The Haines Ski and Hike Club is looking to the Haines Borough for help in expanding its winter track-setting operations.
Club members approached the assembly last week asking for the borough to contribute matching funds for a $4,000 grant the group could receive to purchase a Ginzu 84-inch groomer and track setter. The grant is from the Alaska Ski Education Foundation in Anchorage.
Ray Staska, who sets and maintains trails for the club, said the groomer would allow the club to set track beyond its current operations, which include tracks near 25 Mile Haines Highway, the golf course and along the Chilkoot River. With additional equipment, the club could also set track for skate skiing and get tracks at Chilkat State Park and the Kelsall River.
“We’ve got the ability and volunteerism to do it, but we need the equipment,” Staska said.
The club currently uses two snowmachines and a small track setter owned by Alaska State Parks.
Parks and Recreation member Jon Hirsh urged the assembly to contribute to purchasing the groomer, and pointed to Skagway’s trail system as an example of how the improvement can spur economic development.
“It’s not only for the people who live there – which is a small group of people – but the amount of people that come there in the winter to go skiing because of those trails is huge,” Hirsh said.
Though the assembly liked Hirsh’s proposal and seemed to support expanding ski trail systems in the borough, the group didn’t vote to contribute $4,000 in matching funds. Instead, it voted to “direct the manager to find a mechanism to develop ski trails within the community.”
Assembly members Debra Schnabel and Diana Lapham expressed concern about whether it would be unfair to give money to one nonprofit when the other nonprofits are made to apply for funding from the “community chest” pot of money set aside for nonprofits.
“It would seem to me that our appropriate response is to direct them to make an application to the community fund like many other nonprofits do,” Schnabel said, though she also acknowledged the borough could just buy the equipment itself if it thought developing trails was a good investment for the community.
Lapham also said she just wanted to be “fair and equitable” to all the nonprofits, though assembly member George Campbell pointed out spending money to set ski trails is different than giving money to nonprofits like Haines Little League.
“What sets this apart from Little League? Anybody that wants to can go out and ski these trails absolutely for free,” Campbell said.
Manager David Sosa has put together an interdepartmental group to look at funding sources for purchase of a groomer and how that would affect the local economy and winter tourism. Sosa asked the group, which new tourism director Leslie Ross will lead, to compare and contrast several options, including borough ownership and purchase of the groomer.
The findings will be presented to the assembly Tuesday.