More OHVMR Controversey

First a letter from Ed Waldheim

After this last Commission meeting 12/8-10,2005, I have to tell you that I am finished working with these Commissioners. It has become a Non-OHV Commission, which is not what it was originally set up to be in 1972 with subsequent law changes in 1983.

Mr. Spitler has taken it upon himself to develop policy, develop criteria, and completely disrespect the Division for anything they do in public.

He chastised Ms. Greene because she went to Northern California to help with State Park OHV issues. These are issues that State Parks Director, Ms. Coleman, asked her to attend.

He refused to listen to me when I asked him not to pass any policy or criteria at the Commission meeting today because the general public and OHV Division have not had a chance to review it. He pushed through policies that are detrimental to the OHV Division and OHV program, today on votes of 4 to 1, (I was absent after 11 a.m. today due to a prior commitment that everyone knew about.) with Judith Anderson voting "No" on the Criteria only.

Mr. Spitler killed all Minor Capital Outlay ... except restoration.

Mr. Spitler did not allow the public to make substantial comments, because it is impossible to react to a continually changing policy and criteria by the Commission. As chairman, he pushed for a vote on it without allowing the public or Division any input on the Commission's changes. (Clearly there has to be a violation of public process here)

During the Grant process, Mr. Spitler and his allies continually over spent on issues that had no benefit to OHV. So much was over spent that we could not fund the acquisition in Redding or the addition to Jawbone Station visitor's center. Both had to be denied.

In testimony, on the record I put in a resolution that we move 4 million from Restoration to the Support Budget, yet the chairman never brought this up after I left.

I asked that Attorney who represents the Commission not to let policies be voted on as they did not have proper hearing, especially since the ones that went out in the packet are different from the ones Mr. Spitler passed out at the meeting.

Mr. Spitler is in a continual fight with the Division, especially Ms. Greene where he publicly admonished her even after the Deputy Director asked that we work together. It is clearly certain this is never going to happen.

Mr. Spitler is out of control, and we need to do everything we can to get our OHV organizations motivated to replace anti-OHV Commissioners, or eliminate the Commission entirely.

I have been involved with the Commission since 1983, and it really pains me to have to say this. The commission as it presently is, is totally dysfunctional and is a detriment to the California OHV program. It has to be abolished, taken to court, Commisioners removed, or find whatever method there is available to us to make changes. We can no longer accept this as it is.

I know lot of you wanted me to do this long time ago, but I am always the optimist. I like working within the system with public participation. This clearly is not what Mr. Spitler has in mind, so I am finished with Mr. Spitler and his allies.

I will no long dialog with him or his allies, except in public meetings or at Stakeholders meetings or whereever Ms Greene or Ms Coleman want me to be.

Our program is too important to us to have an over zealous chairman try to run our lives and our OHV program that we are all so proud of.

Merry Christmas!

Ed Waldheim CORVA

Next a reveiw by Bruce Brazil;

This is a brief review of the last three days of the Cal. OHMVR division and Commission meeting.
In previous posts here, I've tried to motivate you, the users of the OHMVR system to attend the meetings. It was very sad to see the turnout of our community of OHVers. There were only a couple of us that were not part of a statewide organization that spoke up during the many public comments segments of the meeting. There was so much CRAP carried out by the commission that Jerry Springer and Judge Judy would have had a field day there. The commission violated many statutes of law even when warned that they would be in violation of said statutes. The commission sat back and pretended to listen to public comment and then went ahead and voted in favor of their own personal agenda.
Several of the proposals by chairman Spitler have been on the OHMVR website for several weeks and they were also mailed out to the members of the public that requested them. On Wednesday, Dec. 7th, the contents of some of the proposals was changed on the website, NOT ALLOWING SUFFICIENT TIME FOR THE PUBLIC TO BE NOTIFIED OF THE NEW CONTENTS. The meetings started on the following day. Actions, (votes) on some of these proposals took place in the meetings. Insufficient public notification of agenda contents is a violation of the Bagley-Keene open meeting act. This is the same legal procedure that chairman Spitler used to cancel the earlier scheduled OHMVR grants meetings on the day the meetings started. Many (at least 200) government agency Representative personell from all over the state and members of the public were in attendance and had to go back home and reschedule for this weeks meeting.
The commission is made up of seven appointed members and is supposed to represent a diversity of the public. However, 4 of the 7 are pro-environmental in back ground. Of the other three, two are pro-OHMVR and one represents the law enforcement. One of the pro-OHMVR commissioners, Mr Chavez, has not attended any of the last 6 days (four different meetings) of commisson meetings so we only had ONE member of the commission that truly represented the OHMVR community. Surprisingly, commissioner Prizmich, the law enforcement Representative, spoke with rational and common sense.
During the second half of the meetings, commissioner Judith Anderson, a Sierra Club member, started speaking up and actually spoke against the extreme pro-environmental threesome of Mr. Spitler, Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Brissenden.
Almost all of the restoration grants (trail closure) got bumped up by the commission to the maximum allowed dollar amounts, while the other grants that actually pertained to OHMVR use enhancement underwent tight scrutiny and many dollar reductions or eliminations.
In Saturdays meeting, funding for minor capital outlay projects took place. This is not part of the grants process and is only for support of the SVRA areas. Of the seven projects submitted by the OHMVR division, the only one that received funding by the commission was for restoration of a severely damaged trail at the Hollister SVRA. New and replacement toilet facilities, environmentally correct cleaning station at Oceano Dunes, and other similar projects did not get approved by the commission.
At this point, public input does not matter to the commission. They are going to keep persuing their personal agendas. The only power left for us is to persue legal and legislative action against the OHMVR commission and to a minor extent the OHMVR division to get them both to comply with the original intent of the "Green Sticker" funding process.
If you have read it this far into my post, I thank you for your interest. The next OHMVR commission meeting is scheduled for late January. A couple of the agenda items were tabled until that time. PLEASE try to attend. Even if our public comments don't have much affect on the decisions of the commissioners, at least our voice will be put into public record, a tool that may be used in the future to try to rectify the damages being done.

Be prepared to support the fight to either disolve the commision or at the least restructure it........this crap needs to stop now

Boo, I will keep a close eye on this and when the info is avalible I will make sure it's posted, if you hear anything, do the same


Thanks

BRC response

http://www.sharetrails.org/releases/media/index.cfm?story=464