Committee allocates Title II funds to Ranger District projects

The Mineral County Resource Advisory Committee has voted on which proposed projects to allocate Title II funds towards.

Title II funds are a part of the larger Secure Rural Schools Fund that Mineral County receives annually and are used to provide money for projects within the Superior Ranger District. 

“The reason it is so important for this community is, with the economy the way it is, it is really hard to get money down to the ground to make projects happen,” Superior District Ranger Tawnya Brummett said. “Everybody is under such tight budgets. This is a neat way for people in the community to come up with a project idea and it gets vetted by project members with really diverse backgrounds. They can agree on which projects will be funded, the work happens and they can see the money really hitting the ground.” 

Government officials told the ranger district to plan on receiving 95 percent of the funding they got last year as part of Secure Rural School, which amounts to $80,700. 

“When we knew that it (the funds) was authorized, and we found out is has been authorized for just one year, we were able to make contact with all of our committee members,” Brummett said. 

Brummett added that in order to sit on the RAC, potential members must go through a mandatory background check and getting approved can take over a year. 

“We were very blessed because all of our members wanted to come back again,” Brummett said. “So we came back and set a meeting time. We are on a really short turn-around and had to have projects received and voted on by the end of the month.” 

The RAC is composed of 17 members and they recently met to discuss and vote on projects that will be funded by the Title II allocations. 

“The neat thing about this committee is I think they were excited to approve the projects that were presented,” Brummett said. “At the same time, they were maybe a little disappointed that they couldn’t fund more. They felt the projects were really good and warranted funding, but obviously you can only fund what you can fund.” 

Brummett said that the project that received the most funds is the Superior District Trail Maintenance Project, which was proposed by Carole Johnson. 

“What that helps us do is fund a trail crew,” Brummett said. “It’s really the only way we get the money to have that trail crew. It’s three people working during the summer to clear those trails and it’s made a huge difference in the amount of trails that we have been able to open for public use.” 

Another project that received a large portion of the Title II funds is the Mineral County Backcountry Lakes, Campsites and Noxious Weeds Project. 

“It’s a partnership with the Great Burn Study Group,” Brummett said. “That’s an ongoing project that is a systematic monitoring of these backcountry campsites usually associated with lakes. They go in and they assess the damage or the disturbance in the area around the campsite.” 

Once the campsite is assessed the group does clean-up and noxious weed treatments.

Several other projects were also voted on to receive Title II funds by the RAC and Brummett said that some of the approved projects are beyond the estimated funds the district will receive. 

“If we either get additional funding or some of these projects don’t need the additional amount we can potentially fund a couple more projects,” Brummett said. “They have to be voted on and vetted by the committee so that’s why we went ahead and approved them even though we don’t have the money for them.”