MORE INFO AS IT BECOMES AVAILABLE;

November 8, 2007

To All Snowmobile Grant Sponsors;

Dear Grant Sponsors,

This morning a meeting was held in Lansing, MI with the following people. Keith Charters, Chair Natural Resource Commission, Frank Wheatlake Commissioner, Mindy Koch, Deputy Director DNR, Lynn Boyd, Chief FMFM, Jim Radabaugh, State trails Coordinator. Other attendees were myself, Ken Scott, Lake Gogebic, Don Reed, Seney, Martin Cottle, Sault Ste. Marie, and Bruce Wood, Charlevoix.

The meeting was held to discuss the last item of the 2008 Snowmobile Grant Handbook. These sections were (b) Equipment Purchased 2002-2005 and (c) Equipment Purchased 2001 and older. Many of you expressed concerns for many different reasons on these two topics. The meeting was civil between all parties and each party gave their reasons and views on these issues. When all was said and done, all parties have agreed on course of action that may affect all sponsors differently. The participants at the meeting felt that this agreement will be workable for all.

I do not have the exact words in a document yet, the department is working on it now, this is my view.

On equipment purchased in 2002 -2005 the statement “MUST be traded in” will change to “MAY”.

If equipment is sold or traded the sponsor will get 100% of their original 40% or 25% investment returned to them. If the Sponsor has a note on that equipment for more that the % returned the program will cover that amount over the % returned.

On equipment purchased 2001 or earlier, the statement “MUST be traded in” will change to “MAY”. again when the equipment is sold the sponsor will get their original % back from the program. Any additional money received over the original % may only be spent on grant supported items.

At the conclusion of the meeting the department informed us that they had taken a poll of the sponsors to ask if they were going to sign the 2008 Grant Agreement. They told me that they were concerned that I and MSA were intimidating many sponsors into saying that they would not sign. I know that there is still a lot of confusion about this issue but let me state this.

I as Chair of the SAC committee committed the rest of the SAC committee to be the fact finder and eventually the negotiators of all of the issues related to the handbook. The SAC committee members put lots of their time and effort to doing what the majority of the sponsors wanted to see remedied in the handbook. When we heard of discontent in the sponsors and the threat of not grooming we all felt it was our duty to get the issues taken care of. Our goal is twofold, to make the Michigan Trails the best there is, and to do this make the Grant Sponsors feel good about what they do for us! We don’t intimidate, we respond.

Bill Manson
Executive Director
Michigan Snowmobile Association