Help Local OHV BAN! HELP!!!!!!!!

People I need some advice here. I live in a fairly nice area out in the country. About 30 minutes to the city, I live in a cresent and directly behind my house is a track that someone built in a old oil rigging type place. There are miles of trails that are secluded from houses etc. BUT as usual someone had to complain, and for some part and I don't blame them. There are always the idiot dirtbikers and quaders who race CONSTANTLY up and down the streets often with no helmets. And these are the people that cause the disturbance. I live in the type of area then as soon as the snow falls it's odd NOT to see a family of snowmobilers going out for a ride. Even on Christmas day it's just tradition. Anyways to make a long story short the town had a survey put out asking whether or not OHV'S should be COMPLETLY banned in my area. And of course only 21% of the people in my area responded. So there will be a town meeting held tommorow to make the final decision. So I must ask all of you, what can I/ should I say to show these people that it is part of our community? I have rounded up as many sledders, quaders and dirtbikers I can to show support. I am just hoping it's enough. There will always be the complaints like they are out late and they rip up lawns etc.....But what about people like me who walk their bikes down the street right to the field and then ride out of sight into the trails where no one can hear me? What can I say about the irresponsible people?

This is really unfair but I guess that's just politics for yah. If anyone wants a pic of the petition and the letter I got in the mail telling me to come to the town meeting tommorow I will post it. And I will let you all know how it went tommorow. Wish me luck

PS, By no means is this hickville but almost everyone on my street owns a sled or a quad. And the old people that have the motorhomes are the ones complaining :(

Thanks SMB I am thinking I might propose a good solution of simply no bikes riding on the streets near houses. I mean you can trailer a bike to the field leading in to the trails, which all the sledders do coming into the city. I just hope we can get this cleared up. What next they shut down our tracks? :ugg:

Here is one pic of the petition

and a larger version




PS, The cut off part just says SHOW YOUR SUPPORT, Which you better believe I will!

Ahh monthly clean ups! Great idea!
Thanks everyone :)

Well I would like to start of saying there were more twists in this meeting than a roller coaster. Ill point this out, there was a survey sent out to about 600 residents I believe? And GUESS WHAT? we show up to the little town hall and there was about 250 upset snowmobilers, quaders, bikers etc... A lot of these people were upset because they never even got the survey. In the room about 60+ people were 100% positive they didn't receive it. (There reasoning,(the ministers) "well we did our best, some obviously fell through the cracks"...yea right) Now they had the results layed out and they made it seem like everyone was in favour of the ban yet if you broke down there little percentages they encoded it was typically a 10-15 person varience between strongly agree and stongly disagree. Meaning if those 60+ people who never even got a chance to respond the results would have been in our favour.

Now to add the icing on the cake. The survey had asked questions like
Do you feel OHV vehicles are doing damage to certain areas of property?
Well even the people who ride OHV's know that they do some damage, so of course some people said yes. But ahh! this is where the trickery comes in, this survey was going to be the final outcome of the decision but it never said this ONCE on the actual survey. So what I am saying is, we were tricked, they took that information and basically used it against us and said "ok they are bad they wreck land ban em" The consensus of the group was that they would realize there was a problem and help solve it, not flat out ban it
Pretty dirty if you ask me.....

So then we have all these people at the meeting, and the 3 ministers or whatever they were, told us the meeting would have NO impact on there decision and that they would bring the survey results to council regardless on what we had to say. No if's and's or butts. Now another twist once again. There were very few people who were for the ban there, (10-12 people) now about 8 of them were so old they could barely walk.....And I don't mean to sound rude but when they stated there case they made no sense at all.... (blatent lies like dirtbikers ride at 3 in the morning lighting fires) When I asked how that was possible when they have no lights etc...they stuttered and told me they can see in the dark :( I could hear one old women behind me who was saying how all riders are evil, and that they are out to get her and her husband??? it was sad they had no idea and just made stuff up. It was hard to face these people and smile but I still did because I won't give in to there rediculous stereotypes. Now the people that we could understand made a good point, they said "If this is a strictly YES OR NO decision than they would say YES ban them, BUT if they could have had the option to come to an agreement (collectively agree on hours of operation, clean up crews etc...) then they would have said NO don't ban them. So once again the survey screwed us all over, there was not ONE SINGLE question that said "would you be willing to come to an agreement" everything was yes or no. Compromise was NEVER even mentioned on the survey. EVER!

Brilliant ideas were brought up at this meeting, yet they had no dictator at all. :whiner:
However was it a waste? I don't think so, we realized the board that set this up, out of 12 members 3 own OHV'S and NONE of them live in our area. So we said what are you going to do when the ban goes to your area? The point was brought up that if they ban our area the problem will just get pushed to the other side of the river and become someone else's problem. Once again the "ministers" never thought of this one :silly:

Lastly one main point that was brought up was that it's mainly the people in the city that cause the problems. Why would people who live in the valley wreck there own land? THEY WON'T, of course there will be 1 or 2 bad people but that's beside the issue. It's the staging area where people from the city come to and rip up the field, drink beers and ride sleds etc... Once again this WAS NEVER ADDRESSED in the survey, most of the respondents thought they were being asked about those type of problems. They wanted a solution not a total ban.

So what's the outcome? There was outrage, we decided no one was leaving until something was going to happen. They could feel our rage. We were told if we want to stop the motion send in faxes and letters to the main offices's. (My letter is being typed as I type this) I have all names and numbers as do the other 200+ members yesterday, we will be heard and this will be stopped. The survey was irresponsbly written and tricked people into something that was never even mentioned. I don't know much about politics but there is going to be a plebicite held? But all I can say, is there was energy in this meeting. Many people had said we moved to the country to ride, we have lived here for 30+ years and have rode every season, if some people didn't see all the tracks, trails etc..when they had moved in to the country they should not have come to complain. We are the tax payers and it's our right. So all I can is this will be stopped. No matter how much fighting I have to do....They won't take away my right to ride.

If anyone actually read this whole thing, thanks for taking the time. If what we do is so bad, then whatever condemn me. What we do brings us together even closer as a society. I have built stronger morels, values and learned a lot of essential things in life through riding. Some of my best memories I have as a child is riding on the river with my dad on our ski-doo. Now one day if I have kids, NO ONE will take this right from them, this is a free country. I want them to enjoy their lives and learn some of the good things I have learnt. Like I said no one will take away my rights :D

I spoke with the 3 of the members. The kicker is only one wanted to be honest with me and basically told me that it doesn't greatly concern them because they don't live in my area. :ugg: However they are willing to help somewhat. I have already phoned some riding buddies this morning to make sure they get there letters out today :aj:

YZ I completly agree, part of the reason why they are called OHV's ;)

But get this question 3 states,
Do you feel OHV's should be allowed the use of fields, trails etc AND road use.

Well as soon as people see Road of course they will say no. It should have been 2 questions :whiner: One of my proposals was to get a whole new survey out...When they said it would cost too much many of us gladly said we would make a un-biased survey on our own time. What do you think there response was? :uh:

Thanks for all your support guys :)

Ill let everyone know how our letter writing goes, it can either go two ways, they will get a new survey, or they will just take a note and give it to council. Either way we will be heard, plus we will go to the council meeting :cool:

Ill try and get some pics of the survey and results up tonight :cool:

KDX357.....
Thanks buddy, it's people like you that assure that people like me and Old89er and bscottr will have to keep writing these letters to prove we don't live by your rules :D

Yes bbbom that will be our next step. They basically said they will have to spend all this money on enforcing this (it's a joke because they can't enforce ANY of the laws they have now)
We said take that money and we will form a club, we will even self police it. It was brought up that a kid will run from a rent a cop, but if a fellow rider from a club comes up to him and tells him to cool it or take it somewhere else etc....they will listen
These people don't understand because they just drive there BMW's around and complain all day :confused:
Some people brought up the idea of having passes that you get if you live in the area and belong to the club to help identify etc....
The topper is, we even offered to pay for these passes to help fund clean up crews (which we said we would volunteer for anyways)

Like I said, we won't let this one go.....this is our right :aj:

thanks again everyone!