06 Oct 2018 Border Mail, Albury-Wodonga (General News) by Chris Young THE mountain bike park in Mt Beauty will be one of the major beneficiaries of more than $1.3 million in funding for community projects around the region. Projects in Bullioh, Mitta and Rutherglen have also been given the green light. Labor MLC Jaclyn Symes has announced the funding for projects around Mt Beauty, Bright, Yackandandah on Thursday. Funding for a total of eight projects has been allocated as part of the Pick My Project initiative. Ms Symes said smaller communities often did a tremendous job in advocating for their needs. Labor said we would give local communities the power to vote for the projects they wanted and small towns throughout North East Victoria certainly did the hard yards to attract the votes they needed to get their projects over the line, Ms Symes said. Im so pleased these projects will get the funding they need thanks to this grass roots initiative. It is unsurprising to me that small towns embraced Pick My Project and have been so successful, country people dont expect things to be handed to them, they are not afraid of a bit of hard work and they support one another to get the job done. The projects include: $200,000 for new community facilities at the Big Hill Mountain Bike Park in Mt Beauty $200,000 to extend the paved track at Alpine Shires Pebble Beach, making it a six kilometre round trip $164,000 for a new beginner mountain bike trail and trail head in Bright $94,000 for the Yackandandah Creek RecreationalTrail extension $200,000 for the Yackandandah Care Sanctuary $200,000 to restore the Rutherglen Scout Hall $91,300 to complete the Shelley to Tallangatta to Wodonga trail $168.700 for the Mitta Valley Mountain Bike Park The Pick My project program divided $30 million between more than 230 different projects throughout the state. More than 95,000 votes were submitted, with funding equally divided between Melbourne and regional Victoria based on the population of the six metro and nine regional partnership areas.