RE: Questions From Trails Committee

This email contains a series of questions and requests for additional information that were posed by members of the Special Committee on State Trails Policy at the first special committee meeting on October 5, 2006. The staff to the special committee sent the questions and requests for information to Brigit Brown and Larry Freidig of the Department of Natural Resources staff and requested their responses. The remainder of this email consists of the questions and requests for information, and the DNR responses.

I have also attached the revenue and expenditure figures for non-motorized (State Parks), ATV and Snowmobile trails as provided by the DNR representatives earlier in the study process.

There will be an opportunity to ask the DNR representatives questions regarding these responses at the November 10 meeting.

Daniel W. Schmidt
Senior Analyst
Wisconsin Legislative Council Staff
1 E. Main Street, Suite 401
P.O. Box 2536
Madison, WI 53701-2536
608-267-7251
dan.schmidt@legis.state.wi.us

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Members would like to see a ranking of park budget size between Wisconsin and other Midwestern states. (Brigit indicated that this information was available through the annual information exchange or parks system impact study?)

http://naspd.indstate.edu/director/aix/2005aix/2005AIX.PDF - See page 30 for a listing of the budget of all State Park operating budgets as a percentage of total state expenditures.

2. Members requested information on the use of budget money by each user group -- ATV's & Snowmobiles in particular. (We have the Year end report information on the ATV and Snowmobile accounts from Larry and some general figures on park trails from Brigit via the budget people that we will likely distribute, but I wanted to check to see if there was anything else you would like the members to see on this topic.)

The only user groups that will have any separated budget information will be ATV and snowmobile. I have provided two attachments that show the amounts budgeted for both the snowmobile program and the all-terrain vehicle program through the last two biennia. I hope the appropriation descriptions give the folks a better idea how the money is distributed as a motorized program. I should add a bit of a warning on the year-end reports that I provided you earlier. While it's true that each report gives a snapshot of the health of a program at a given point in time, it can be misleading. The expenditures reported for the trails program correspond to payments made for projects approved in a number of different fiscal years, e.g., it takes an average of 2 years to complete and bill out a bridge rehabilitation project for either the snowmobile or ATV program. There is a tendency for people to assume that the expenditures correspond just to the projects you approved last year or the current year.

It differs a bit between the snowmobile and the all-terrain vehicle program. Our snowmobile maintenance agreements are written at $250 per mile. For counties that meet certain statutory thresholds, there is a program of supplementary maintenance payments. The statutory cap for snowmobile maintenance payments is $750 per mile and we have counties that regularly max out at this level, e.g. Vilas, Oneida. For the ATV program there is no supplementary maintenance program. Grants are written for summer maintenance (approximately 8 months of activity) at $450 per mile and winter maintenance at $100 per mile.

Please note that the amount snowmobiles and ATVs receive per mile from the grant program does not necessarily equal the amount that it costs to provide for these uses. Many of our trails have found that expense is greater than the amount received per mile. (E.G. the Bearskin State Trail)

There are not currently any reliable use numbers. I am working with the Dept of Transportation (Tom Huber) on purchasing pyroelectric (uses heat instead of motion) sensor devices (http://www.eco-compteur.com/) to gain better user counts. Thus far, we have not had a counting system (beside using people to do the counts, which is very expensive, and we have not done on any sort of meaningful scale) to get any sort of accurate count information. We are hopeful that this new pyroelectric sensor may be the answer. That said, we do have attendance numbers culled from a variety of sources that are reported for our properties. These can be found on the Internet: http://dnr.wi.gov/org/land/parks/reports/visits.html. There is no data available for snowmobiles or ATVs, either.

Snowmobile - 18,576.9 miles sponsored by counties and 707 on state properties for a total of 19,283.9 miles. For summer ATV opportunities we have 1,658 miles sponsored by local units of government (primarily counties) and 180.3 miles on state property for a total of 1,838 miles of trail. For winter ATV trail opportunity we have 4,074 miles of locally sponsored trails plus 133 miles on state property for a total of 4,207 miles.

[For non-motorized trails] Yes, please visit: http://dnr.wi.gov/org/caer/cfa/lr/stewardship/local/Local.html for a listing of grant programs. The department dedicates a portion of Stewardship each biennium to trail acquisition. We also do significant amounts of development work on state trails, much of which is through grant programs to our cooperative trails.

[For ATVs & Snowmobiles] The Stewardship restriction for "nature based outdoor recreation" in s. 23.0917(4), Stats., applies to the property development and grants assistance subprogram under Stewardship. It does not apply to the land acquisition subprogram used by the Department. Consequently, the Department could use Stewardship funds to purchase land for ATV trails, but not to develop the trails. However, Department acquisition with Stewardship would be contrary to legislative intent, unless the primary use of the property was nature based, and ATV's were a secondary compatible use.

The definition of "nature based outdoor recreation" in s. NR 51.002(19), Wis. Adm. Code includes multi-use trails where the primary uses are nature based (such as hiking or cross-country skiing), and motorized use would be a secondary use and allowed in a restrictive manner so it would be compatible with the primary uses."