Gas Tax for Trails?

Those of you who attended the government trails symposium a short time ago may recall the chair of the meeting mentioning in passing, a notion of using provincial gas taxes as a method of funding trail-building initiatives. Not much more was said about it, which was unfortunate, as I thought that it would make a great revenue source. It appears that I’m not the only one to think this way; the governments of Canada and Saskatchewan had the very same idea some time ago and called it The Federal gas Tax Program and a partner project known as the New Deal Gas Tax Funding Agreement.

I like it! Check out their accomplishments to date; (I quote): “The Saskatchewan Trails Association encourages municipalities to apply for the New Deal Gas Tax funding to support local trail projects. Several municipalities have already successfully obtained grant funding to develop trails in their communities. Lumsden and Kelvington, for example, received over $22,000 and $171,000 respectively for walking trail developments within their community. Nipawin received over $28,000 for a walking path, while White City received $38,000 for pathway lighting”.

If that isn’t an excellent use of gas-tax revenue, I don’t know what is! As such, I’ve written several letters in hope of learning about Western options in the area of gas-tax trail-funding; cross your fingers, touch wood, keep the rubber side down and all that jazz...

Read up on the whole gig here;

http://www.sasktrails.ca/index.php#gastaxprogram

Andrew D.

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