Supervisors use
Forest Reserve
payments for trails
By Joe Naiman
The Alpine Sun
A Federal law which distributes logging tax revenue for local
schools and roads will provide $144,000 to the county this year,
and on Sept. 25 the Board of Supervisors voted to allocate
$21,600 of that money for acquisition of trail easements.
The supervisors' 5-0 vote also approved a
recommendation to seek legislation that would change the
distribution to allow more money to be spent on roads and
trails.
Prior to 2001, the Forest Reserve payments were tied to
logging activities and varied each year. The intent of the
program is to finance local schools and infrastructure in rural
areas. The federal payments are distributed to the states, which
then distribute to each county.
Half of the money allocated by the State of California
is earmarked for schools while the other half had been provided
exclusively to the county road fund prior to 2002. The
California allocation of half for roads and trails and half for
the County Office of Education has been unchanged since 1908,
and the distribution formula is the same for all of California's
58 counties.
In October 2000 President Clinton signed the Secure
Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act of 2000,
which was intended to alleviate the impact of reduced logging
activities. The act provided rural counties with an increased
and predictable level of funding for local schools and roads by
providing approximately $1.1 billion above pre-2000 Forest
Reserve payments over a period of five years. Congress recently
extended the 2000 act for one additional year.
The increased appropriation led to a January 2002 Board
of Supervisors decision to allocate 15 percent of the Forest
Reserve payments for acquisition of trail easements related to
local forested lands. That equated to approximately $12,500
annually, and over five years a total of $62,611 was
appropriated in the county's Capital Outlay Fund for trail
easement acquisitions.
The current allocation of 15 percent of the
extension-year revenue provided a higher annual allocation.
"That's $21,600 that we didn't have before," said Trish
Boaz, the chief of the Resource Management Division of the
county's Department of Parks and Recreation.
Boaz noted that the allocated money has not yet been earmarked
for specific easement purchases.
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