ATV controversy continues in Lake of Bays, mayor blames ‘yahoos’

[ratings]

The Township of Lake of Bays will have to decide how to proceed with respect to ATVs travelling on its municipal roads. Its two-year trial ATV bylaw, restricting ATV travel to municipal roads south of highway 117, is set to expire on January 1, 2016.

“To date we’ve received no complaints over noise and in talking with the roads superintendent, there was no increase in maintenance (costs) on municipal roads,” Director of Building and Bylaw Services Stephen Watson told council. “So, staff felt since the bylaw was going to elapse, that perhaps this would be a good time to extend the bylaw through the entire Township.”

He said the District Municipality of Muskoka is awaiting council’s decision to extend the use on all District roads within the municipality.

Watson said ATVs are already travelling on roads they’re not allowed on, so extending the bylaw to all municipal roads would simply recognize the activity.

Council is divided on allowing ATVs on municipal roads.

Lake of Bays Mayor Bob Young disagreed with staff’s assessment.

“To the contrary I have heard complaints from lots of people, especially in Sinclair Township, saying ‘I sure hope you’re not going to allow them up here.’ So I’ve heard a lot of negatives with very little request for extension, so I don’t see how I can support this.”

Young said he could support extending the existing bylaw, which restricts where ATVs are allowed, but he could not support allowing them on all municipal roads.

“I have very similar concerns. I have not had a single person request the extension in this area,” said Councillor Nancy Tapley, referring to the northern part of the municipality.

She also said the fact that people have requested additional signage from the municipality – most of it stating no ATVs allowed – speaks to people not welcoming ATV use on their roads.

“I’d be more comfortable if this had gone before the public first. To me it is a very interesting argument to say, ‘well they’re doing it illegally so let’s make it legal,’ because that could roll across to a whole pile of things in society that perhaps you’d like to not do.”

Councillor Ruth Ross argued that in her area of Dorset, they are legal and there have been fewer problems.

She said the ATV clubs have been working hard to create new trails that stay off the roads.

“These are all-terrain vehicles, they don’t want to be on the roads. They want to just get to the trail bits. I think we are playing the same game that we played with the snowmobile clubs 30 years ago,” she said. “I think we need to be a little more progressive in Lake of Bays. Yes, there’s people that are never going to like them, there’s people that don’t want snowmobiles, there’s people that don’t like two-wheeled bikes on 117… you can’t stop them from coming.”

Tapley said there are already issues with trespass on private property, which police are doing very little about, and making it legal will only exacerbate the problem, especially since the creation of new trails is slow at best.

“I almost think that we’ve got the cart before the horse on this,” she said.

Councillor Bob Lacroix, who represents the southern portion of the municipality, was in favour of extending ATV use to all of Lake of Bays.

“Bracebridge and Huntsville have now opened up all their roads so 117 up to Lake of Bays border is open for ATVing but illegal the rest of the way, which makes no sense,” said Lacroix. “They can come down Road 9, all the way to Beauview Cottages, but they can’t go past it because that’s the limit. So to me it makes perfect sense to open up these areas where you can’t go on private property, like from Road 9 to Baysville, there’s no trails. There will never be any trails because it’s all private property so you need the road system to get into town.”

More public input required.

Councillor Shane Baker said he would feel more comfortable making a decision once members of the community have had an opportunity to provide input.

“I think we will get a lot of trespass complaints if we just say all roads are suddenly open and I think we’ll get more noise complaints because otherwise a kid with an ATV, a 16-yer-old on, say, Port Cunnington Road, will just go up and down the road because there’s nowhere else to go. But when you are near the boundaries of our township, to the East, North and South, there is Crown land, so opening roads in those areas makes more sense. “

Councillor Terri Glover, representing the south side of Lake of Bays, said ATVs bring business to the area, although he understands there have been complaints. He suggested allowing ATVs to run all roads for a trial period.

“There are tons on South Portage Road and every one of them roars into the back woods. They’re totally irresponsible because it’s the yahoos that are the problem. But we have a high yahoo content,” said Young, adding that passing a bylaw allowing ATVs on all roads without people realizing the issue was even on the agenda, would be unfair and cause an uproar.

In the end, council decided to defer the issue and seek more input before making a decision. Whether ATVs should be allowed on all municipal roads is expected to be brought up again at is October 13 council meeting.