Covid-19 is further complicating divisive conversations about allowing all-terrain vehicles on municipal roads across the state.
Riders, eager to expand terrain access during the summer season, have been pushing for ordinances to legalize ATVs on roads leading to trails. Other residents, concerned about noise and safety, want to table the talks until Vermont’s state of emergency ends and public meetings can resume in person.
The debate has spanned the state over the last year, particularly in rural regions, and both sides have found it increasingly difficult to reach a middle ground.
Two towns — one north and one south — show the mid-pandemic pitfalls.
In Pownal, resident John Bushee, who grew up riding ATVs with his family, began drafting an ordinance two years ago when he was unhappy with legislation that limited ATV access to town land.
His ordinance, which proposed allowing ATV traffic on 21 town roads, was abandoned. The discussion was postponed with a decision to seek further public input on the issue. Currently, only five roads in Pownal are open for ATV use.
While the selectboard has yet to release a draft of the ordinance they are considering, board members have discussed opening all roads in town to ATV traffic.
The board would charge a fee for vehicle registration and mandate that each vehicle clearly display a registration sticker.
The fees from selling those stickers, the board says, would go toward enforcement of the ordinance’s noise and safety regulations, including one that prohibits back-and-forth riding on town roads.
According to about 30 residents opposed to the ordinance, now represented by an attorney, enforcement of existing ATV ordinance violations is lackluster.
“My road is just one road, for example, where we have speeding, noise, wheelies, pranks, and destruction of property,” said part-time Pownal resident Peter Hillman.
The ordinance also puts Pownal’s already-limited police presence in question. The Bennington County Sheriff’s Department currently contracts with the town to provide enforcement, but said it will not renew its contract with Pownal if the ordinance passes.
Attorney Merrill Bent, with Woolmington, Campbell, Bent & Stasny, represents the group of concerned residents, which calls itself Pownal Citizens for Safer Roads. In a conversation with the department, Bent said, officers told her that they do not attempt to track down riders after a complaint has been made.
As a rule, officers in police cruisers don’t pursue riders driving ATVs, which do not feature seat belts or protective enclosures, Bent said. Riders are also difficult to track down, particularly at night when many of the complaints are made.
Bushee said it’s up to fellow riders to police each other.
“What we’ve been doing is trying to tell the people who have been riding to start trying to police it yourselves,” he said. “There’s a good group of ATV riders that like to ride that don’t speed. They ride single file on the sides of the roads.” These people, he said, will be responsible for encouraging a culture that stays within the bounds of the ordinance.
A special session held June 2 over Zoom by Pownal’s selectboard emblemized the concerns of residents who would rather discuss the matter post-pandemic. The meeting was the first of several ATV-focused work groups scheduled outside of the board’s regular calendar.
Board members jump-started the agenda, only to be immediately interrupted by Hillman, who raised concerns about two of the selectmen’s alleged conflicts of interest, and asked why they had not recused themselves from the conversation.
“Can you please shut him down?” Selectboard Chair Angie Rawling asked the Zoom host, who turned off Hillman’s video and sound. “We are not on public comment.”
Later, Bent asked the board to address the conflicts of interest, the specific locations where road access would expand under the ordinance, and the board’s plans for enforcement. Another commenter pointed to a statement on the Specialty Vehicle Institute of America’s website, which says, “ATVs are designed, manufactured and sold for off-road use only.”
The board gave each caller three minutes to speak, then declined to address the comments, stating they were there “to listen.” The ordinance, they said, can still change based on residents’ concerns, though according to Hillman, the board has rejected calls for an independent task force that would include both riders and those concerned about expanding access.
Two board meetings scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday of this week were postponed after Bent alerted the board that different meeting times had been posted on the agendas and website’s homepage.
CAT-TV, which has filmed more than 230 of the selectboard’s meetings, was not scheduled to broadcast either of this week’s sessions, leaving residents with limited broadband access to tune in over Zoom.
In an interview, Hillman called the selectboard a “runaway train.”
“To expect people to see their government suddenly draft and pass laws, when your only opportunity to get informed and participate is to try to go through and get somewhere on Zoom for three minutes, to us, just stands the whole idea of democracy on its head,” he said.
Bent criticized the decision not to televise the meeting, writing in an email to the board that it appeared to be aimed at excluding the public from the process.
“If your position is that the pandemic poses some problem with following the standard practice as to public access,” she wrote, “then the best course of action is to table the issue until the state of emergency subsides, rather than proceed in a manner that excludes many Pownal residents.”
Rawling, the selectboard chair, declined to comment for this story.
If the ordinance passes, residents will have 44 days to submit a petition, which, if signed by 5% of the voting population, would be followed within 60 days by a ballot vote. The secretary of state will not allow electronic signatures — posing another challenge amid Covid-19.
“Everybody’s already organized, so we’re poised to do it,” Bent said.
For Bushee, the prospect of an extended timeline provides more reason to push the ordinance through quickly.
“By the time it gets approved, you’ve waited until August or September,” he said. “It puts it into where nobody’s riding anyway.”
About 150 miles north of Pownal, Coventry officials adopted an ATV ordinance April 20, after discussing the idea at a meeting in February and one in March. It was set to go into effect 60 days later, on June 19, and would allow the vehicles on all town roads.
But residents said hundreds of riders descended on the roads of the small Orleans County town the weekend of May 15, the day area trails opened for the season.
“I lost count after 200,” said Martha Sylvester, a regular in town politics.
Kate Fletcher, another resident, said she saw about 50 go by her home. When she tried to tell riders the roads weren’t open yet, one responded by flipping her a middle finger, she said.
“That’s just downright disrespectful,” said Fletcher, who also serves as the town’s assessing clerk and delinquent tax collector.
The debacle prompted at least seven residents to bring up the topic with board members during their meeting the following week.
One said ATVs had damaged her Class 4 road, which would require personal funds to repair. Another complained of the noise and asked officials to lower the speed limit. And several argued the question should have been put to voters.
The ordinance could be challenged by petition — like what happened in Newport — but the pandemic might make that difficult. So residents at the meeting asked officials to waive a petition requirement and schedule a town vote.
Chair Scott Briere wasn’t interested in the idea. Neither were board members David Gallup and Phil Marquette.
Organizers including Sylvester mustered 62 signatures, above the required 39, which has put a halt to the ordinance until a town wide vote.
They did so, safely, by sending individual petition sheets to people, who could then sign then and drop them off or send them back without having to come in close contact with anyone, said Sylvester. But she doesn’t think townspeople should’ve had to do that in the first place.
“I think the ordinance could’ve been put on hold, and the selectboard could’ve moved or made some kind of accommodation for the citizens of Coventry,” she said.
Fletcher said she would’ve preferred the question be put on Coventry’s Town Meeting Day agenda.
Town Manager Amanda Carlson said officials hadn’t considered it for the annual meeting warning but thought people would discuss it anyway.
“They were surprised when nobody brought it up,” she said.
The topic first came to the board this year at a Feb. 3 meeting, minutes show.
A representative of the Borderline Ridge Riders ATV Club — the same club that lobbied for ATV access in Newport — told officials that Coventry was the last town in the area without full ATV travel, which had confused travelers and prevented people in Coventry from accessing trails without a trailer for their vehicle.
Board member David Gallup said he’d support a trial to boost recreation in the town.
The issue returned at the board’s March 16 meeting. One resident said he hoped officials would rethink the idea and asked for more signage and law enforcement patrols.
After hearing from another opposed resident April 20, the three-man board approved an ordinance. Marquette said then his understanding was the roads wouldn’t be used for regular travel, only to access trails. Briere said the ATV club would be expected to map out the trail access points and encourage riders to only use roads to connect to them.
But none of those things was in the ordinance.
Briere said in an interview that he supported the ordinance as a way for “all residents to be able to get access to the trailhead.”
And having an ordinance would let the town regulate ATV use, he said.
Some residents were wary that Briere, the board chair, could benefit personally from expanding ATV use in town. He co-owns a snowmobile business in nearby Newport that also sells ATVs, parts for them and equipment like helmets.
But he saw no conflict of interest in voting for the ordinance, according to the Barton Chronicle.
“Even if I was to vote no, it would’ve still passed,” he later told VTDigger. “So it’s kind of irrelevant.”
He added that his family’s shop is already “as busy as we could possibly be” and that he isn’t seeking more business on top of that.
Leigh Curtis, vice president of the area ATV club, said Thursday he didn’t want to talk about the petition because he didn’t yet have all the details.
For now, residents await a vote date from the selectboard, which next meets Monday. The board has 60 days from receiving the petition to set a date. Briere said that because of the challenges of Covid-19, he believes the town may decide to mail ballots to citizens and have them return their responses.
“We’re happy to do whatever the residents of the town want to have,” he said. “If they want to have them open, fine. If they want to have just the ones the club needs open, that’s fine.”
Until that vote comes, the new ATV ordinance will stay frozen. Only some roads, already opened in past years, will be open for ATV travel.
Sylvester isn’t opposed to a trial run. The problem for her is in the process and the ordinance itself.
“There could be some adjustments,” she said. “But right now, it’s just straight chaos.”
Correction: This article was updated at 9:06 p.m. to clarify the rules of an ordinance that is currently in place in Pownal.
Read the story on VTDigger here: A tale of two towns: How Covid-19 is complicating ATV debates statewide.