Morning Read I: Snowmobilers praise Finch, Pruyn easement deal
The Glens Falls Post-Star is reporting that snowmobilers are “ecstatic” over 89,000-acre Adirondack easement deal purchased late last year by the state of New York.
The deal was engineered by the Adirondack Nature Conservancy and includes about sixty percent of land that the green group acquired from Finch, Pruyn as part of a $110,000,000 deal.
New York state paid $30,000,000 for recreational easements. This from the Post Star.
Overall, the state easements open nearly 30 miles of snowmobile trails to the public, including routes from Newcomb to Long Lake and Indian Lake to the Moose River Plains, and a 15-mile trail from Indian Lake to Newcomb and Long Lake, according to The Nature Conservancy, which helped develop the plan.
Other effects of the easements include new public access to High Nopit Mountain in Bolton and English Brook in Lake George; opportunities for camping in Stony Creek; and camping, hunting, fishing and paddling on the 2,000-acre Lake Desolation Road tract that includes Archer Vly, a lake in Greenfield, according to The Nature Conservancy.
Read the full article here.
Tags: adirondacks
I’m sure they’re happy. But- there was already a trail from Long Lake to Newcomb that ran along 28N. Snowmobilers have been traveling from Indian Lake to Cedar River and on to Moose river for decades via 28 and Cedar River Rd.
IMO this is an attempt to justify a $30 million dollar boondoggle by showing that one special interest group is happy. Why not open State Forest lands to snowmobiles? That wouldn’t require new funding.
“”In some cases, where all we purchased for instance was a snowmobile trail, that’s all the public can do there. Those lands will still be posted against hunting and fishing and trespass,” Martin said.
“When we open up hiking trails on the property, we’ll put up signs on those trails that say the public needs to respect the private property owners’ rights, and that it’s only the trail that’s open or only a particular campsite,” he said.”
Good luck trying to enforce any of this with DEC staff reductions. Also, where will the money come from to build the trails that don’t yet exist?
Also, Brain, the upfront cost for this was 30 million dollars. What are the ongoing tax payments and maintenance costs? Any idea?
Thanks.
As well as upfront costs, what about costs that continue forever and ever! employees, taxes, maintenance, enforcement? The SNY can’t keep up with what they have, never mind something new. I manage conservation easements, the SNY has been crying the blues about lack of funds to fulfill their current obligations, how can they commit to more? I just don’t understand it!
I wonder how much a purchase like this really affects the budget.
Cost of this purchase / Total New York State budget = X / 100
Any of you want to do the math?
Dave,
It is ONLY 30 million dollars for the purchase price. We have no idea what the ongoing tax burden for the state as well as the maintenance costs will be. If you look at each single transaction of course it isn’t going to look like much but you can also look at it in other ways.
For example this easement plus the Forest Preserve acquisition to follow along with the taxes and maintenance would basically drain the EPF so there the percentage of impact is very high. Why should all the EPF funds be spent on adding additional land to the Adirondack forest preserve? Does the rest of NYS deserve and environmental protection funds, are there higher priorities?
Or how about this: How many teachers or state police will we need to fire to pay this initial 30 million? How many for the other Finch landss that will cost at least 80 million as part of this deal? How many more will we need to lay off as we make the tax payments each year?
The math isn’t that simple when you look at the bigger picture. If your only priority is adding land to the Forest Preserve than yes it is a simple equation. Don’t worry about where the money comes from.
BTW the left side for your equation is already a negative number, about negative 10 billion.
Gee whiz! Someone gets a benefit so let’s all complain they got theirs.
Fact! Yes there has been a trail off the Cedar River Road going from Indian Lake to the Moose and yes there has been a trail running between Long Lake and Newcomb but those were leased trails the towns had to pay for every year. Now they don’t and the money can be used for better maintenance.
The Indian Lake to Newcomb trail is new.
With these connections, all three towns will benefit with more snowmobilers coming to enjoy the connections and spend money.
Is all the intelligence in the Adirondacks limited to Hamilton County?
This purchase is about .02% of the budget. Even if you add on an unrealistic amount for maintenance, there is still no way something like this even begins to dent the budget.
If someone thinks the EPF is too small or should be used differently, that is a separate issue. I was addressing the notion that somehow not making this deal would have lead us down the path to the fiscal promise land.
Some of the reaction over this (and other relatively small state expenditures) is like getting spooked about your second mortgage and deciding the way to address it is to stop buying your morning coffee.
The very bottom line is that the state is broke and non-essential expenditures should be limited. Advocacy groups will say there program is still small to be cut. Well, 30 million here and 30 million there and pretty soon you’re talking serious money.
Pete, is all the greed in NY centered in Hamilton County? Let me put it this way, how many years will it take to recoup the cost, plus interest, plus maintaining the trails, through snowmobile revenue? I remember having a similar conversation with my step father when they had a business in Racquette and I was in Long. He was in favor of spending a ridiculous amount of money on something snowmobile related. I figured it out at the time and we would have had to have what amounted to zillions of snowmobilers spending nearly a million bucks over the winter to recoup the cost of the program. It’s just not gonna happen, especially with gas upwards of $3.50 a gallon and rising.
And I’m sorry Paul, but $30 MILLION dollars is still an enormous sum of money, especially when it’s coming from the taxpayers of already broke NY. This is a fine example of what amounts to PORK.
It would be quite awhile before you start talking serious money with that approach.
The math is doable… same equation as above. Figure out how many 30 million dollar programs or deals you would have to cut before you make even a 2% dent. It is a lot.
I have no doubt there are small programs out there that are wasteful and deserve being eliminated, but if you want to get the budget under control, nickle and diming small programs isn’t going to get you very far, very fast.
And cutting small programs that have a return on investment, in terms of bringing money into local areas, is especially misguided. We’ve seen a lot of that going on.
In the case of this deal, all 27 towns and municipalities where this land lies support the purchase. They are doing so because this will have a positive economic impact on them.
Heck, I understand the gut reaction to this problem, but eliminating a deal that amounts to .02% of the budget, has a positive economic impact on local towns, AND is being paid with money from the previous year’s budget… is the ultimate cut off your nose just so you can feel like you are doing something scenario.
Hey, a Danish pension fund is making money on this. Why didn’t New York buy into this through their pension fund? Then the money would just go around in a circle spinning off new jobs as it went? The beauty of the free market!
Dave, in that case, we’d be better off simply giving each town a portion of he $30 million (which IS a huge sum of money) and calling it done. I’m sure Long Lake, for instance, could maintain that trail for decades on better than a million bucks.
Someone besides these towns are making a profit off this taxpayer swindle. I don;t know who owed whom, but there’s always more to these things than meets the eye.
I don’t think $30 million is a lot of money. That stupid Superman Broadway show cost over $60 million. Many movies cost 100’s of millions. A couple Great Camps cost more than $30 million.
How much do we spend every day in Afghanistan?