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View Full Version : I just spent 3 hours talking with the Police . . .


Trail_Fanatic
September 8th, 2006, 01:44 PM
It seems one of the local land owners (adjacent to Staple Rd) is trying to file a criminal trespass charge against us.

The officer wanted our side of the story.

After a 2 1/2 hour explanation he was quite satisfied that we had ALL of our T's crossed and I's dotted properly and that we were in NO WAY involved with ANY criminal trespass.

Any further action by the land owner would have to be directed toward the County Road Commission.

It might have been a pain in my butt at the time, but now I'm SURE glad I had those 47,000 phone conversations, emails, and in person meetings with the CRC!

It pays to cross those T's and dot those I's!
95geo
September 8th, 2006, 01:49 PM
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Trail_Fanatic &#064; Sep 8 2006, 01&#58;44 PM) 17365</div>

It seems one of the local land owners (adjacent to Staple Rd) is trying to file a criminal trespass charge against us.

The officer wanted our side of the story.

After a 2 1/2 hour explanation he was quite satisfied that we had ALL of our T&#39;s crossed and I&#39;s dotted properly and that we were in NO WAY involved with ANY criminal trespass.

Any further action by the land owner would have to be directed toward the County Road Commission.

It might have been a pain in my butt at the time, but now I&#39;m SURE glad I had those 47,000 phone conversations, emails, and in person meetings with the CRC&#33;

It pays to cross those T&#39;s and dot those I&#39;s&#33;
[/b]


i feel like i just saw the last 10 minutes of a soap operah.... whats the rest of the story? or was this just a public service announcement to cross your t&#39;s and dot your i&#39;s?
kb8ymf
September 8th, 2006, 02:12 PM
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(95geo &#064; Sep 8 2006, 01&#58;49 PM) 17366</div>

i feel like i just saw the last 10 minutes of a soap operah.... whats the rest of the story? or was this just a public service announcement to cross your t&#39;s and dot your i&#39;s?
[/b]

Well Pat, you opened up that can........I&#39;m privy to the story but I think everyone needs to hear it from the &#39;horses mouth&#39; :poke:
jim-kb8ymf
lgottler
September 8th, 2006, 02:26 PM
I think it has something to do with late night streaking :ahhh: across someones property......But I could be wrong :D
Brian
September 8th, 2006, 03:54 PM
:blink:
Trail_Fanatic
September 8th, 2006, 04:42 PM
Originally intended as a public service anouncement to &#39;cross your Ts&#39;.

You&#39;re right though, a LOT more background would be useful, eh? (sorry)

OK, short version (honest):

The Two Trackers 4WD Club adopted 10,310 acres of the Manistee NF across 3 Townships in northern Muskegon County.
We&#39;ve been cleaning the trails out there for 8 years now and have hauled over 460 yards of trash, 1500 tires, junk vehicles, etc.

Last year it was noticed that many of the &#39;two tracks&#39; we were cleaning every year were in fact unsigned county unmaintained roads. We approached the Townships and CRC and adopted over 30 miles of county two tracks that run through our area. During our initial request for adoption we included aprox. 13 miles of &#39;roads&#39; that we knew were blocked off. Presumably illegally, but we thought this would be one way to find out for sure.

The CRC approved a &#39;modified&#39; list that had dropped 3 miles of the blocked &#39;roads&#39; because they had been properly abandoned.

BUT

That still left us with 10 miles of roads that were blocked.

We explained the baricades and locations to the CRC and offered our Volunteer equipment and personell to remove the obstructions if the CRC wished to save their budget.

They agreed.

There was one road in particular that I thought would be rough going -- Staple Rd.
The &#39;original&#39; deeded &#39;road&#39; had been blocked off 30 years ago. There is a house next to it that looks to have stumped it off in the woods and then smoothed the two track and planted grass over it next to the house.

As a result, a user created &#39;go around&#39; developed that intersected the road (0.3 miles to the south) about 200 yards further to the east than the deeded road. Everyone just used the new trail and nothing was ever said about the situation -- until a couple of years ago when a new house was built adjacent to the &#39;go around&#39; and blocked it off too.

Now there was NO access to the road.

We were really hoping that the go around trail would fall under &#39;highway by user&#39; statutes. Had that been the case, we would have only had to remove 1 stump pile and been done.

No, the CRC said that the deeded road is what should be open.

So, on Saturday, July 29th several Two Trackers reopened 9.8 miles of the 10.
The other 0.2 mile is where it gets interesting.
Yes, of course it&#39;s Staple Rd.

The Bobcat was busy clearing a couple of the stump piles so my Clubmate Jeff Trayor and I walked ahead of the group to make sure we were &#39;on line&#39; with where we were supposed to be.
We walked out of the woods right on target.

Unfortunately the house next to where the road is supposed to be was having a deck party.

So, Jeff and I were asked what&#39;s up. We explain as politely as we could. This was the 4th land owner of the day and we&#39;d become pretty good at smoothing feathers. The &#39;lady&#39; of the house (and I use the word rather loosely) wasn&#39;t going to hear of it. You&#39;d have thought it was the end of her little world. She and all the &#39;guests&#39; had all had a few drinks by the time we came along. She called her husband and son to come home. They pulled in and hopped out of the truck with beers in hand. Needless to say, Jeff and I were getting a little worried.

I gave her the number of the Police, whom she did call.
They told her that we were in the right.
She hung up and told us that the Police told her to have us leave. That didn&#39;t sound like what the Dispatch Supervisor told me he was going to have his Dispatchers say, so I called them back myself.
They told me what they had actually told her and asked me if I wanted an officer sent out to assist us.

I did NOT want organized four wheeling presented in this light so I declined the officer and explained to everyone involved that it was after 5:00 and our last piece to reopen so we&#39;d knock off and let the CRC figure this one out.

Well, apparently she called the Nature Conservancy (who owns 60 acres in the woods along the &#39;road&#39;), the Township Supervisor, the CRC, and Representative Farhat and S C R E A M E D foul play, tresspass, and Karner Blue Butterfly habitat.

The police just told me there was NO tresspass because there was no INTENT to tresspass. We are under the impression that it&#39;s a county road and led to believe that by the CRC&#33;

I don&#39;t know if the CRC is REQUIRED to give prior notice of activity or not so I don&#39;t know if there was any &#39;foul play&#39; on their part, but CERTAINLY NOT on ours.

I&#39;m working with Christopher Hoving, the DNR Biologist who performed an initial KBB inventory for the Nature Conservancy property. As a biologist he can see where a two track might be MORE benificial to the KBB than not having it. It would provide additional habitat by clearing brush that has overgrown the &#39;road&#39; as well as act as a travel corridor allowing the KBB free travel between private &#39;openings&#39; to the south and Camp Owasippe, the oldest Boy Scout Camp in the country (FULL of habitat) to the north. So we might take away that arguement too.

This is a good cause but has REALLY bogged down my time.
I&#39;d rather be working on the new State Forest Plan.
lgottler
September 8th, 2006, 05:06 PM
That is kinda neat. Working with the County road commision and the townships.... Let me ask this: How do you go about checking to see if a road is supposed to be active, and does this have anything to do with say DNR or State or Federal land issues?

Lucas
Trail_Fanatic
September 8th, 2006, 06:51 PM
<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(lgottler &#064; Sep 8 2006, 05&#58;06 PM) 17374</div>

How do you go about checking to see if a road is supposed to be active, and does this have anything to do with say DNR or State or Federal land issues?
[/b]

Call the CRC that has jurisdiction over the area and ask for a &#39;Certification Map&#39; of the Township where the road is located.

A Certified Road Map is a map that the CRCs send to the State each year telling them which roads they are claiming jurisdiction over and requesting funding for.

If a road is on a Certification Map it&#39;s still claimed.
I&#39;d verify this with the CRC, just to be sure.
If you know of an obstruction on a Certified Road you&#39;re supposed to notify the CRC and have them remove it.

I&#39;m finding that once it&#39;s grown over, the Endangered Species Act MAY become an issue if a species is found.

The TT simply took it a step further and volunteered to do the work for them.
There was a LOT of double and tripple checking of easments, etc.
The process has taken 10 months to this point.

You&#39;ll also find that some CRCs are easy to work with and some aren&#39;t.
Some want their two track roads and some view them as a liability issue.

If you have a county or counties that you&#39;re interested in, I&#39;d like to ask you to help all of us out by asking a couple of more things of you:

1) When you&#39;re asking for Certification Maps, ask for the entire County.

2) While you&#39;re on the phone with the CRC(s) of your choice ask them to place you on their list of interested parties to contact if future road abandonment proceedings are started within the county. Some counties don&#39;t have an actual list yet, they just call the power and gas companies, etc.
Ask them to please notify you, reguardless.

3) Let us know IF any abandonment proceedings do come up.

4) Let us know if you find any &#39;obstructed&#39; roads.

Let&#39;s get a list together of the counties people are willing to keep track of for the group and see if we can get &#39;em ALL covered.

I&#39;ll take Muskegon, Oceana, and Newaygo.

Here&#39;s the list I have:

County Road Commission Phone Numbers
Upper Lower Peninsula Only

County Phone #
Alcona . . . . . . . 517-736-8168
Alpena . . . . . . . 517-354-3252
Antrim . . . . . . . 231-587-8521
Arenac . . . . . . . 517-653-2411
Benzie . . . . . . . 231-325-3051
Charlevoix . . . . 231-582-7330
Cheboygan . . . . 231-627-5694
Clare . . . . . . . . 517-539-2151
Crawford . . . . . 517-348-2281
Emmet . . . . . . 231-347-8142
Gladwin . . . . . . 517-426-7441
Grand Traverse. 231-922-4848
Iosco . . . . . . . 517-362-4433
Isabella . . . . . . 517-773-7131
Kalkaska . . . . . 231-258-2242
Kent . . . . . . . . 616-242-6900
Lake . . . . . . . . 231-745-4666
Leelanau . . . . . 231-271-3993
Mason . . . . . . . 231-757-2882
Manistee . . . . . 231-723-6522
Mecosta . . . . . . 231-796-2611
Midland . . . . . . 517-687-9060
Missaukee . . . . 231-839-4361
Montcalm . . . . . 517-831-5285
Montmorency . . 517-785-3334
Muskegon . . . . 231-788-2381 Pat Brower
Newaygo . . . . . 231-689-6682 Pat Brower
Oceana . . . . . . 231-873-4226 Pat Brower
Ogemaw. . . . . . 517-345-0234
Osceola . . . . . . 231-832-5171
Oscoda. . . . . . . 517-826-3218
Otsego. . . . . . . 517-732-5202
Presque Isle . . . 517-734-2216
Roscommon . . . 517-275-5181
Wexford . . . . . . 231-775-9731
Trail_Fanatic
September 14th, 2006, 06:57 PM
I attended the last Blue Lake Township meeting to make sure that the woman who complained about the reopening of Staple Road hadn&#39;t turned the BOD against us.

No fears. They are quite impressed with our works -- other than the Staple issue. I explained our position and asked that they not hold this one incident against us. They asked that we &#39;let the dust settle&#39; until next spring. They&#39;ll reinstate us at that time.

A byproduct of the meeting:
They asked if we&#39;d be interested in helping them with some two tracks on Township lands. The trails in question are actually ones that we used to take to get back to Whitehall when we ran the St. Pat&#39;s and Toys for Tots out of there.

I told them that we&#39;d take a look at all of it again in the Spring.

I have to admit that it would probably go along way towards:

1) Cementing our relationship with the Blue Lake BOD

2) Making sure the trails in question are open for generations to come.

I also had a meeting with the head of the Road Commission (Ken Hulka, Bob Woodruff&#39;s boss) and Bob this morning.
Mr. Hulka assured me that they have no intention of abandoning the road.
He admitted that the Karner Blue Butterfly thing could be an issue though.

In an attempt to eliminate the KBB as a possible threat to the project, I have scheduled a meeting with the DNR Biologist, the Road Commission, and myself to go out to the Road and make sure the butterflies are served best. The two track may be better for the KBB than letting the habitat overgrow and become lost to the woods (KBB won&#39;t live in the woods).

Wish me luck.

If the DNR signs off, I&#39;m going to ask when the CRC plans to &#39;open&#39; the last bit that we didn&#39;t.

I want to be there to see it.