VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012 VTGC Annual Meeting; 4/26/2012 Present: Sherry Winnie, Will Flender, Ken Hoepner, Alex Hoffmeier, Kate Hilfiker, Ry Parcell, C.J. Scott, Katherine Wrigley, Dave Hardy, Doug Weber, Dani Cady, Danny Hale, Noah Pollock, Amy Kelsey, Craig, Gray Stevens, Luke O’Brien, John A Call to order: Jessica R Going to try and keep us on schedule today and maybe even get us out a bit earlier. Will be making motions and anyone can do so during the meeting. Treasures Report: Amy K Website is now set up to have people join online via Paypal as well as join via check in the mail. Making sure those two talk is still something we are still starting to work out. Most of the money that has come in has been through membership enrollments now. VTGC now has it’s own debit card to easily do business online now. Trails Symposium was a small profit this year. Amy can provide a further breakout of any of these line items if needed. Touch briefly on the conversation relating to taxes and exempt status. Executive committee is now looking into these items and further work with an accountant to become a 501c3 tax exempt organization. If income is greater than $5,000 amount then we need to file. We are now at that point. Other benefit is that donations to VTGC would be tax exempt. Decision would be to file for the change in status. DH: should do cost benefit Could be cheaper for us to just file taxes in the long run. Certainly a step up in what we would need to do to make it happen and then to maintain it as well. Want to make sure that we do this in the most thoughtful way possible to not take away from our current focus. Will have to pay taxes this year; b/c of glitch but will not have to pay again next year. Really just picking up where we left off in 2010 with Justin K trying to take us to that next level. Will likely have something to report in our August quarterly report. Vote in new members of VTGC Board: Voting in Ry, Dani, and C.J. Will need 2/3 of the existing members to vote those people in. Danny makes motion to approve, adopt, whatever to vote in the new members! Vote was successful! Approve Minutes File: DH: I would like to say that I function best with email attachments; would be the preference to have all correspondence on email attachments instead of Dropbox. Group would like to agree with that. Ry will send out the notes as attachment and put on dropbox as well. Jessica will make copies of the minutes after a break and then we can approve them after the group has a chance to look over them. Committee Reports Membership: Dani Cady (Chair) Has handout of current members and an outreach list. Going through the old ways of tracking and managing and trying to update that to reflect new members and get everything on the website. Takes some time and some challenges related to data management and spam issues.
VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012 Reach out list is something that has been kept for a while (Amy K) and Dani would like us to see if the information is current or if there is someone NOT on the list please put them on. This is key. Would like to reach out to those people on the reach out list with a card mailing to get the process going. Would also like to invigorate the towns into signing up. Biggest issue right now is working through and getting familiar with website. Outreach: Ry P, Amy K, Kate H, Josh R, Jess R, Walter O, Luke O attach my notes here JR: Reference the MOU for Chairs. All board and executive committee members must serve on a committee. Chairs need to be executive committee and need to facilitate the required number of meetings. So there are some specifics surrounding the chair position so it will need to be a board or executive member sitting as chair. Anyone that it really speaks to...get in touch with Ry Kate will get in touch with Dan Kayhill. Ask him if he is serving on the Governors Conference on Recreation and if he knows anyone who wants to participate in our symposium. SW: VTGC was asked to participate in the Governors Conference on Recreation in a trails tract. She served on the governor’s conference committee...she was a point person between. DH: who puts out the newsletter? RP thinks that it is the secretary. JR: It is the Outreach Committee who takes care of the newsletter and updates. DH: It is important for someone to disseminate information and update the website. It is important for the VTGC to get information out to the public. But it may not be the best fit for the outreach committee to handle all information management and the symposium. LO: a good first newsletter would be to talk about the symposium....content, etc to get people interested and solicit some ideas. Also, you could talk about last year’s symposium as the first newsletter. JR: Newsletter posting and emailing would be easier with Mail-chimp. Last newsletter came out in January. Action item: Luke, Jessica, and Walter could take on the first newsletter...couple it with the membership committee outreach....in September. Amy is interested in helping with next newsletter. Should we be sending out paper copies? Seems like we should be printing them and sending those hardcopies. Also, it is a good way to reconnect with old members. Dave Hardy: brochure about upcoming event that gets excitement going. also have some membership info on there. Brochure is better than a newsletter....less work. SW: also a good time to have membership organization talk about projects 2-4 newsletters a year....need one before symposium Should the outreach committee be in charge of the website? Is there a news page; yes and each member gets their own news page to put their updates up; that is then linked to their own page and the greenways council page. Do we track with Google analytics? Yes we track and look at those things. We also get good traffic on our Facebook pages.
VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012 Follow Ups: talk through what the Outreach Committee manages...is that the best fit and should other things be delegated out to other committees or a new committee.
ANR Relations: Jessica Ricketson, Walter (Chair), & Dave (potentially Alexis) Purpose is to gather info from membership about priorities through info gathered in surveys. Our survey system is solid in that we get one out every couple to few months and are linked to website and go out via email. Really important in gathering information. Amy K has upgraded our account so we could gather more information from greater than 100 people. We now have capacity to gather all the data that comes in to us. Results of what the council should focus on in the next year survey: 140 respondents user group associate with: 58.6 OHV, 32.1 paddler, 52.1 hiking 27.9 x country skier, 31.5 snowmobilers, 7.1 horseback Based on Survey, these were the areas of highest priority (in order of most to least) 1. Creating a statute granting incentives for landowners to allow public recreation trails and campsites on their property. 2. Reforming/refining the trail permitting 3. Raising the $370,000 cap on the Vermont Gas Tax moneys that are currently devoted to recreation trails 4. Funding a study focused on the importance of recreation trails on Vermont’s economy. 5. Creating a full time state wide recreation coordinator. 6. A direct link to funding for recreation trail construction/maintenance and the user-groups, for example a tax on recreational items 7. Funding a study focused on the importance of recreation trails on the health of the people of Vermont Other Comments/Priorities from the Survey: Survey was not fair! I was only allowed to use each slot once!! 1-7! This survey will NOT be accurate!! Reallocate state and federal grant monies (de-monopolize VAST from these funds) to establish a state wide motorized vehicle trail system for (OHV) Less welfare in VT, and move some of the money to establishing ATV trails as many states do. Most important of all, ATV access for people with disabilities Open old trails and logging roads already on state lands to all of the public License all boats with or without motors Survey doesn't work if you want to check two in the same column. Change Current Use program to forbid posting of land in current use. Funding currently seems biased towards non-motorized and VAST. The gas tax is funding this program; I'd like to see more options for OHV such as off-road motorcycles and ATV's. I hike, snowshoe, and ski, but I also like to ride off-road in the summertime on dirt bikes and ATV's and those options are very limited, and not allowed currently on public land...... The most important thing to me is the equal right to enjoy my chosen form of recreation. Specifically off road motorcycling. I know of no state OHV trials that I am allowed to use. Until there are I'm not sure it matters to me if there is a state wide director, if the $370 k cap is raised or anything else in this survey. I'm a tax payer that is not benefiting from a state wide trail system. I would be happy to pay for an ohv permit for access to ohv trails that include off road motorcycles
VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012 These are guesses as I am not sure I understand the impact of all these items As a comment, trails for responsible (reg, insured), QUIET, and sustainable off-road motorcycling is a priority in most OHV motorcycle clubs. Including multi use areaOpening Vermont State Lands for ATV use Opening State Lands to OHV Trails Study on how many people take part in individual activities. Study on ATV impact to Vermont Economy. You need to focus on ATV's. Snowmobiling is a dying sport- with this winter as an example. There are hundreds of people going to NH over Vermont to ride and camp and spend money. Open up access, make some campgrounds ATV accessible SW: who Develops questions and who gets it? Executive committee develops it and it gets sent to distribution list. Big take away to users is that we want to be a forum for orgs and communities to use their voice to ANR and FPR in the fall to make changes happen and feedback go to people. Really want to broadly spread the survey to get the most information possible from members and membership organizations/communities. JR: wants to solicit information from the group about how to even more specifically target people to answer the survey questions. DH: will you continue to send it out to the entire distribution list? Yes. Last survey wasn’t really clear on what the survey was all about...would be a good idea to make that clear and have a couple sentences explaining it so it could easily be forwarded. Have a timeline with Commissioner of Parks to discuss these things and ensure they end up on the legislative agenda. Have also been talking more about the gas cap tax. Chapin has really took the lead for that and how to craft the language for next year’s legislative agenda. Need to consult attorney about having tax incentives for private landowners and how it shapes out in the long run to avoid potential lawsuits with users. Danny H: Tiered incentives would be something to consider b/c tax incentives would ultimately affect the amount of tax revenue coming into the state. WF: should really focus on getting the existing information and systems out to the public first. If people don’t know what we have available to them then we should first educate them on what they have options with. There is so much Landowner Liability information out there but clerks aren’t getting it to new landowners and existing landowners. JA: we should also look at easing the process of getting easements on their land. You can use Rec Trails funds for obtaining easements. DH: easements have the potential to lock the land out to larger user groups and exclude some user group. Mostly exclude rather than include us. We shouldn’t reward people for closing land off to Vermonters...we should reward people for opening their land up. Dave Hardy: Easements do not have to exclude people or use from the land. They just need to all be written specifically for that particular use. JR: we did not enter easements onto the survey but maybe we should. Yes, it is an existing incentive! Series of Surveys Preview: go down list of priorities and craft those surveys to address those. Incentives, gas cap tax, and reforming and refining trail permit process--> would like to reach out to members and member
VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012 orgs to help craft the content and questions in those surveys to best ask the right kinds of questions and focus on the issue concisely. Should have questions at the end of survey (if numbers are greatly larger) to make sure that the larger group answering the survey questions dictated by the first group to confirm those are still the issues they want to learn/talk/provide feedback for. JF: Looking for new members and also to utilize people’s expertise as the topics form. AK: Ask very directly at the end what each person thinks the biggest priority is: Allow space for them to type up that question. LO: sounds like there is a disconnect between what people want to know and what we present at the symposium. We should factor into trail symposium the results of the survey so we can have a direct line and place to try to best answer/address these questions. Brief debrief of card room; people found it useful to be there and decided that it would be beneficial to go back to the card room next year if a slot opens up. We are on the wait list. Would like to continue having handouts, an informational board, and things to pass out to people to take home with them to read further about. Jess found it helpful to have a quick and to the point “elevator speech” about key points to ensure we maximized the short time we had with key individuals when they stopped by the table. Fundraising: Chapin Spencer Chapin is not here. Committee is related to the gas tax initiative. Also, will focus on fundraising after the tax is done. Nothing has been pulled together for this session. Review the Membership Organization MOU: Jessica Ricketson Certain types of memberships have certain types of expectations. The MOU reflects where we think these levels should go in the future. This is a draft of the MOU. Helps line out what orgs can bring to the table to help the VTGC and Vermont Trails through their support...both time and money. Our goal is to have a very clear MOU identifying the expectations of members to aid the Council in establishing realistic goals Most of us are happy going to meetings and participating on phone calls but want to be careful to not build something we cannot support. Is all of this chasing volunteers away? If you or your org put in more time and energy what is your incentive to do so? This document seems like it could push volunteers away as it seems like a lot of commitment. Really like the background section and that something is being given to members. It would be nice to see an open space in the document for the potential volunteer/supporter to list the things they could see themselves doing to support the council. Then you would have specific action items or things the potential volunteer is willing to help out with. The more specific they can be with what they would like to do, the better. Very commitment focused and not asking the volunteer/member questions about what they want to do. Should ask in there somewhere what you want to do. Goes from being a requirement to a wish list. Tone should be changed to be more inclusive and member/volunteer driven. Tone seems very businesslike and contractual. Ask about past, present, and future commitments open for people.
VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012 Don’t want to overcommit people to specific tasks, hours, emailing, etc by signing this. Should try to have it encompass the flexibility that serving with VTGC can offer. Personnel Time: ask about how much time the org currently gives to VTGC and how that impacts them. Should effectively utilize the information about our members and membership orgs about what they can give and look at how to reach out to those people for those things. Rec Trails Funding Guidelines: Sherry Winnie FPR Policy # 14 Encourages continued use of class 4 roads as public rights of way. FPR will not us RTP program funds for class 4 roads. It is the departments policy to use it for trails. Question has come up to explain when RTP can be used. Also question was where was the policy stating this? Commissioner sent the policy to Danny Hale. Most recently a ranking committee met to review grant applications. Question was raised about policy and making sure there is clarification for certain orgs; VAST as example which uses class 4 roads. We are all waiting for that clarification and anticipate it to be distributed to VTGC in the next couple weeks to facilitate continued discussion. Sherry has brought copies of information that was pulled from the Spring 04 newsletter from VTGC. This defines, by law, what the class 4 roads are and what trails are. Also responds to why it is important to keep both class 4 highways and trails, maintenance on them, info on classifying them, use regulations, and how to manage them. It all goes back to Towns to maintain, or not, their class 4 roads. Each plan has its own set of documentation. We should take the document home and study up. Policy seems older and outdated and doesn’t encompass all discussions that have happened since this policy was signed. We should strengthen it and incorporate the new information. VTGC is being asked to do specific things with this policy: how the council can support this policy. We can update it with assistance in review and updating of the section where we are mentioned. Our goal is to update this policy whether it be weighing in on changes or rewriting the policy to update it with current language and information. It was recommended to change the text of FPR Policy #14 to clarify that the VTGC should be notified if a town plans to reclassify a Class 4 road. Symposium: Ry Parcell Ideas Generated for workshops, etc: panel presentations easement information shedding light on Landowner incentives already on the books. Charge 35 bucks and it can double as membership fees. Jennifer Wait: National Park Rivers and Trails person. She will help you cultivate your project. Works out of the MBRHP: Kate is going reach out to her. How to operate and utilize ATVs to get materials to the worksite How to get tools to the site Landtrusts Town forest people We should also have a more administrative focus for those people as well. Should have a brochure as well to distribute to people before about goals of symposium as well as a newsletter for people to take home with them. It is necessary to identify a chair for this committee to support and coordinate the development of the Symposium.
VTGC ANNUAL MEETING 4/26/2012
Reach out to more people than the committee for future conference calls. Keep examples general so they can be applied to the widest variety of user groups...being too specific may leave some people out and not make it as valuable. Need to figure out how to incorporate motorized people and horses and snowmobilers. What are those common themes? Administrative things; permitting, landowner liability, funding, knowledge of regulations, easements, bring in land trusts/towns to talk about their process. Could VYCC get a variance to allow OHV use on the trails during this event? Guest Speaker Ideas Governor Deb Markowitz Megan Smith; travel and tourism Famous person promoting something.... Rusty SCORP Chapter about VTGC What is the best way to review our section? Use track changes on a word document and send to Walter. Do not know the timeline from Ed O’Leary. Will send out that information along with the document. Update outdated information/content and language. Should send as attachment and have people send their edits/tracked changes to Walter and he will compile. Next Meeting August 15th (Wed) Elmore or Branbury State Parks. Ry Parcell will reach out to Agnes Barsalow (Ranger at Elmore) to see if it is possible to have the meeting there in the new Boat House.