Pasayten's Methow Valley Bulletin Board

All for limited time use of chainsaws to cope with the backlog.

David Bonne. The reason there are less trails now than 40 years ago has more to do with the FS budget and other factors than “FS neglect”. We used to have a much larger trail crew, but the FS budget is one that Washington decides to cut every year. Timber money used to help fund trail maintenance and other FS projects. More and more of the FS budget goes to fight fires instead of project money. Without the contributions of the Backcountry Horsemen and horse packers we would have even fewer trails cleared. The massive wildfires cause the need for many more trees to be cleared from trails. One option we have is to allow chainsaws in the wilderness for a couple of weeks in the spring, but there are people who find that offensive and oppose the practice.

Jingles wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 8:40 pm Same way pouring money into more mountain and fat bike trails would benefit a bicycle shop that rents, sells and services bicycle and related products.

We already have enough dam trails in the area

well I hope you're getting out to speak with voters then. Last time this issue came up in 2014, one of the issues opponents brought up was Okanagan County was paying Methow Trails something like $100,000 per year. The opponents were saying that MT support money would now fall on the property tax payers here. Look for the MAC MPD to partner with all kinds of organizations looking for Recreation dollars.

As stated before, empathy goes out the window when people are looking after their self-interest. I can't understand why liberals support a regressive tax. We know that self-interest justification like, it's for the children or it's good for the community, allows them to turn away and not see the effects regressive taxes have on exacerbating poverty.

In the Book "Divided Paradise", Dr Sherman calls this putting on the "blinders". The Methow Valley was her case study for the book. She details how newcomers to the valley feel good about giving money to support what they believe is good for the community and believe they are supporting the poor. The opposite is true as that disconnect isolates a lot of the Old Timers here.

Quote:

"Old Timers are tied deeply to Paradise [Methow] Valley but face a complex set of issues here. Unlike newcomers, who often have multiple types of economic and symbolic capital to help them navigate the challenges of rural life, old Timers generally have fewer resources to aid them in securing even basic necessities, including work, housing, and child care, as well as food and utilities."

It's obvious the well off newcomers who are proposing this Metropolitan Park District are just imposing one more economic barrier to those basic necessities.

Why not just tax the people that want this. Let them pay to support their dream. Take your blinders off.

My hope is that there are enough Old Timers that haven't been displaced out of the Valley and enough well off newcomers who understand the negative social and economic impacts that Proposition 1 imposes on the less fortunate and will vote NO.

Off topic but have to say something about trails. I recommend people try following animal trails(deer) or old cattle and sheep trails. Gets into territory most people don't see. But wait a minute-do I want the woods crowded with people using those kinds of trails?
And we are admonished to stay on the trails, yet cattle are allowed to roam all over the place. And with alot of the FS trails heavily blocked, those trails need to become passable again. I talked with the FS about some ideas I had for some new trails and they said they can barely(or can't) keep up with the ones they have.
Let them all go up to poor Maple Pass and pound the crap out of it.

Now, there just needs to be a benefactor to pay for a new outdoor pool and have maintenance costs taken care of each year. Even if it's losing money.
Can an indoor mega aquatics center ever catch up and pay for itself? No. Even with putting the burden on the property owners. I might be willing to pay something if everyone pays and that means everyone and not just the property owners.

But FOP are all over the place. "We might do this, we might do that in the future". So before a taxing district can be voted in, people need to know exactly how the money will be spent. And the FOP doesn't know exactly. They have an inkling.

Jingles wrote: Tue Sep 12, 2023 8:40 pm ...
We already have enough dam trails in the area

Do we? The only "dam trail" I know of is off Highway 20 to Ross Dam.

Seriously, though. What exactly is "enough"?

By one measure forty or fifty years ago we had far more trail miles. Decades of neglect by the USFS has reduced the total by seventy percent or so.

When I am out and about on weekends it seems nearly every trailhead is full of cars. Some are full on weekdays. Most of the nordic trails in wintertime also feature packed and overflowing parking lots. That to me argues that we need more trails and definitely more trailheads.

Same way pouring money into more mountain and fat bike trails would benefit a bicycle shop that rents, sells and services bicycle and related products.

We already have enough dam trails in the area

I'm not suggesting anything nefarious between government and private Partnerships they happen all the time.Another example is down in Oregon where a private company is now running the forest service campgrounds.

I'm referring very specifically to what is stated in the FOP feasibility study. Quote;

"Capital Funding: p. 72

"Partnerships – There is certainly the possibility of including equity partners in the project. There may be limits on the number of these types of partnerships that can established for the project due to competing interests. Partnership dollars could be received from other organizations as noted in the partnership section of the report."

And page 59

"As a new aquatic center becomes closer to reality, the opportunities for partnering will increase. A
well written partnership agreement will need to be drafted between any organizations involved in the
project. The agreement should clearly outline the capital funding requirements, project ownership,
priorities of use/pricing, operating structure, facility maintenance and long-term capital funding plan.
These agreements must be approved prior to committing to begin design or construction of the center."

Also consider that a climbing wall is already being considered as a MAC MPD recreational project. That would most certainly benefit a mountain climbing outfit and a place to employ off-duty/off season guides.

Same way pouring money into more mountain and fat bike trails would benefit a bicycle shop that rents, sells and services bicycle and related products.

Both you and FOP are using language that is confusing and not strictly speaking correct.

What you are describing gets into the murky area of "private-public partnerships". I'll just note that there are a confusing array of rules governing such partnerships (a lot of it comes down to conflict of interest rules and rules against self dealing). Those rules are only sporadically enforced but if there are a lot of concerned citizens watching what is going on I doubt anyone will try anything too shady. Also, how such stuff is handled from a tax or accounting perspective is Byzantine, and nobody in their right mind wants to tangle with either the IRS or the Varangian Guard.

The right way you administer something like that is having a not-for-profit corporation that is independently administered from both the government entity receiving the money and the corporations (and possibly individuals) donating the money. From my point of view doing anything but that should raise alarm. And by "independent" that means the not-for-profit is ran by a trusted third party with no personal or family connections to either end of the pipeline. That can be very hard to do in small communities like ours.

I don't see either North Cascades Heli Skiing or NCMG as being particularly great organizations to act as a conduit for passing money to the pool and see no way they could get any imagined "profits" back from the pool into their bank accounts. Unless they wanted to play very fast and loose with the law.

At one time or another, I've been at all three places in public-private partnerships. All I can say is that it takes a lot of work to make it all function and a lot more work to not run them improperly. And even there I saw a lot of "technical violations" where we inadvertently ran afoul of some obscure corner case in the rules. Because we were determined to keep our noses clean we did address those "technical violations" as soon as we were aware of them.

One thing that occurs to me. When or if something like this eventually passes (and I personally think some version of a public pool district will eventually pass, though perhaps not for many years) we should advocate hard for annual independent audits and have the results of those audits being available to the public in a timely fashion. Sunlight is a good disinfectant and a very good way to keep things clean is to require open books.

David Perhaps I'm using the wrong term? You seem to be talking about corporate takeovers whereas I'm talking about private Equity funding as a private/government partnership.

What I'm talking about is what is stated by The FOP study where direct Equity Investments by private businesses partner with the MAC MPD. Government and private businesses partner together all the time. Perhaps I'm using the wrong term?

A relevant example of this would be the non-profit Friends of the Avalanche Center who raise money and fund to support the Forest Service funded Northwest Avalanche. Center. (To make matters confusing the friends of the Avalanche Center now calls themselves NWAC also)

That money is used for various purposes such as education and paying NWAC field Observers who report current mountain Snowpark conditions to the Avalanche Center. Many of those paid observers also work as, you guessed it, Commercial Mountain guides.

Also consider that a taxpayer supported recreational facility or Bond is a good investment cuz the payment is guaranteed. If that Recreational facility supports your business, which is what the Mac is designed to do ie support all tourist industry businesses here, then that money is guaranteed with generally not risking a principal capital investment. The the trade-off for incurring Less Capital risk is a lower interest rate on your capital.

You do understand that I run a business right and use my money and physical labor too invest in this community since 1984.

I certainly would be interested in any law citation that supports your opinion.

Chris, I know you mean well, but "private equity" in this context does not mean what you think it means.

From Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_equity ):

In the field of finance, private equity (PE) is an investment fund, usually a limited partnership, which invests in and restructures private companies. A private-equity fund is both a type of ownership of assets (financial equity) and is a class of assets (debt securities and equity securities), which function as modes of financial management for operating private companies that are not publicly traded in a stock exchange.

Private-equity capital is invested into a target company either by an investment management company (private equity firm), a venture capital fund, or an angel investor; each category of investor has specific financial goals, management preferences, and investment strategies for profiting from their investments. Each category of investor provides working capital to the target company to finance the expansion of the company with the development of new products and services, the restructuring of operations, management, and formal control and ownership of the company.

Yes, there have been cases where Private Equity operations have taken over operating existing public infrastructure (usually public parking or toll roads) and paid a flat fee to the government that owns the infrastructure. Those stories rarely ended happily for anyone.

It would be very difficult for those businesses to do what you describe and (1) not fall afoul of the law, and (2) make any money. Bluntly, those two are almost mutually exclusive.

Most private equity folks are what I call "main chance" people: they look for low hanging fruit where they can make a lot of money for very little effort on their part. A pool in the Methow is seriously small potatoes and not worth their time. We've all agreed that it is challenging enough to figure out how such a pool would make any money in the first place. My own experience with PE is that unless the deal involves billions of dollars, they generally aren't interested. I really doubt that a Methow Aquatics Center is a billion dollar deal.

SOulman wrote: Mon Sep 11, 2023 3:48 pm
It is important to remember what the hired consultants said.

"The pool will likely be funded through a range of public, private, and philanthropic funding sources, but it is likely that debt issued by the MPD will be a prominent source of capital." p. 70 of the feasibility study

The other things that might help fund construction are as follows:

Capital Funding: p. 72

"Partnerships – There is certainly the possibility of including equity partners in the project. There may be limits on the number of these types of partnerships that can established for the project due to competing interests. Partnership dollars could be received from other organizations as noted in the partnership section of the report."

With Bo Thrashed and Blue Brady now taking control of the FOP Board as co-chairs. That places them in charge of the FOP's Methow Aquatic Center planning and will likely be future Metropolitan Park District commissioners at some point.

Both of these persons have a vested interests in their husband's. businesses. Bo is married to Paul Butler who owns North Cascade heli skiing Incorporated along with Ken Brooks. Paul purchased former owner Randy Sackett's share of that Corporation in 2005. Paul also owns, I believe it is a 25% share of, North Cascade Mountain Guides (NCMG)along with Blue's husband Larry Goldie, Josh Cole, and Leavenworth resident Jeff Ward. All of those NCMG owners also work for Paul's business North Cascade heli-skiing.

We now know that if Proposition 1 passes, which establishes a Metropolitan Park District, the plan appears to be to keep the Wagner pool operational in Twisp which will be supported by the Metropolitan Parks District, i.e. our tax dollars.*

Other recreational facilities such as a climbing wall gym and an indoor Methow Aquatics Center will be built at an undisclosed location. The FOP just won't say. My assumption is that facility will be built in Winthrop near other tourist accommodations and recreational facilities such as the ice rink and MT Ski trails. Twisp has little need for two pool facilities.

One of the funding sources besides our tax dollars could be, according to the FOP feasibility study, money from private equity partners which means that our tax dollars would be used to generate profits for any private equity investment in the MAC.

The question I would ask is, what and who's private [capitol] business will invest and partner with the MAC MPD? Whatever business partner that is they could excerpt control over our tax dollars, and as stated above, profits generated by our taxpayer funded recreational facilities will go to them.

As a voter I would want to know if that private investment [capitol] could come from Bo's and Blue's husbands businesses that could partner with the Metropolitan Park District?

No doubt that a Climbing gym located in Mazama would help with those commercial Enterprises. Are we going to be paying to support those commercial Enterprises with our tax dollars or any other private business that partners with the MAC MPD.

Anything is possible since taxpayers will no longer have control in any new or existing recreational facility that a newly created Metropolitan Park District, ie the MAC, chooses to develope or support. A Metropolitan Tax District can return to the voters to ask for another Levy rate increase over the .75 cents per $1,000 of assessed value. Other than that they can build and support what they want, where they want according to Washington state law. (see RCW 35.61.130 section 3)

It's important to consider these issues and any conflicts of interest that might exist. I'm voting NO on Proposition 1.
* Edit for correct word usage [capital ie money]