think this can be a big step in short-term funding for the next four years, hopefully to get some infrastructure replaced and improved and some trouble areas taken care of for clubs. So we’re looking forward to getting out, talking to people about that, getting them excited to get out in November and vote on that bond issue. The next step we’re taking is for some longer term funding to close the gap we will be meeting with Joe Higgins from the Snowmobile Program and James, our lobbyist. Joe, James, Mark, and myself set up a meeting for two weeks from now to nail out some details on what could be a great funding source that was brought to our attention. They passed a bill last session taking 40% of the sales tax from automobiles and putting it directly into the Department of Transportation’s budget. Brent brought that up to us last fall, followed that closely. So we’re working to figure out how much sales tax is generated from the snowmobile sales on an annual basis to try to mimic that bill and see what that can do to help close that funding gap. On average, the last 10 years between equipment purchases and trail grants, we’re missing about $3 million of funding from what Joe’s office pays out to what all of us clubs report. So we’re going to go after many different facets to try to close that gap over time. We need to have solutions that come in now, and we need to have solution for the short term like trails bond, and we need to have something that can be in place and set in statute over time that they can’t take away from us. That’s where we’re at. I’m happy to answer any questions either now or shoot me an email, call me, I’m more than happy to talk to anybody about it. Anybody have any immediate questions for Matt? Okay, thank you, Matt. Membership Chair, Eileen Lafland: As far as membership goes, the packets are out there. Let’s get those memberships coming back into the office so that my fingers can start typing in membership’s information. I’m getting a little bored at home, so get them sent back in as quickly as you can. And again, thanks to Bob and Lori for the online piece of it. Scholarship Co-Chair, Barry Ryan: The scholarship fund is doing pretty good. We have $1,706.12 in the savings, and its $60,060.05 in the CD account. On your tables, there’s a two-pager updating the scholarship activities as far as what we’re looking for to further the goals on that. So when you go to your clubs, please reach out to them and see if they have anybody that’s willing to further their education, whether it’s going to college or a post-graduate or adult ed, something like that. We can use the help of the scholarship fund. So we appreciate all that’s going on today, especially the Barron family and the Libby family and Ruth Livingstreet, because you guys did a great job at the cook off down here. Trails Committee Chair, Brent Spaulding: So the big order of the day is the snowmobile map. I started the process early this year, but we had some struggles with our data for the overlay, but Carl Morrison over at SW Cole did a fantastic job. We worked through a lot of smaller issues, and Carl sent that to the printer this morning and also Lori had revamped the entire front section from last year in a different format. Lori got that right over to the printer. And at 4:45 this afternoon, I got a proof of the map. I responded with a green light. So the map is underway. I asked for October 2 nd as the ideal date to have them done by that would

D IRECTORS MEETING @ RT 11 STREAKERS September 17, 2024 Mark Chinnock, Barry Ryan, Brad B., Larry Lafland, Betsy Watson, Jerry Major, Eileen Lafland, Matt Baron, Al Swett, Gail Ryan, Lori Hemmerdinger, Bob Flagg. SECREARY’S REPORT, Accepted and put on file in the office. Treasurer’s Report, Read, accepted, and put on file. President’s Comments – Mark: Epping Grass drags is October 11, 12, & 13, 2024. MSA will have a booth. We’ll be down there representing MSA and Maine snowmobiling in general. We get asked a lot of questions, regarding different hot spots in the state, and questions on the county. The Mass Expo will be on November 16 and 17. Okay, so some one of the biggest things we been working on is the funding issue. Matt Stedman will talk a little bit about that. We put together a funding committee with the MSA to try to come up with ideas to bring more money back to the clubs. That is the ultimate goal. The second part of that is James Cody, who is our lobbyist. He is spearheading the 30 million dollar trails bond, which could come up in the election in November when we all vote yes on four. Matt can talk a little bit about that. And the last thing that I’ve got is deadlines. I’m sure everybody has their membership packet from the MSA as well as Joe Higgins’ office. So, the ones you need to worry about right now are the Capital Equipment Grant and the Club Grooming Grant, which are both due by December 1 st . So they need to be into Joe Higgins’s office, at the Department of IF & W, Snowmobile Division, by December 1st. Along with that, in both packets, one from the MSA and one from Department of ACM, are two separate officer update forms. The one for Joe is obviously really important because if you don’t fill that out, send that back, you don’t get any money. The one for the MSA is equally as important because it ties back into the online membership, which Lori and Bob Flagg have been working diligently on to come up with a portal that works for everybody. One of the questions on that officer update form is how much do you charge? Every club is different, right? So we all charge different prices. Unless we know what you charge for a club membership, we can’t charge the club’s appropriate membership fee. So it’s really important that you turn in both of those officer update forms. To find the officer update form for the MSA, go to the website and go to MSA forms/officer update forms. Executive Vice President, Matt Steadman: Sounds like you guys got a great turnout down there and that the crews put on a good meal for you. So glad everybody could come out tonight. Like Mark said, everything’s winding Betsy Watson, Secretary 207-205-1559 412 Roberts Ridge Rd, East Waterboro, ME 04030 watson.betsy29@gmail.com

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