News

Our next meeting will be on Sunday, April 27, 2003 at Crossgates Mall. We will meet up on the 3rd floor in the meeting room of the Security Office. The meeting will start at 10am. The best place to park is upstairs by Pizzaria Uno and then just take the elevator to the 3rd floor. This is just an organizational meeting to make plans for the upcoming season. We hope that everyone will be able to attend.

In other news

Our Club Plates are finally ready to be distributed. I hope everyone feels that it was worth the wait when you see them. The cost is $4.00 each and they will be available at our party.

ATV abuses spark call for regulations

http://www.timesunion.com/aspstories/storyprint.asp?storyID=92918

ATV abuses spark call for regulations
Legislator/farmer wants unregistered operators subject to a fine

By TIM O'BRIEN, Staff writer
First published: Wednesday, January 15, 2003

With the arrival of winter comes a growing number of snowmobilers and
ATV riders adventuring across fields.

While most snowmobilers and many ATV operators respect private
property, others cause trouble for farmers and other property owners who suffer
damage from inconsiderate operators.

Property owners say the problem is especially bad with all-terrain
vehicles, but ATV enthusiasts say that stems from the lack of a public
system of trails for ATVs, similar to the network of snowmobile trails.

Rensselaer County Legislator Ed Swartz is seeking tougher rules for ATV
operators. He wants to implement a county fine for improper use of an
ATV and for operating an unregistered ATV.

Regulating ATV operators could have the same impact that rules imposed
on snowmobilers has had: make them more responsible, he said.

"The snowmobilers I know haven't had so much of a problem since the
1970s when the clubs were set up," he said. "On the other hand,
four-wheelers tend to tear up the ground a little more."

Swartz said people ride across his dairy farm daily. He allows them on
some parts, but posts signs prohibiting the vehicles in areas where his
farm would be damaged.

Still, he said, some riders ignore the signs and run roughshod over his
land. When they do, Swartz said, he doesn't hesitate to prosecute.

"When I do have a confrontation, I try to have it followed through to
the point where the machine is confiscated," he said. "I'm trying to do
a high fine, so it doesn't affect those people who are registered and
use their machines properly. It affects the renegades and
troublemakers."

George Mesick, owner of Gem Farms in Castleton, said some snowmobilers
use his property, but the ATV riders are more frequent and do more
damage.

"We'd probably give some people permission if they'd ask correctly but
nobody ever asks for permission," he said. Mesick -- who raises cows
and buffalo -- said the riders have killed portions of his hay field,
leaving a path off Van Hoesen Road.

He loses hundreds of dollars of hay annually as a result. "We had one
group two years ago went through one 12-acre hay field and really
ruined it," he said.

Since snowmobiles must be registered and have visible license numbers,
he said, they are less commonly ridden onto private property.

"The ATVs are much more destructive than the snowmobiles," he said. "In
fact, we have given permission for a snowmobile club, and they are very
respectful."

Alex Ernst, spokesman for the New York State Off-Highway Recreational
Vehicle Association, said $20 out of the $25 registration fee
snowmobilers pay goes into maintaining routes and providing insurance
for their trails. ATV riders are required to pay a $10 registration fee
-- but all of the money goes into the sstate's general fund.

"The snowmobile travel system is 90 percent on private property, but it
is permitted and they do have insurance. Those trails are put on a map.
They help people know where they can go and ride legally," Ernst said.

Robert Bryant, Saratoga county director for the New York State
Snowmobile Association, said snowmobilers were once considered
troublemakers.

"The snowmobilers tended to be renegades years ago," he said. "Then we
got organized."

Today, clubs like the Charlton Snowmobile Association, of which Bryant
is president, teach members to respect others' land.

"We make sure they all get a map when they join our club, so they know
where the trails are," he said, and new members are taken out for an
initial ride. "We try to make sure everyone knows where the trail is."

Members now know that if they fail to respect property, they put at
risk the almost 9,000 miles of snowmobile trails in New York state. "People
know if they don't behave, the trail gets closed," he said. It happened
for a while last year on 150 miles of trails in Charlton.

The state has 150,000 registered snowmobilers and an equal number of
registered ATVs. But based on sales data, Ernst said, another 150,000
ATVs are not registered [misquoted, correction: 100k registered, 200k
not- Alex]. In Rensselaer County, there are 1,359 registered ATVs and
2,106 registered snowmobiles, said Joe Picchi, spokesman for the state
Department of Motor Vehicles.

But Ernst said paying the registration fee provides no benefit to ATV
riders. "By registering your ATV, you get no access to any trail system," he
said. "When people have a place they know they are allowed to ride,
they are going to take that route, the path of least resistance. This could
be one of the solutions, developing a trail system that people know
where it is."

Forever wild and forever beleaguered

http://www.timesunion.com/aspstories/storyprint.asp?storyID=91934

Forever wild and forever beleaguered
By Fred LeBrun

First published: Sunday, January 12, 2003

Last year, the five-member Town Board of Horicon in Warren County voted
unanimously to open eight backcountry routes to all-terrain vehicle use
under the premise that because the trails once were town roads, it
still has jurisdiction over them.

At least a couple of these trails pass through the "forever wild"
Adirondack forest preserve, where motorized access of any sort is
forbidden by state law.

So, predictably and appropriately, the attorney general's office is
suing to close the roads. The issue is in the courts. Watching with
eagle eyes are a number of Adirondack town supervisors who support what
Horicon is attempting. They make it clear in the latest issue of
Adirondack Explorer magazine that if Horicon gets its way, we are apt
to see an instant explosion of trails opened to ATVs throughout the
Adirondack Park, making what already is a difficult task of law
enforcement an impossible nightmare.

Overnight, the man-made wilderness and solitude of the Adirondack Park
will be shattered by the roar of gasoline engines. On Friday, along
with denying the Lake George Park Commission's application for a test use of
Sonar to rid the lake of Eurasian milfoil -- which got the headlines --
the Adirondack Park Agency ruled that the state Department of
Environmental Conservation's unit management plan for the Bog
River-Low's Lake Canoe Area meets the requirements of the Adirondack
Park State Land Master Plan.

What all this bureaucratic gobbledegook translates to is that
motorboats will be banned right away from a 12-mile route they heavily use in
summer, and that floatplane access to the same route -- that's been
allowed forever -- will be phased out over five years. Motorboaters and
floatplaners lobbied hard to keep their current status.

In other words, the Adirondack Park Agency and the DEC are affirming
"forever wild" at the same time that many localities are trying to bust
out of it.

Not that this contradiction and confrontation over motorized use is
anything new. It's been there ever since the APA was founded more than
30 years ago.

But the latest grass-roots thrust in favor of ATVs is potentially the
most dangerous yet, both in terms of actual physical conflict and in
the erosion of the charms of a very special Adirondack Park.

Battle lines are forming once again. The unmistakable impression I'm
getting is that within the Adirondack Park some potent owners of ATVs
lately have become increasingly emboldened in challenging an
understaffed DEC enforcement wing. It's becoming an in-your-face issue,
and that's never helpful.

ATVers want a trail system they believe they deserve, that they've
already paid toward with their annual registration fee. Only they don't
necessarily want one on private leased property to accommodate a serene
Adirondack Park. They are insisting on trails where trails cannot be,
by law. Meanwhile, the greater alarm is that ATV abuse, and to a lesser
degree snowmobile abuse, is rampant well beyond the Adirondack and
Catskill parks and getting worse. Battle lines are also forming all
around us, with the sides flip-flopped.

Up in the Adirondack Park, there is great grass-roots local sympathy
for ATVs, and that poses much of the problem in terms of enforcement. Down
in our world, homeowners, property owners, farmers and town officials
are reacting more and more with outrage to increasingly belligerent
trespass.

Too often in the past, local law enforcement hasn't taken the
violations of property rights committed by ATVs and snowmobiles seriously enough.
That's got to change, and fast.

No way should we be blackmailed into providing an ATV trail system for
a crowd that wants to beat us up to do it. Contact Fred LeBrun at
454-5453.

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