Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: And we are. Good morning, Wednesday, 05/06/2026 here in house transportation. We are spending the morning here with some citizens, which doesn't, believe it or not, happen all that often in this building. But that's neither here nor there. I just got my tour of where the Newport Bite Pass slash Burke Beebe Spur Trail actually is. I have to say I haven't actually been there. I'm not sure how many members of the committee have. But we do know there's a rail trail manager for the agency and there's multiple other trails. But we have this particular four mile spur that we are here to learn a whole lot more about this morning. So thank you very much for joining us. Whether it's online, I know you have four or five, five or six witnesses for this morning. Chitt, is that your going first or is Terry going first? You guys going together? I'll go first. Good morning. And then as far as once you start, identify yourself and then fire away and then usually this group has lots of questions and we'll interrupt as you go for questions or if you want to wait till the end, we could do that too, but we're not very good at that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Thank you Chairman Walker and many for inviting us to give our side of the story on the Beebe Spur. My name is Chittenden. I am a Derby resident and I am a native. I have lived there for seventy six years. To my extent, I lived in Massachusetts. And I own property on the Beebe Square, and I've owned it for fifty six years. I lived on the Square for thirty years, full time, since 1992. Exhibit one and two, this is the letter. And back when this was planned, we had a public meeting in Derby when Vermont first took over the rail trail, and this was the first one of the four, as we bespared. And we had public meetings and AOT met with they brought me and they're unanimous. Everybody liked the bike spur. Unanimous, no stone machines on the bike spur. And AOT even met with city new board, exhibit one is a letter from assistant attorney general Scott Gwittenden to, John Ewing, who is the environmental commissioner at the time, state of Vermont. And I wanna read some excerpts from from this letter. So the surface will be rolled to compact it, and it will be upgraded to satisfactory for pedestrians and bicycles. There will be signs to indicate the following. Motorized vehicles are not permitted anywhere on the path and no motorized signs will be erected. AOT has made this commitment to the community. This is not an effort to avoid Act two fifty jurisdiction by segmenting the project. And these signs have been up here the next one. These signs have been up here for twenty five years. You could see the signs. The sign with no sewing machine, mysteriously disappeared two years ago. But the other one, no motorized vehicles, they've been on that path for twenty five years. And there hasn't been any active, no stone machines on the path for twenty five years. In fact, anybody that's bought property on the BB Spur in the last twenty five years, has brought up with the understanding that no motorized vehicles were alive on the path. And conversely, the people that are vast numbers, there's only six of them that I know of, they bought it with the understanding they couldn't use the path. And they got to the vast trails by some other means, lots of times by the way. And contrary to the testimony given by attorney Toml Levy at your March meeting, when he said snowmobiles have always been allowed on the path, that's not true. And it's unlikely that AOT would make that promise, and two years later, when the path is done, they would allow snow machines. I mean, don't think they would have made that change. That's a bait and switch. I don't think they wanna go there. Anecdotally, members, and we are VAST, we go on the people in the local area are VAST, they're nice members. Anecdotally VAST is blaming us for the homeless and the abutters for all this activity and, you know, the increased activity in the last couple of years. But actually, it's VTrans has created the activity. Their website shows the four realtor trades including and Beebe Spur. And they have a pictorial with travel pictures where they have they show snow machines and skiers meeting on the path. Well, that's a 12 foot trail. Those are done at Memorial Or Zesquoi Trail. None of those could possibly be be done at BB Square. You can see that. That's only seven foot wide, that trail. And if you meet if a skier meets a snow machine on that path, the skier has to get off the path. So it's just and this is flat. This is for the old timers like men or young kids who got novice skiers. It's a flat trail. And if you don't have edges on your skis, you take a one foot off that trail. You can go down eight or 10 feet in a lot of places. So that's a false argument that they're making. A answer.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: That's a representative McCoy and it

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: represents Wells. Is it a railroad?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: It gives me a railroad. Well, it used to be a spur. A spur. Not a rail line, a spur.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay, and do we know how wide a railroad bed normally?

[Terry Lucas]: 48 inches. Four feet eight inches. That's a track width. I know

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: they own a lot of property.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Right away, Terry, you gotta identify yourself.

[Terry Lucas]: Oh, I'm sorry, I'm Terry Lucas. I was born and raised in Newport.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay, so 4 Feet eight is where the rails of a train. But as far as the width of another trail, I don't know. What's the length of the Legoire Valley rail train?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We're gonna find out today. Today. Represent Wells is up next.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: How many homeowners on that four mile stretch, Jack?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: There's 132 that bought their own property, butting the pot. Another 85 that either have access to it or right away to it. So there's two zero five people that own, and then half mile on the north end, there's zero homes. So there's three and a half miles where you have all that property, Very densely populated.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You said 85 access to the lake, you mean?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: To the No, to the White path.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: To the path, okay.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Right. So, it's very In fact, we had an instance this winter, somebody on Facebook, a snowmobile complained they met a skier on the path and the skier would not get off the path. The snow snowmobile had to get off the path. He's like, a snowmobile cannot meet a skier yet. You know, if you're walking, you can meet. But if you're skiing, it's too close. And the only people that don't think that's dangerous is the guy on the 400 pound sheet. Yeah. He's not concerned about hitting somebody.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Casey, you're up.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: We're seven feet on there. I I see I see maybe the one on the left, I'd show show that's the wider than seven feet. The other one's obviously wider than seven feet.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah. This the the one over this one over here is probably eight feet. That's the north end. They put top coating on this year, and the south end, they only did seven feet. The north end, they did eight feet. But that's there's no houses there, and that's a half mile stretch to Canadian border.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: And he's in that shape. Kim told me there's a rail trail that's probably more like this one. And I personally have met skiers and we just wave and they go around me. It has big drop offs deeper than that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: You'll see the drop offs, that's not the drop.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: Well,

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I see cross country skiers all the time, I cross country ski myself and I haven't had any problems on any trails, but I haven't been up there. It's probably a little out of my way, but.

[Terry Lucas]: This is actually the nicest part of the trail. It's the widest and the flattest with the least amount of, I think we're talking like a four or five foot.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: This one over here on the left. On the right. The one on the right is That's only seven feet.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I thought those were the same place.

[Terry Lucas]: They are the same place. The one on the left is probably four or five years ago when that snowmobile sign was up. The one on the right was taken about a week ago, maybe ten days ago. After VTrans put that new stain that on, it looks beautiful. But that is the widest, the nicest part of the sprung. It's probably about three quarters of a mile long.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Represent White? Yes,

[Candice White (Member) [time-bound override]]: so just to confirm, the two photos we're looking at are the same location, just taken a couple years apart? That's correct. Okay, and I just want to make a comment. Think it was Jackie Casino from the agency Transportation who was testifying a couple months ago on the BB Spur. And there's obviously some differences of opinion because she said there is no area on the BB Spur where a snowmobile and a skier cannot fit side by side, like there was not an issue, from what I remember. I don't know if committee members

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: She did say that.

[Candice White (Member) [time-bound override]]: Yeah, but you are saying that is not the case from your experience.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: We have a petition that's signed by eight ten users, skiers, that will not use the path because it's dangerous when they meet. And these skiers have to get off the trail when the snow machine is coming.

[Terry Lucas]: We have another presentation, great activist, that I'm going to present that shows today what it looks like, and you'll be able to see where those big drop offs are and how narrow it is. Fact, we met with Jackie and some V Trans folks yesterday on the trail, and I was with my golden retriever walking. It was at the place which is the highest precipices, with the shortest shoulders on the track. I had to quickly get off to the side because we're talking this much before there's a 30 foot drop. And that was just people? That's just, well, there's a truck coming at me, right? There's a V Trans truck coming

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: V up. Trans truck.

[Terry Lucas]: Which is eight feet And mean, instinct, even with that, there's nowhere to get off at these particular spots. They're not everywhere, but maybe a mile to a mile and a half of the most densely populated is where the most and biggest precipices are. But we'll show you those pictures. And

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: if a snow machine's going 15 miles an hour, they can mean it's pretty loose. But this the what we see is snowmobiles are going quite fast than that. And you you don't have advantage in many skiers on a flat surface. Represent Casey.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Soldiers going between those pipelines right No. No one comes out.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: They take the middle one out in the winter.

[Terry Lucas]: They take all three out?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: No. They no. Just the middle one.

[Terry Lucas]: Oh, middle one. Yeah. Just just the middle one.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Okay. The middle one is not fixed. They take it up. But this is groomed by a month from May God trips. It's a nonprofit organization that has several 100 members, and they've got a trail network for the intermediate advance, 16 miles. They're the ones that groom this path from day one. The ass doesn't groom it, has never groomed it. It's too narrow. The bridge is up, and we have three thresholds here, eight foot, four inches wide, and you can't get a 10 foot, you know, groomer and an eight foot hole. So they don't groom it. It was groomed by a nonprofit.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Nor do

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: they have any intention

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to groom it. It's my understanding. Nor do they have any intention to

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: groom it.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: No, they have no intention to approve In fact, VAPS doesn't even put it on their trail map. VTrans is the only who puts it on their trail map, and they say it's open for anybody

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: as it functions. So, Pouech has a question for you.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, thanks for your testimony. So, you you go up north and you hit the border, there's no vast trail continuation there. And you go down south, there's no real vast trail continuation. So even, and it's not on the vast map. So it's not like this is part of the network or key to the network where you can go from one place to another, you can go all around the state. This is just sort of a dead end for the Bass Trail. So I imagine people aren't like going on Sunday all day long and going on this trail to get somewhere.

[Terry Lucas]: This goes nowhere. Well, there is the lake. Yeah. Part of it is they cross the lake to get the Bass Trails onto the

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: And there's another trail on the other side. Yeah.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: The Lindsay

[Terry Lucas]: Road will take you across this four mile wide lake that's six miles along.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah. Go to the next 50 maps.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative White, for you to Here's

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: the vast map of this is all of Orleans County and Northern Essex County. Yeah. And according to AI, Vast has 470 miles of trail in just Orleans County. And you take that lake, where you come from, there's 25 square miles of usable space there. Do whatever you want on the lake. So look at the look at the correspondence of the corresponding trackage between BB Spur and the little Yeah. And the Bass network. We've only got four miles compared to four seventy miles. And VTrans is opening this up for all of Bass. And we we we don't we wanna shut down. It's Bass doesn't groom it. It's the only and I said earlier, it's the only publicly groomed ski trail in all of Long Beach County, probably all of Northeast Kingdom. The only and the the high school use it used to use it for their cross country ski team and even meets. They don't anymore. I don't know

[Terry Lucas]: if it's private. And it's free.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: And it's free. And it's ruined by a private organization. So

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: The they just started doing this after '25 What was the alternate route around the area? Jacques Pouech said they actually could go up near his, follow his landline, a pool and farms. Was that their alternate before? They used

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: to have a trail. It went up there. It used to be groomed by North Ray Guard trails. And the snow machines used to use it so they stopped grooming it because of trip. Okay.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Represent the foot. So is the three and a half miles the entire yellow line?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. We can go to the next slide.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: So do a lot of Canadian snowmobilers No, use this to

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: doesn't connect. Oh, it does not? No, it doesn't connect in Canada. Okay. So but a bicycle What

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: number is that comes across in your chair, can't someone got a trail number on that one that's in the middle of the spur, is that the issue where that trail seems to startend there? The winter they head out over the lake.

[Terry Lucas]: Cross. Yeah.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: They go out over the lake there.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I'll get to that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Out there

[Terry Lucas]: or something they started there.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Okay. I'll get to that. See, this is the Beebeesburg, the entire and it's 3.8 miles long. And and you can see how fortunate and this is the vast network.

[Terry Lucas]: It

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: did enter the Canadian border. It isn't within two miles of any vast network. We come down this is across incoming across the link. It goes across a private right of way given to Vast, which is a year to year lease, and it crosses the Beebees Spur. It goes up about 400 yards on Lindsay Road, which is a town road, and it's got a wide curve that's dangerous in the South. Then it connects with Vast for heat, then the Vast For only that's for all the traffic coming across the way, both ways. Then the south end, there's Priority Drive. It dead ends at Priority Drive. That's to connect to this fast over here, it's a quarter mile away. You gotta go across the city road and or sidewalks. Two roads. Priority Drive and Union Street before you can get the path. So that really did end. So that's not legal. The bike path now continues on, goes down through the Bluffs and down Scott's Farm, down Priority Beach, and all the way into Newport. The bike and it's a perfect bike trail. And the bike trail, you get when you get to Canada, you have to go to the customs. That road goes all the way to customs to check-in, then go back and eat. In fact And a lot of Canadians use it in some And in

[Terry Lucas]: the wintertime, people do ski down this far down through down through Yeah, can ski at the But it's got hills. The only thing that's flat is the Phoebe's Burg. The rest of the Crowley Scouts, that's the Scouts Farm, is very hilly.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representatives Pouech is up, and

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: then Represent Bird. So to get back to it, I mean, the spur doesn't, there really is no reason for vast travelers to go on there, except apparently what we've heard is that there's some landowner, people who own property and they get their machine, they come down the spurts, get on the Bass Trail. I mean, do you have like data about how many snowmobiles go down in on a typical Sunday?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well, I'll let Lynn talk to that later. But they they yeah. They use it all the time. And we have people from today.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: That's what I'm sorry. Yes.

[Lynn Rutland]: There's half a dozen people who live along the Strip, I'm sorry, I live Rube Lake in Newport. I live on the Spur. I live there year round, so there's about half a dozen homeowners abutting the trail who use it to come down and access the lake and some of those some of

[Candice White (Member)]: those aren't local and on the

[Lynn Rutland]: weekends they bring my group of friends up so there might be you know six twelve snowmobiles coming down and going off to be quite busy.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: So not just people cruising the trails, but more like landowners along there that use it to connect to the trail.

[Lynn Rutland]: Right. And this is the first year that they did use it prior to this, it wasn't allowed, so they went another back trail through the canal.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: And at Airbnb, they advertised.

[Terry Lucas]: What did they do before this year when they were on the Geebies Curve? How did they get to the lake, to the rest of the grads?

[Lynn Rutland]: There's a couple of rooms that go from their homes that they can easily go on to connect the trail, where they would take their trailer down the road. It's not that hard to get from where they are onto one of the trails.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So previously they used to either haul their trailer up to the park, up to the lot to get onto the rail, or they went out onto the lake?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Correct. Or ask the neighbors, so you could cross the neighbor's land. But they always found a way

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to get Through the lawn, you mean, or through the trail?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well, there's a lot of open people that And you should go home to

[Terry Lucas]: Let me show what they did, because you know this area better than I do. But how Dave's Commerce would go across where Yeah.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: The people there's out of the two thirty people who live here, there's only six that have some issues. And they they would ask their and most of them are right in here. And they would ask their neighbors, and they would get permission to go across, you know, this neighbor and that neighbor until they get to the Bass Strait. And this is fields up here. So one one neighbor might own the whole street.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So they didn't come down the they went east your side. They didn't come south.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well Okay. Or most of most of them went on the ice. They go on ice and come down in this way. Oh. And the ice was two feet thick this year.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: The new issue is in the group closer to that vast trail down there or using going up. But you're not saying they're going up and down the whole trail. They're just they're going to and from that area to that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah. But it only takes one machine to pull on a straight little trip. But yeah, they didn't there's not a lot of that track. But they look at B TRAN's website and it says it's open to sweat machines and it's on the lake and people say, I don't want to try it out.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Clearly more owners could or could not. So, Representative Burke?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Well, maybe my question was answered, but it sounds like there are other options. Does the lake, probably the lake doesn't always freeze?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well, it's early and late. Yeah.

[Terry Lucas]: Although usually if the lake's not freezing, they're probably not getting floods. No, snowmobiling is not a good time.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah. We'll

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: try to hold back some of our questions for little while to help you get through the presentation. I know you have a number of questions.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: All I'm saying is, what B TRANS has done is they took the four trails, and they made Three years ago, they said, Okay, I think they reorganized three years ago. We also trailed. So they took the four trails and then brought us approach. Okay, we're gonna make them all the same. Now you got four roads there, three major highways and a dirt road. That's what you got. There's three major highways and a dirt road. We have a dirt road. You can't it's gonna cost millions to upgrade the same specs as the other three. And show them this picture here. Well, remember

[Terry Lucas]: a few folks thought we didn't, nobody complained. We had a petition.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: This is a petition we sent out. This petition, after it came out in the paper that Beebe Spurs can be opened to some real traffic, we didn't say that. Somebody picked it up from B TRANS. Then everybody got namaged.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Can you see that picture right there?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah. This picture is not B TRANS under B TRANS. That's one of the other chairs. We don't have anything that wide of Beebeesburg. Now this petition we sent out, and these are people that use it, the pedestrians and skiers that use it, and it's eight eleven signatures, and every county in Orleans, every town in Orleans County is represented there, and 75% of the signers are from the area, our area. So, these are people who've been kind of kicked off. And they used to ski all the time. They don't, that's a lot of signatures. That's all people from the area.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Any of you folks stole a You stole a bill? I have, but I don't know.

[Terry Lucas]: Yeah. I have before.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: So so you probably never come up on a skier before on a snowmobile?

[Terry Lucas]: No. I ski on the big life. I mean, where there's no people to snowmobiles. Well,

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: my point is that they they sure

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: they don't have that one.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah. And that's not our trip, but they've got it on the Baby Spur.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Well, we we like I said, we got a we got a rail trail down my way and I don't know we all get along just fine. If I had property along that trail and I wanted to go snowmobile, I'd probably figure out a way, but I would definitely wanna go that way.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well, that's what they're saying. But up until this year, they've always got their own way or trailed.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Well, the bass doesn't they really don't want you on the lake. People don't go through the lake. So I only don't care, I see that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I mean, I've seen that there's hundreds of them on the lake at any one time on a weekend.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: When there's plenty of ice? Yeah, that's right.

[Terry Lucas]: WiFi seems slow. And

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: just remind me, is the Vibe Spur owned by the state of Vermont?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yes, it's by the Rail for Trails. Rail for Trails. And it's an older German Rail for Trails. Okay. And before they said, they have to have motorized vehicles because of ADA. And that ADA, that's you know, we understand that. And we're not saying ADA compliant vehicles like scooters and realtors can't be underneath. And they also said that federal funds allows them to sell to you. They don't mandate sell to you. They do allow something.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: We

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: understand that. But the other point Carrie was making earlier about Jackie said she had no complaints. So it was eight ten complaints there, plus the city of Newport and the town of Derby both have resolutions asking B TRANS not to allow snow machines on a bike rack. It actually has an adverse effect to economic and tourists. It's chasing the tourism away, because all those people at Siena used to come to Newport and they'd eat or whatever, shop, and now they don't come up there.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: So I guess, if I've been more, so I mean, I live in Oakley and the D And H Rail Trail goes right through our community, 19 to 19 miles along in Saint Decathlon. But we call it a rail trail, we don't call it a bike trail.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: This was the first one and from day one it's been the pedestrian bike path. Even when went, when the stat goes through Act of 50, pedestrian bike path. It's always been called a bike. It's never been called a trick. Even in Scott Wood and Florida, he mentioned strip half, seven times, never mentioned strip. They had no intentions of putting some shoes on Beaver's Fair. Thank you.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Represent Keyser. So this trail is state land. And

[Chris Keyser (Member) [time-bound override]]: everybody in the state pays taxes, right? Genetically, everybody in the state owns a little piece of that, right?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well, it's like the other railroad. They

[Terry Lucas]: also own a piece of the road. Why don't we allow some of those on the roads? And that just is a

[Chris Keyser (Member) [time-bound override]]: And

[Terry Lucas]: They

[Chris Keyser (Member) [time-bound override]]: do go across the road. They do put it on the side of the road.

[Terry Lucas]: Can they go for a mile, like a half a mile or so?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Depends how bad you are to ride.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: It says on the beach area in the website that it's here. Lynn? Let's see what else you got here. I'd like to have Lynn come up here. Is

[Terry Lucas]: the Wi Fi really slow? Noticed all of time.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: It's very sketchy the last two days. Oh, okay. Noticed pictures all of a sudden. Okay.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Alright. The lack of leadership.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: It's on the phone. I can get a joke.

[Terry Lucas]: We'll get there. Good. Alright. Okay. I can also bring up the PDF file. Maybe that's easy to bring the PDF file up instead of the the live doc. Oh, I also have them in. So we wanted to talk about the spur versus the mainline. All of the memorial, spur is just a, it's a smaller trail. It tends to look smaller. The tracks are the same size, but it looks smaller because vegetation isn't pulled back, so it looks like it's very narrow. And it tends to be hilly, lots of turns, and they don't have a lot of ballast, a lot of the rocks underneath the rails, the trails, the railroad tracks itself. They're primarily used for short distances, in this case, three or four miles to connect industries, like for a wooden mill or dairy farm or transport forest. Sorry about that. Let me open up the PDF file. This is

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: gonna take forever, I think. Where did that go?

[Terry Lucas]: It's gonna PDF file for that book. Oops, no. Show me. There we go, okay. So this is just quickly, that's a spur. You can see there's a lot more balance. The traction's the same size. Again, that's a mainline, that's a spur. Main lines tend to be much straighter, much wider, usually 10 to 12 feet with another one to two foot board. Our spur is about seven feet wide, with up to two feet on each side of the borders, but it typically runs about a foot. And most will show you pictures and things of that as well. Of the four trails, the Beebe Spur is just 3.8 miles long, seven feet wide, one to two foot shoulders, which quickly taper off to the slope of what's on the beach side of it. The Lemoyle, the Missisquoi, and the Delaware Hudson, those are main lines. They're 10 to 14 feet wide. They're meant for high speed, heavy trains, lots of vegetation. If the Beebees Spur was 14 feet, 12 feet wide, there's nothing we could complain about. Absolutely nothing, because they can coexist quite nicely, automobiles and people. It's the spur. The spur is very different. Today, the spur stops at Prouty Drive, Chitt said. There is still track that has a degree move that's behind Columbia, Vermont maple products, and then there's a big overpass where there's a tunnel that goes through. Those still have tracks, but no one's ever taken those down if you wanted to connect things up. So there's no connection to Downtown Newport. The topography of the spur is what's interesting. Because those shoulders are so narrow on the west side, the lake side, the Magog side, that's where we see anywhere from 10 to 30 foot drops. And these are not just like rolling drops, these are 90 degree drops straight down to rocks. We have pictures of those, we'll show you those. On the east side, they're not as bad. There are three wetlands. The wetlands tend to be five to 10 foot drops into ponds and things like that. There are a couple of places that are 10 to 20 foot drops. We'll show you pictures of those, which are big, big crevices, where if you're lucky enough, you hit the tree at five feet, and you won't go any further. You're not so lucky, you're gonna be a 20 feet drop to one foot drop. Even VAST, in their best practices manuals, talks about slopes of trails. Some of those slopes are going up the trails, but some of them are ones coming down. When you're going around a curve, when there's a big slope, they tell you you should have big wide stances. So as you're turning, you can see what's around those turns. We have turns on the spur where you'll see you can't see those things. And then they talk about slopes. The percent of the grade, here, is a vast document on best practices. Anything that's in the 40% or maybe 50% is all red. That 50% grade is a 37 degree slope. We have slopes that are in the 45% on the densest two miles of the spur. So this is the west side.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: This

[Terry Lucas]: one's going south, this one's going north. That's Chitt. You can see there's erosion happening here. The trail is here. We're about a foot and a half. When there's snow there, you don't see these things that are pockets of almost like a sinkhole, where if you're the steer trying to get off this, you go in this thing, you're going off to the side down here. And this is only 1,008 feet, something like that. It's not big, but it's a treacherous place. And this spur is that seven feet wide thing. Dog. Chittenden I walk every day for five to six miles.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: We do 700, 800 miles a year. Only because he's in the dark.

[Terry Lucas]: Again, this is the west side. This is the spur heading north. This is the spur heading south. This is about a 10 foot drop. This is a 10 to 15 foot drop. It's probably about 35, 40, maybe 45 degrees in some places drop. And this is kind of rumbling, so it doesn't look too bad, but this is sloping very quickly. If you get off, there's snow here and you're a skier, you're probably or a snowmobile, you'll get started.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: So if I'm a skier and I hear a snowmobile coming, well that's like a snowmobile. Why wouldn't I go off to the like on the right hand picture why wouldn't I scurry over to the left hand side? Why is a skier am I going go over to the right hand side the more dangerous side? On

[Terry Lucas]: this side?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: No, on the other Yep, now look up there if I see the meadow, I can see the meadow right there. Why don't you just scoot over there and I don't know, I mean I don't know what kind of skiers you got up there but I mean I could see where the danger is not me moving away from it

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: and letting the snowmobile go by. So this is about a quarter to a half

[Terry Lucas]: mile long area. It's not just this spot.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: This is left. Yeah.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Yeah. See how it's nice there? We'll took a spot where it's skewed it's smooth over

[Terry Lucas]: there safely. It's very nice over here too.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: But you all feel that you need to go over towards the steep side. That's what When a snowball comes, that's your instinct, is to go over to the steep side? You'd free My instinct is to go to the left where the grass is, where it's a meadow. Mean, Well, we'll I'll show you trying to make a point, but you're you're really beating a dead horse. Well, I'll show

[Terry Lucas]: you some other areas where there is nothing to go to on both sides. But you're right. If you could get to this quickly enough, you should. Well, here. Well, the snowmobile, if you go air free, go buy that. I'll give you my take.

[Lynn Rutland]: The majority of the path has steep sides, either going to the lake or into wetlands. There's very few spots where there is a bit more space. So I take your point, but the majority of it, they're steep sides.

[Terry Lucas]: In fact, this is the part where there's on both sides. So this is a 25, 30, both of these are lakeside. And I'll show you the flip side of this is over here and that's a 20 foot drop. We're not, there's nowhere, in fact, is where I met Jack. Yesterday. Yesterday, with my dog and Chet. Chet had been quickly trying to get over here. I'm not going over here with my dog because if my dog goes down the side, I'm going with I'm not going before this fence that's selling. I think VTrans put this up. And it's a 20 foot fence. It's really big out there because, I mean, it's a straight

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: They wouldn't have been there because

[Terry Lucas]: of the erosion. But there's nowhere to go here. What is that? Is that just like a beauty? Oh, have somebody there's a homeowner on this side. Put the platform on. He put a platform on. I don't know the look of it. I'm not arguing about that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: He's an architect, so he'd get suspended this.

[Terry Lucas]: Somehow he stuck it onto the side.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: He didn't want to sell the property?

[Terry Lucas]: He leases the property to the state.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: It's all leased. Most of that property that he's showing you is leased from Beach Ranch. The state owns all that lakefront property for a good share of lakefront.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay, so all the houses are home owned right inside of this

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: picture. In fact, Jesse mentioned at the last hearing there's 50 homeowners supporting Beaver's Park. Actually, there's 200. But I think it's a 50 she's talking about a leasehold. There's 50 landowners that pay a lease across the bike path. Across the road. Because on the right side, it's so much. Was all part of the right of way that they inherited or bought from Perth.

[Terry Lucas]: So this is like the nice part you saw in Chetz, which is the northern part of the Beekees River. This is right next to the Jets house. This is only a ten, fifteen foot drop.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: It's a very nice drop.

[Terry Lucas]: I mean, you're gonna fall, this is right on fall. This is a nice rolling kind of a ball. But I mean, sides look like this. This is another one that's a little further north of where we were looking on the previous one, which was really precipice, precipice, high precipice. This has had a long You can see where they've been putting rocks in. Somebody came, I guess, ten years ago to bore rocks to stabilize So if you're falling here, you're falling onto big rocks.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: This here is right by my house. And about ten years ago, there was two snow machines come up the path going north and it was in a blizzard. They couldn't see. The first guy went over the back. I heard him scream, so I was out over my yard. I went up there and the first slug went over the hill, he turned it. When he landed, he broke his ski. The second guy jumped off his and his rolled over. Down on the upside, rolled over, broke his windshield. And I went over because the guy was screaming. And I went over it had awful damn narrow snowmobile trail. I said, You're on a ski trail, not a storm. Your vast trail was 70 feet out of the road. They had to tow his machine out because he broke it. Brand new one.

[Terry Lucas]: And these are the rocks they've been putting up against the shore to protect more erosion. At the bottom of these things, that's where those sit. This is the east side, so the Nami Water side, the east side of the spur. This is the flip side of what we just saw, where I said it was a nice place to fall, when Chittenden said he saw

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: a couple of This is where he traveled, yeah.

[Terry Lucas]: Yes, a nice similar visit, falling off. This is that other side where I showed you the 30 foot drops, that's the flip side of that 30 foot drop. You've got a foot, and then you're going down to here, which is about 10 feet if you'd like to hit that tree, or you're down 20 feet at the bottom of this reference. There's nowhere to go. This is the wetland, one of the wetlands. There's three wetlands on this. This is seven feet wide. It fakes us out to the eight feet or eight feet four inches to the depths of the trestle. And you've got a eight to 10 foot drop on each side of these wetlands. I mean, you're gonna fall into the bottom of feet, between five feet of water. There are some sharp turns. You can see that there are, if you're coming fast down these things, you're not gonna see what's in front of you. Even the vast best practices said these things should be wider. I'm not a road guy, but I don't know how you make it wider. Get these things which are collecting water coming down from the hills so it doesn't wash out the path. I don't know how you fix it. Maybe V Train's on the site.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: It's in March. There was someone who went by my house wide open. I have a house sitting, she said it went by a 100 mile. And then it was wide open, and it was dusk. And there's still skiers out there at dusk. And he went this way north.

[Terry Lucas]: Wish if our spur looked like this, there'd be no complaints. Can go there. There's four feet on each side. There's nothing. I mean, little gullies. That's nothing. That isn't the problem. Even the Rail Trails Conservatory, the RTC, which is a nonprofit thing that the government, the USDA and a few other things give money to. In the Association of State Highway Transportation, they recommend minimum 10 feet for multi use trails. At minimum, they recommend 12 to 14, which is what all the other three rail trails, that's what they are. We're not. We're not even close to that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Main difference being the word spur or side traffic versus the main line. That's correct. What was that about?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I've ridden Memorial Valley Rail Trail quite a bit. There are sections in there where it drops off. So that's not unusual for rail trails. There are sections where they go through farm fields too, But like going from St. Jay up to Danville, there's some steep drop offs. I mean, you look and you go, holy mackerel. So it's not uncommon.

[Terry Lucas]: How wide is it though? It's probably that's

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: 14 I don't think the rail is that wide necessarily. Certainly two lights could pass.

[Terry Lucas]: And then just as a note, the only spur that I've been able to find that's like ours is the Belmont Spur in New Hampshire. It's in Belmont, New Hampshire, kind of midway between Concord and Plymouth, and it's close to snowmobiles because it's only eight feet wide. Just like our trestles are eight feet wide, this bridge is eight feet wide. It's closed. How long is this? Two thirds? Like three point something. It's less than four. Okay.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I just want to make a comment that the Delaware Hudson is.

[Terry Lucas]: And this is run by the New Hampshire Rail Trail Coalition.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Just a comment that

[Terry Lucas]: the Delaware Hudson is eight to 10 people. With a two foot shoulders on each side. Why don't you feel this?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: And there are right

[Terry Lucas]: spots on it. And a lot of the spur, even the baby spur, is two feet. Like you saw on the northern part where the sign was removed, it's eight feet wide, two feet, and it's low, that's a really safe spot. It's the parts that are in, which is where they want to drive the sun over. This is just a safety thing we looked at with kinetic energy. You have a person with a snowmobile, it takes a serious price. Oh, sorry.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: How many people have been hitting snowmobiles on that trail? What was the first year?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: It's the first year you've been used? But but they they've never used it before.

[Terry Lucas]: Nobody ever went around the trail.

[Phil White]: A lot

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: of people use it. They get lost. I mean, not a lot, but a few. They come off the lake. They can't see where the the exit ramp is across the Beebees Spur, so they go across private property and get on the spur and run it. So they have been on it. Yes. They're not complaining. The only accident I know of is the one that rolls it open, but they didn't hit him.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Prior to this year, they would be breaking the rules, etcetera. It would be an issue. But now it's allowed, whereas before it was not allowed.

[Terry Lucas]: So if somebody wasn't from the area bought it out. And

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I don't wanna say they're breaking the law, they were certainly breaking they were definitely out of the now it's a different scenario. But I don't know how you would enforce it other than sign it. Guess I I do have to interject there. Look, if it were a VAST related trail, which it's not, but a VAST has a pretty significant budget for enforcement and targets enforcement of their riders in order to not antagonize homeowners. I mean, they're very aggressive about that. So I agree that, I would probably say I would not know about enforcement on a non VAST trail, we've heard huge testimony on a VAST trail. They are pretty heavy on the enforcement. But that's two different things. I just wanna be clear as far as if that was understood that VAS has a significant enforcement.

[Terry Lucas]: That is your life station.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: So they have a contract to the, I don't remember exactly how much, it's in the tens of thousands, if not $100,000 a year they're spending on the Get A Fish and Game, State Police, the Sheriffs. But this is not in the vast network, nor are they proposing to add it to the vast network. So that won't necessarily help. But they might help a little bit if we were to ask. But I'm just saying, I do want you be aware, in the vast network, they have an entire system because they can't risk their homeowners that are allowing them to use their properties to not be protected. Representative McCoy? What are these numbers in these bubbles? So this is, if you

[Terry Lucas]: might look at the GIS data of property and base taxes of density, population density. So 37 homes is yellow bubble. That's correct. And then 1,000 feet. 1,000 feet. 123 homes are adjacent to it. The other 82 are within 1,000 feet of this world. Okay. And the density, if you take the miles divided by the total homes, it's basically in this short little area. So there's 123

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: total homes? All those bubbles add up to 120

[Terry Lucas]: All those bubbles add up to two zero five. I count it both. It's butter's kind of adjacent. Same with this one. And we're just denser than anybody. Part of it's a little more, a main line tends to go where the roads are, like Route 5. You don't see a lot of houses through the fast parts of Route 5. Like I said, if we were a main rail, that 12 feet wide, 14, there's nothing to complain about. There really isn't, but we're not. You.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Jim Casey, do you have any slides that shows a tape measure going across the?

[Terry Lucas]: Oh, we just measured it this morning, I mean yesterday we didn't take a picture of it. Figured you'd believe us. Mean, I'm

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: a carpenter and I know how long things are and I also, to be honest with you, some of your measurements, I'd like to double check to sell.

[Terry Lucas]: I can certainly take it again and send you a picture.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: We have a picture. She's got

[Lynn Rutland]: some steeples. I have a bunch of pictures I took this month out there with my steeples. Measuring to

[Terry Lucas]: both. I did wanna say something about I have nothing against VATS. They bring a lot of money into this state. We need them. In fact, my next door neighbor gives them access to the state, from Lindsay Road to the lake. There's a lot more snowmobiles that go through there. I'll see 10 to 20 at a time. I might hear them a little, they don't bother me. They just don't bother me. It's a safety issue. That's all it is, is a safety issue. I have nothing against snowmobiles. My perception, I guess, is

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: this is not a fast rebating issue. Like Vast is not looking for this trail or adding it or not. I'm saying I don't think they have anything really to do with it, I guess, is my view on that part of it.

[Terry Lucas]: I'm not VTrans saying snowmobiles are allowed.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: But Vast is not interested in advertising or being involved at all.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: The only thing that Vast gets involved with, and we like the Vast guys that we deal with, they're the ones that have to get the right away across off the lake and across to connect with they have to get that lease every year. If they lost that lease, there wouldn't be any access across the lake except in Downtown Newport. I don't think about it. But they have to talk to the patrons to get that police. And the patrons ask cops

[Terry Lucas]: And they go fast on the lake in front of me? It doesn't bother me. It's a four mile, six miles long. They can go there any way. I don't care. It doesn't bother me. There's nothing I mean, they hit themselves, that's a problem. But it doesn't affect the people that use that spur.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I feel any of that. I'm saying FAST is not causing this issue. FAST is not taking a stance on the issues too.

[Terry Lucas]: Other than they had a few members who wanted access to the SPUR. Was the issue.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm speaking on behalf of the organization. I just want to be very clear about that.

[Terry Lucas]: Had nothing to do with

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Windham?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, thank you both for your testimony. I appreciate it. I just have a couple questions and then a comment. So looking back at notes from when Jackie Cassino was in to testify back in March, and she spoke of the Phoebe Spur in the context of Vermont rail trails, and that the Beebees Spur in particular was taken over from the Canadian Pacific Railroad. It's overseen by the state. Some improvements were made with federal highway funds, which has some strings attached. AOT is responsible for the maintenance of trails, but you're saying AOT does not maintain the BB's They've

[Terry Lucas]: done a nice flush

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: So at your they do, they just don't grill it.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: They've done it. They've They've maintained it.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: So they've done, okay, because it sounds like there's a little discrepancy here between AOT is maintaining it, and kind of the use, because you showed us a letter back in the ninety's where it looked pretty clear that there was agreement from the state that this trail would not be used by motorized vehicles. Yes. And within the last year, two years, that has changed. Has there been any formal, because that's a formal letter. No, no, no, So that just changed in AOT within the last couple of years.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: There was no public hearing. They didn't contact any homeowner or butter. They didn't contact town of Derby or the city of Newport. And they just did. They just changed it. Okay. And made a broad brush.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Okay, so that seems like a concern. I'm concerned about that, because that doesn't seem like there's good communication, or something happened there, I'm not quite sure. The other thing that Jackie mentioned was that when there are issues on trails, that there's a board or something, people can go with concerns to talk to her or her group about uses of betrayals. Has that been, have you all done that with Jackie? No,

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: we've talked to Jackie. We've had different meetings with her.

[Terry Lucas]: Recently in the last couple of weeks. Before then, we weren't allowed.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: No, we weren't allowed. We had no standing. Yeah, had no standing.

[Terry Lucas]: Was a meeting between Menthol Mayagog Trails, Bass, and V Train.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: That's called the council, the Phoebe Spur Council. It includes Bob Primo, who's the head of the nonprofit group Menthol Mayagog

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Trails. The one that's grooming the trails.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah, one that's grooming the trails. Uh-huh. And two AOT employees, and two VAST members, and Jackie.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: No homeowners. So no homeowners were invited to that meeting.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I asked if I could get in, and I never got an answer back. So there's no homeowners on it. And that's their council. And Bob Primo, being on their council, was unaware that they were going to allow stone machines, and they didn't even know about it. So they didn't even advise the councilman.

[Terry Lucas]: He was the first one to tell us about it in November. So

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: that system is not working the way it has been proposed, and it's not satisfying your concerns.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Talked to Jackie during a rural meeting. NVDA is a party to that plant. They do Northeast Vermont development. They're partly into their Northeast Kingdom plan. And we had a conference call with Doug Morton, who works for NVDA, Asian outreach coordinators. We had a Zoom meeting once a while, we had another one coming up and Jackie was on there.

[Terry Lucas]: It was more of a venting of us, why haven't you talked to us? Nothing, you wouldn't let a pin in.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: There's nobody in every tackles.

[Terry Lucas]: But she's done a great job maintaining that.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I have nothing against that. Nothing at all against it. Okay, okay. And I think you've made, in my mind, a believable case that there isn't a safety issue here, given the narrowness of the spur, so that you're seeing that skiers and snowmobile riders can really not coexist safely.

[Terry Lucas]: In many spots, especially those areas where the snowmobilers want to be to get to the down the spur to the deep sea, to the cross.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: We should have. Phil will give some testimony.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Thank you.

[Terry Lucas]: And this is just that Chitt had an interesting thing. He looks at the four rail trails. The main lines are like highways. We're this little dirt road that's kind of like, that just, you can't do. All

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: the moves and restrictions are applied equally. Guess that's it. Representative Burke has a question for you.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Yeah, following up on Representative White's question, so you have no indication of what the internal conversations were, you try to, what way they will focus their process, you know, I mean it obviously didn't involve you, but did they ever say why they did this? Was it just because of ADA?

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: They actually mentioned a lack of communication at its office. I mean, I was there, I took thirty five years, nobody's ever contacted me for the State of Farm

[Terry Lucas]: ever since 1998. The most we ever heard was when Jackie gave testimony here, and I think it's a lawyer that's here.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Yeah, joined Denmark.

[Terry Lucas]: When he talked about ADA and equity and things like that, that's the first time we'd ever heard anybody tell

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: us. Okay, it's been everybody complaining to you, will we're gonna let this change because we need to dissatisfy ADA, or we want to, or whatever, okay.

[Terry Lucas]: Or even the town select boards, they weren't aware

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: of it, neither Newport or Derby were aware of that. So

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: this spur is rail banked, that's the term for

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: And the

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: I think we had some testimony that talked about that ties in the federal government, that you can't change it, and that they also have rules of what it can be used for what limitations on how you can restrict it. And I believe we were told that saying you couldn't use the snow machine was a limitation that goes against the federal government rail trail the rail bank rules and regulations.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: So you said that snow machines should be allowed?

[Terry Lucas]: Yes.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: They could be allowed. No one does it say they should be.

[Terry Lucas]: Aren't there exceptions? I thought the lawyer mentioned that there were exceptions. I don't know what it requires to get those exceptions. I would think safety would

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: be an exception. Would think, but I mean, that's a piece

[Terry Lucas]: of it too. But it would be nice to know instead of just, like, it, and we didn't even know it was coming.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: His established case that won in New Hampshire wouldn't have been wouldn't have been closed. And that was a spur. But I have a friend who

[Terry Lucas]: did the Apple Watch is

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: like federal government. That's right. Whether it's rail ban

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: or I do understand that the formation of the rail trail under the agency has been, what it's only been a few, three years now, and they certainly, this is the last of the, started all

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: the way through

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Memorial, Francisco, Hudson. This is the fourth and the

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: end of their run of trying

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to really understand what they have and where they're at. So I'm gathering that that may not have gone well at the end, but I believe from the testament we heard, the understanding is this was what they've done everywhere else. I think those And steps sort of just happened, may not have been the best way for sure. But they're moving in the direction of same supposedly, understanding the same rules as what they manage the other ones. But either way, we're through the winter and we're here and we'll see where

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I think we would move over here. Ski, classic ski center there and work with the eight and one for a dog trails in the city in Portland and make a nice trail. Windham?

[Terry Lucas]: The person at least.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Once again, owns it, not just you people that border up against it. Everybody owns that. I don't think really just a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: few people can get sit there

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: and decide to make a ski center on something that everybody in the state owns.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: There are eight ten people signing petition. The city of Newport signed a resolution.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I didn't sign it down my way. Everybody owns it, right? Everybody should have a right to sign that petition.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Well, I can.

[Terry Lucas]: There ever be a safety issue based where you be concerned about snowmobiles? Yeah, I

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: don't think snowmobilers need to be driving out on their way. That's what I don't like. I've seen people, I've seen the situation where people go cross Champlain, they drown, they don't need to, you know, in the beginning of the snowmobile season, it's definitely not a place where you want a snowmobile.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Those people

[Terry Lucas]: that live along there,

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: the few snowmobilers that they

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: are, should have

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: a right to move their snowmobiles and not sit there and have a trailer and and politely go by you folks when you're when you're cross country skiing. I do both and I get along with them. Usually, it's just a wave and I've been through tight little areas. Not everything's perfect and pristine and 20 feet wide.

[Terry Lucas]: So it's interesting because the people who want access to the skirt, it's all because they want access. They said they don't want go across the lake except for this one area. That's they want because it doesn't connect to anything. Do you guys ever ski LLA? I'm going all the time. Why do I? Because it's not good.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: We have somebody

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: that's behind me on the team. Let's take test. I don't know if you're up next.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Can we talk about Phil?

[Terry Lucas]: Oh yeah, Phil's. Do you want to unshare me or do you want me to unshare myself here?

[Lynn Rutland]: Phil's way you've been waiting on Zoom. Yeah.

[Phil White]: Yeah, hi. This is Phil White. I'm sorry about my lack of picture, but I hope Carrie will come by my house and fix

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: it. My

[Phil White]: my my my issue is that this was not open to snowmobiles. And as a result of that, men from Magog Trails, which started twenty five years ago, started voluntarily grooming the BB Spur to allow public access for free on a groomed ski touring trail, in the wintertime. Now the grooming has a very specific value is that there is a side that tracks for diagonal cross country skiing, the old school skiing, and that there's a four foot wide corduroy that's perfect for skate skiing. And that's the kind of competitive skiing that you see now. So what we're seeing is that for twenty five years, skate skiers have had groomed trails that serve the general public, and there have been no snowmobiles affecting that track. Now after a snowstorm, the trail is groomed, and we can have four or five snowmobiles coming from the north from the Johns River area and destroy that portion of the track that's used for skate skiing. Now a lot of rail trails are groomed by VAST and cross country skiers will typically use those trails for diagonal skiing, but they're not really usable for skate skiing, except under rare circumstances. So I I have spent the last two decades of my life trying to build a a recreational asset here in Orleans County. It's called Kingdom Games, and we host running, biking, and swimming events. And I've worked very, very closely with the city of Newport, which is adopting the the recreational tourism as an economic driver for this area. And I know how hard it is to build what Memphremagog Trails has done. And I think that they're I'm very supportive of VAST and the 470 miles of network that they have in Orleans County. They're valuable for the community, and they're value valuable for tourism. But I'm also value Memphremagog Trails, and it's 18 miles of groomed trails. And it's an asset to our community to have that here. And I think both of them can exist without adversely impacting either one of them. This is driven by a handful of people, not the general vast public. So I'm hopeful that you'll look at it in that perspective that this really is not suitable for shared use. It's not necessary for the vast network to be successful. It is necessary for MefromaGog Trails to continue to have 18 miles of broom trails. That's really all I have.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: Thanks very much. And it might have been this must have been quite a shock to you to see something that had been twenty five years and all of a sudden things change. And I was a recipient of that. I own property on the trail down in Pouley. But that's neither here nor there. I think a lot of this is path to the side. All these wonderful things that we've done and tried to maintain and enjoy all these years, because really, this is not Presenting that is not going to affect the situation. Have you researched how to remove the spur from rail banking? Boy,

[Terry Lucas]: I've talked

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: to a few

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: folks about it. Good, okay, that's a good process because that's the way to get it done. That's the way to satisfy yourself. And given all the effort that you put in, rail banking is a way to do it. There are two ways to do it. And so one way to do it is to And it all has to go to the federal government. But one way to do it is to have, as I read here, once the corridor is spurred, can see it's not abandoned. There's two legal ways. One is that you have the railroad or successor, which is Vermont, the trail manager must agree and then apply to the federal government to have it done. You haven't tried to

[Terry Lucas]: do that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: No, no.

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: So I'm going to suggest to you that there is much more to do. And I think that I would encourage you to do that, and I would support your efforts from the transportation committee to go with the state and to encourage unbanking of this particular storm. And that's the permanent resolution of this problem, in my opinion.

[Terry Lucas]: How would it work for huge wetlands?

[Patricia McCoy (Member)]: I don't know these things, but there are two avenues in which to unbank this property, and that would solve the problem.

[Terry Lucas]: Can you believe it's all played?

[Phil White]: Can I say something on that?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Sure. My

[Phil White]: read of the federal law is that snowmobiles may be allowed if the state or local governments approve that. And that, I think, is what the federal law says in statute. I don't know about the regulations.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Oh, the sky but the sea.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: But

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Oh, I agree.

[Phil White]: That's why the the legislature several years ago

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Tax member.

[Phil White]: Specifically allowed snowmobiles for the other rail trails.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: They're bringing money

[Phil White]: And this one as well. And that's why it's allowed.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Candice White (Member)]: Am wondering if the rail trails in Vermont, the ones that are rail banked, fall under regulation under the Surface Transportation Act, the Federal Surface Transportation Act. And if so, as someone who represents Shelburne, would offer you a cautionary tale. We tried several years ago to fight a salt shed in our town and spent half $1,000,000 on very foolishly, in retrospect, on trying to fight the feds. So that's just something to whatever you decide to do going forward and you're exploring what is possible to just know about, I'm sure it's easy to find all the information on that a bigger seven days, etcetera.

[Terry Lucas]: Ideally, it would be best to work with VTrans and AOT about something that can be either slowed down or until we can understand, I mean, just throw something out there and

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: it That doesn't

[Candice White (Member)]: seems like a very reasonable pathway to pursue. Said that the RPC was kind of facilitated conversations with the Jockey.

[Terry Lucas]: It was the first time, yeah, we just had a meeting about the BB Spur. And your first meeting, everybody's pretty We were all upset. So it was a meeting just to vent, I think, more than anything. And then it all toned down. But you just can't flip a switch and say, snowmobiles now, and nothing is even looked at or thought about. At the end of the day, that's the issue.

[Candice White (Member)]: Right, right, well, you know what?

[Terry Lucas]: Or expanding vats up there to get better trails for people. They need better trails to work with the people around there who took about two.

[Candice White (Member)]: Right, right. So it seems like some kind of a mediated conversation about potential alternatives might be a good starting point. Also, whether or not, given the perceived concerns about safety, it's possible to allow snowmobiles on the trail, but at a reduced speed or something like that. So there seems like there's some things that might just be within reach, you know?

[Terry Lucas]: Since you're the snowmobile expert compared to me, I've only driven you a few times, but they are fun. My understanding is it's hard to go slow in a lot of these snowmobile, they're meant to kind of like, you know, ratchet up fast. Is it hard to keep it

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: at little four cylinder, four cylinder, 150 horse, and I can putt right along easily with it.

[Terry Lucas]: Not preferably. Yeah. I mean,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative Wells and then representative White.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Thank you. First of all, I'm disappointed that Phil doesn't have a picture because he's a dead ringer for David Letterman. Phil, you and I talked about that one particular person on that trail has a bread and back breakfast. He's from Massachusetts, but he's gonna sell his property. He sounded like he's doing a lot of the damage. When he moves on, will this alleviate half your problem, or what do you think?

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: No.

[Phil White]: He's advertising as having access to the vast trail. So he's looking to sell to somebody who wants to use the B B Spur.

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: They'll wanna continue that. That. And just to know on level of ice, I have a huge event there every year, 120 pickups parked on it. From December until early March, anybody can drive across that lake at any time. It's not full of holes. It's not dangerous. We do it all the time. That is a non factor. They can take that lake anytime. If I can hold 120 pickups, and I did laugh about his talk about speed because some of these guys go 148 miles an hour. That is an option. Thank

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: you, Phil.

[Phil White]: Yeah. Thank you, Ken.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Reps on white.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Just, again, I appreciate your testimony. And I think that, I mean, my feeling is we've, there are enough concerns that you've brought to light that I personally would like to invite Jackie and perhaps someone else from AOT back in to revisit this. I feel like this testimony has brought up some issues that counter some of what was shared with us back in March. And so I'd like to dig in a little further before we give you lots of different suggestions on which route you might want to go on. I think it makes a lot of sense to go to AOT first.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you.

[Phil White]: Can I say one last one?

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: We're gonna go to, I guess Phil's got something to say, then we're gonna go either to Walter or to What's that, Phil?

[Phil White]: I just wanted to say that this is the only rail trail that has a ski touring foundation presence on it with grooming. Unlike the others, unlike Memorial, unlike Missisquoi, unlike any other, there's actually an active cross country ski center that's grooming this trail and has done it for twenty five years. And and I think that distinguishes it in addition to the safety issues from the some of the other rail trails. So I I just wanted to say that.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: So so the ski touring center owns it now?

[Phil White]: No. Sounds like you're living on your planes on it. There's citizens who have voluntarily groomed it for twenty five years. They're out there at 06:00 in the morning grooming it, and I'm having my coffee watching my doctor go by, grooming it at 06:00 in the

[Terry Lucas]: morning They worked with they worked with VTrent. VTrent. VTrent has asked

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: to do that. They worked together. They partnered that back.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: So so in lieu of you guys make claims to it. It kinda sounds like you guys are working to make this touring center, the words that he used, it's a piece of Vermont state property. But that's what

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: it was designed for. That's how it was built. Was built that. A

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: foot.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Representative White, you can comment while we're switching.

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I just want to comment that I think this committee, we know that transportation takes many forms in the state, not just cars or snowmobiles, but bicycles and pedestrians and skiers. And these are all valued forms of transportation in our state. And I think there's an argument that automobiles aren't any more important than skiers, aren't any more than cars. So we have to consider all the different modes of transportation in our state that are valued. So

[Lynn Rutland]: my name is Lynn Rutland. I was born and raised in Newport. Moved back to the area about twelve years ago. I live adjacent

[Terry Lucas]: to the

[Lynn Rutland]: bike path and it has been a cherished resource for everyone, everyone who lives there, everyone who comes and visits, and whether they're biking or skiing or walking, but the fact that it has been non motorized is really important to a lot of us who are out there, whether we're running for us, which is skiing or walking our dog, it's quiet. Everybody can access it because it's flat. And we don't have a lot of resources in the area for outdoor recreation. So, this bike path has really been vital, whether it's in the summer or whether it's in the winter, and I do live there all year round, as an outdoor pedestrian paths. And I'm nothing against snowmobiles, but the safety factor is definitely a concern for me. Where I live is where there's a drop off, the, not on the lakeside, but the other side, down to a brook. Someone on their bicycle pulled over there one time to take a picture. Measured it yesterday. It's barely 10 inches, and it slopes like this and then goes straight down. They fell down and they broke their shoulder. So, I'm aware that these accidents can happen. I've been out there cross country skiing when snowmobiles have come. I've moved over, but it's not for those of us who use it regularly on foot, we were all shocked. And when I say we, I'm talking about the whole community, just people that live there, all the people that signed the petition. We have council meetings in Newport and Derby, and the majority of the people who actively use the trail on foot were like, snowmobiles don't make sense here. And the fact that there's only a small group who want to use it, the rest of the snowmobiles don't. I mean, we go, why can't we have these four, less than four miles for pedestrians when snowmobiles have four fifty in the counties.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: This person that broke their shoulder, why did they So it's not a snowmobile that shove them off.

[Lynn Rutland]: No, but I'm just saying that the places where it's so narrow and drops off, it's easy to step off and-

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: A snowmobile had nothing to do with. No,

[Lynn Rutland]: a snowmobile did not have anything to do with that, was in the summertime, the guy was on a flight. It's an indication that it can happen.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: I can guarantee you you won't see snowmobile on there during the summer.

[Lynn Rutland]: No, but it's even more likely to happen in the winter because when everything's all awake and the snow's piled up, you can't see it that far. Anyways, so it's been such a cherished place for people on foot. Like I say, whether they're out there walking their dog, or out there getting our fresh air and exercise, and to have a motorized vehicle just changes the character of what has been a really important community resource for over twenty five years. And I was thinking, I've been in Burlington for a long time, I walked and biked and skied the past there, and I thought, I don't think anybody in Burlington would be thinking about having snowmobiles on that trail for the same reason that it's used heavily by pedestrians and is in a residential area. So it's just not compatible with what's already there and what has been there and what people love and appreciate about being there and being able to use that path. So that's my 2¢. President Wells?

[Kenneth "Ken" Wells (Member)]: Would there be any chance that everybody could get along if that path was widened to 14 feet, the whole length of it, but I for

[Lynn Rutland]: think that's a good question. I think that's a good question because I think like myself, and I didn't think of snowmobiles, they're a lot of fun, but I was out there one day and skiing, and when the snowmobiles passed me, and I'm sorry, but I'm here to get my fresh air and exercise, and the stench from the fumes nearly blew me off the trail. So, that's part of it. So, I don't know. And part of it is tranquility that's there. I mean, people are out there, we have wetlands, people are out there for the birds, and you have a motorized vehicle coming by, and sorry, it's not the same. Whether, we're there for the quiet, and that's important.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Make a comment on that, bringing it up to 12 foot wide. The only way you could widen that is to dig it down about two feet. And then you're gonna have a roller coaster, because you got three main highways abutting it. You got three or four private driveways, and you got three trespasses, and you got three wetlands. So it would be a roller coaster, the only way you can't possibly put more fill in. You'd have to get fill out. And because it goes like this, if you took two feet off the top, you could get maybe 10 feet wide.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I don't know what you

[Terry Lucas]: do about erosion near the lake side or the wetlands.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: It would cost millions of dollars to do that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I can't get 150 miles of roads plowing. I'm sure I'm not. Anyway,

[Lynn Rutland]: was that your all I I like I say, no one was informed. The whole community was in shock when this occurred and we don't have a lot of other options. The fact that it's free, that it's groomed for prescency skiing is really important to a lot of people, and whether it's cross country skiing or snowshoeing, it's a prime recreation for a lot of families, older people who live in the community.

[Terry Lucas]: I think the other issue we have too is, get we this letter in 1997 that said no motorized vehicles and 2023 I guess snowmobiles comes up, when ATV is going to be announced, I mean, we

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: hear that every year on property, what the rules are, are not, should not be about ATVs and why we can't or can't use them. But that issue comes up statewide.

[Lynn Rutland]: And I hear snowmobilers saying, oh, we can be comfortable, we can pass, but there are enough people who live in the community who don't want to take the risk, who feel that it's not safe enough, that it's too narrow, it's not long enough, it doesn't go anywhere. Why does this need to be why does this need to be open to snowmobiles?

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Representative Casey? Because everybody owns it.

[Lynn Rutland]: Well, and anybody can use it.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: That's right.

[Terry Lucas]: Everybody can use But

[Lynn Rutland]: it doesn't have to be on a snowmobile. It can be on so many other things that are not motorized.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: You've had your spot. Reading that,

[Terry Lucas]: was there all winter? Did you see reduction in people using the

[Lynn Rutland]: Yes, yes. I know people personally told me that they didn't feel safe. One good friend who had her hip recently replaced, who was an active steer, but she didn't wanna go in there, she didn't wanna take the risk. Some people were smaller kids, they didn't wanna be out there. So yes, there was definitely a reduction and the snowmobiles, they do go by at a fast speed. And it just doesn't feel like it's necessary or really brings anything to the community, rather it detracts from what we have that is precious.

[Terry Lucas]: Do you do you not live there all winter? Not this winter. I did. Okay. The other one is I did.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Okay. You live there all winter? I was a good share. I was in Florida. Uh-huh. But for a good share of this winter, was in Florida but I lived there for thirty five years every window.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Alright. But but but now you don't. Well, this one in Florida. I don't blame you.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I was there in December. I was there in December when the path was over. That's the poor excuse because I have people living in my house, my family. My mom is still living. She's 108, 103. She still lives there. And I have a caretaker and I have family come up all in one. They use the bike path.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Well, it's everybody's, though. Just so you know, it's everybody's.

[Lynn Rutland]: I don't think anyone's debating that. Does

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Walter have anything he'd like to add? Oh, you're all set. I'm sorry, I wanna make sure that you Sorry, Len, you're Thank you very much.

[Terry Lucas]: Thank you.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Yeah.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I think Walter is the only one that hasn't well, don't know if Jillian doesn't I'm not sure if he's here.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I don't think she's here.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: But if Walter wants a chance to

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I mean, I don't think she's on top of it. Right. Jillian?

[Walter Medwid]: Chairman Walker and members of the committee, first of all, thank you for taking the time to address this issue. It is an important one. My name is Walter Medwid. I've lived in Derby, near the BB Spur for nearly twenty years. I estimate I have taken 7,500 walks, bikes and skis in that time. I also estimate my mileage at over 10,000. I'm probably due for an oil change at this point. The Spur means a lot to me and I know it well. Vermont public policy regarding the creation of a rail trail on the Spur was codified in 1997 with a ruling. That ruling was made possible when the concerns of abutters were addressed by Vermont AOT declaring no motorized vehicles would be permitted, and any changes to the Spur would require local government engagement and process. For my twenty years here, that is all I have known. No motorized access, And for some, it has been thirty years. Over that same period of time, a remarkable public private partnership emerged between the state and Memphremagog Trails, a not for profit focused on cross country and bike trails. The ski trail on the spur is groomed for skate and track skiers and other users such as walkers and snowshoers. Member Magog Trails has done remarkable things over that period of time. It has brought and operated grooming equipment that fits the narrow trail, that BB is. Volunteers erect snow fencing to preserve snow on the trail. Equipment is available to rent, children and adults if they wanna ski on the trail. A community asset has been developed for young and old at no cost, and no tax dollars have been involved in maintaining the winter conditions on the trail. For this neck of the woods, this is an exceptional community gem. Seemingly overnight, that changed with the allowance of snowmobiles. No public announcement, no notifications of abutters, no community and local government engagement to discuss the change. The quality and the character of the ski trail has been compromised. Over twenty years of investment has been compromised. This isn't a vast trail. Vast operations and networks aren't affected. Vast is supported is supporting its handful of members who seek access to the spur. But at what cost to the common good? At what cost to the public good? If snowmobile use is required by federal banking, we have been out of compliance for the last quarter of century. Would not the federal government have notified us that we are not in compliance? And I know that Jillian, who is ill and is not testifying, has researched this, and all of her research has determined that the state determines what uses may or may or not happen within the context of federal use. It is not federal requirement that snowmobiles be used according to the research that Jillian has done. And I'll wind up here. BB Spur is 2.7% of Vermont's rail trail mileage. BB Spur is less than 1% of vast trails in Orleans County. Let me repeat that. Less than 1% of snowmobile trails in Orleans County. Beebe Spur, on the other hand, represents nearly a quarter of the Memphremagog Trail network in this remarkable public private partnership. Beebe Spur is a tiny island in a sea of snowmobile trails. Its value to the community cannot be overstated. And I think in the discussion today, we have lost the context. This is a dot in a in a sea of snowmobile trails. And in the maps, did not see that there were snowmobile trails all over the lake. So, in reality, the trail mileage is far and above four sixty or 70 miles an hour. The context of how much snowmobile activity takes place versus how much is protected for quality skiing, both skate skiing and track skiing on this trail. The scale is just off the charts. Jack Young is a North Country High School graduate. He was a 2026 Olympian in cross country skiing. He cut his skiing teeth on Memphremagog Trails and BB Spur. In 2014, Ida Sargent, also a Memphremagog trail skier, was a 2014 Olympic cross country skier. We have a treasure. It is a dot in a c compared to snowmobiling. I asked you to protect it by passing H 894 and thank you again for your time.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Thank you, Walter. I appreciate it.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Thank you. Are we

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Absolutely, Representative Baig, you can speak in our committee anytime.

[James "Jim" Casey (Member)]: Don't want to join up there or speak later. I

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: won't be long. As you know, I presented this committee some months ago regarding the VD spur, and I did receive a lot of questions from my friend here,

[Terry Lucas]: but I just want to make

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: two comments. One, the trail starts at ProudhY Drive near the hospital. It's the maximum place for people to get some exercise exercise that's

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: needed and prescribed by their primary care physicians. It's an easy

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: excellent trail to walk. There very few, if any, places around the Newport area to walk and to speak. This is the only one. And you can go all the way up to the floor to the bench, and you can go all the way down to town in Newport without interfering or being in the roadway or the house, it's a safe place for people to walk and speak. The vast trail system, they have their area and they have the ability to access the trail system from

[Terry Lucas]: that area.

[Rep. Woodman “Woody” Page (Guest, Orleans County) [probable]]: I would also say that pictures are nice, you've seen a great many pictures here, but seeing is believing and I would recommend people come to New York and go to the vet care for themselves and make their determination. Final thing is I believe there will be a meeting later on with AOT and I hope we can resolve this issue anecdotally where everybody is satisfied from this. And I just want to say thank you, Representative Walker and the committee for taking this testimony and being willing to listen to the issues involved. So thank you, everyone. Thank

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: you, Rob. Rob. I think that we're at the end, I guess. I have things that I want to make sure to clarify or say. I appreciate what a beautiful area that it is, and I appreciate my annual trips up to Newport High School and to regularly get thumped by the basketball team there. And I appreciate how beautiful the lake is. And I'm sorry I haven't made that big event of the 120 pickup trucks and the hundreds of snowmobile throwing 140 miles an hour. I have to say the parts that are, and I think it's very interesting to find out about Olympic skiers that started on Bibi Spur Trail. I also want to clarify that in 2021, we passed a law that said all of the rail trails in Vermont and they will be managed by the Agency of Transportation, they will form the rail council, the rail division inside the agency. Jackie Casino was hired to manage that eventually. It is the law that snowmobiles are elected on all the trails. And we passed that in 2021. So it is the law. The agency is not implementing a random piece. It was instructed by the legislature and it was passed. So it is in the 2021 T bill that said all rail trails are snowmobiles are allowed. So although it certainly didn't roll out the way that people were, sounds like in this particular testimony, it may not have been rolled out very well and people were not informed. I do want to make sure to clarify that the legislature passed a law in 2020 and it said snow wheels were allowed on the BB Spur. It said on all four rail trails, that's what the law says in 2021. We made that pretty clear as a legislature. So that they are doing is the charge of the legislature and you're doing what citizens would do, which is to try to change that law with the work with your representatives. So that's sort of what would have to change is whether or not we're going to make an exception to that law that we previously made in 2021. So that's really what it boils down to. Secondly, I have to also say that the comparison to the snowmobile trail to VAST, which is all run by an organization, the combination of private land is not relevant to me at all. I appreciate what Walter's testimony about what they do for ski trails and I appreciate what you have in your neighborhood and where you live. But it is a publicly owned and declared by law snowmobiles are available. It is not a separate trail. It is a publicly owned four miles and it right now is dictated by a public law that says it's going to be open. So we will have to change it if we want it to be an exception or we want it to be handled differently, that will have to go through and it'll have to pass here and pass the Senate. The vast lands are private, combo, a whole different world. This is a public trail. So whether it's 1% or one tenth of 1%, it isn't relevant. It's a publicly owned property. We have to make a new law to govern that and change it. I want make sure the committee is clear to that. I appreciate that there are other options perhaps for snow wheelers, but it isn't relevant because that's the law that's available to everyone as obviously has been pointed out multiple times by part of our committee. So that's our charge and those are the clear parts of it. It is what we pass and it is required to be open for snowmobiles until we change that law of 2021. So whether we go from here or not is going be up to an effort, which would be this committee, the Senate committee, the T Bill, some piece with the agency feedback. They are not here today purposely on my discussion with them because we wanted to hear directly from you without the feeling of where they're at. I highly encourage, given how things run, that the BB Spur Council, that you be as actively involved in it to help shape the policy of where they're headed and where the spot is, especially given the timeframe of how things will and won't change between now and the next winter, or the winter after that, because that's your best available option to influence while working on changing the law or not changing the law.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: I asked Jackie last fall, how can we change this? And she says, you have to write a law to change it. It's as simple as that. That's why we write that.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I'm saying the page like that. And that's the process. And that's what brought us to this part today. So I do appreciate that. I don't ask a question.

[Terry Lucas]: What was the 2021 law made? Well,

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: would suspect that I'd

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: have

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to go back and ask. I wasn't the chair then. Oh no, this is go my around as the chair. But I know that there was a huge economic benefit to the management of the trails and the year round management of them and to bring consistency to the policy of the way they are run and to really leverage and maximize that really amazing public good that we had in those trails. The uniqueness of each trail may not have been known at the time, but the goal was to maximize the I'm missing the word that I'm looking for to maximize that asset, and to bring uniformity to it. It is bringing worldwide, I can't believe I meet people from all over the world, Swanton being a start or end point for it. People are coming to run that trail from all over the world. It abases me. There are businesses popping up all along it, and there's travel there from everywhere.

[Terry Lucas]: That existed before federal money. It must needed to positioned as a federal government, so you had to.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: No. I think my understanding is that the vast had tried to run it, but it's such a significant plus, my understanding, we've heard testimony that mobilers don't want to jump on that one trail and drive it for 90 miles. They use that trail to get to their trail network. It's not like they don't jump on that trail to go 90 miles from one. Bicycles do. Other, you know, walking, running, and I think you'll see more events as we go forward. But my main understanding is that it's all about connecting. People don't want to drive up and down the four mile Beacon Square all day on a snowmobile. They're trying to get to something that rises. They don't drive up and down Memorial Valley as their snowmobile all day, that's not where they're trying to go. Are heavily used parts to get to a trail that they didn't get off. But my understanding is economic piece. So do you have another question?

[Lynn Rutland]: Well, I'm just going to say I appreciate what the state wanted to do with the trails, but I do think it was an oversight not to consider the character of the Beebe Spur, given its length and width separately, and that's part of why

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: we're I'm particularly struck by that fact today for some reason versus the other day, is that a spur is a totally different animal. It was not meant as a main thoroughfare of heavy lodge, it was I'm sure meant to, well, I don't know what the connection in Canada was and what the businesses were, but it's generally about boxcars or side storage. We have them all over the place, and perhaps not as used as much as some of our reps would like them to be and have more rail trail. But Representative Pouech, you wanted to add?

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, this has been helpful. I can certainly understand people who have come to use the trail, and I think it's totally okay. You can have trails that allow motorized snowmobiles or e bikes or whatever you might have and other trails not to. I scan those, I scan vast trails and have not really had many problems, but I know I have to, you know, and I also where I typically ski, there's no snowmobile which will ruin the trail itself in different ways. I would encourage to work with V trains. Even though it's public, there's plenty of public bike trails and stuff that don't allow mechanized, ATVs aren't allowed on Mile Valley Rail Trail. So there are exceptions. And I could see the desire by the people who have used it for a long time to go that way. But I think the chair has sort of said, hey, that's a lot. And so I think really working with VTrans to see how much they are willing to discuss moving options around this world.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: I appreciate that. And I would add that as far as what the committee is going to do or not do, it's going to have to learn from the fact that perhaps there are exceptions to different people. What will this precedent do if we go back and change that law? And what does it do to the other rail trails? So what other association, you're not an association, but what other citizens and group would love to perhaps shut down snowmobiling on one of the other trails. I would be concerned about that. But I'm not going to guarantee what we are or aren't going to do today, but I wanted to be clear that for what Jackie's doing or what the agency is doing, they're doing what we told them to. And may not have done it well or they may have had some bumpy starts, but they're certainly sincere as she is in terms of her effort to make all of the trails statewide, has had some very nice successes. We have to figure out if we're going to change the law. So, Representative Burke?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: I just think the difference is that people have talked about sharing the trails with their wanders. I think the issue is narrowness of the trail. Not necessarily a shared nickel symbol boost.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Perhaps that will be a big indicating factor as to why we could have a different law. Perhaps there are other pieces that we need to discover to help justify why it was different. But that was a big one for me today.

[Candice White (Member)]: I was just going to say, it's common practice when we have a pinch point on a road or a blind curve where we have a sign that lets people out, slow down. We just passed in our T bill, actually, legislation to provision to authorize a temporary lowering of the speed limit for that purpose. So it seems like there are solutions that could be found.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: Yeah, and I think, I know VAST does that on their trails. It doesn't look like VAST does anything with this trail other than some access for Coming

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: off to the lake and that's all they do. They don't even have

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: to go to home.

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: That's up and down just from a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: few landlords. Yes, I want to be very clear on behalf of, well, don't speak on behalf of Bass, but I have spoken to them. They do not take a position. They want to cross the trail to get to the lake, to keep their existing trail network. They are not involved in the conversation related to what happens on the VP Spur, and those people that are snow building on it are not speaking for Vast in any way, they are not involved in this BP spur, what we do or don't do. If we do, as we do or don't move forward, we'd be happy to hear from them, but they are not part of the driving factor one way or another. They may have members that live on there, but that's not a vast organization speaking for that. Yes sir? Has changing

[Terry Lucas]: how can we spur as you, is that a broader law, can it just be an exception to AOT as a

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: big tent? Sentence. We made that 2021 law very specifically saying that civil billing was allowed on all state rail, managed rail trails. There are differences because like the Glover Trail in the State Forest is not federally ranked, but that law in 2021 specifically names these four rail trails that are being managed underneath that piece. I believe, from what I've been told, from our discussion with the agency and with the pledged counsel, is that Jackie is right, we're going have to change law if we're going to change this. Now, there could be some kind of, I don't know, temporary. There could be a lot of other options that would be discussed about how to manage it, but really to get at that where you're at is my understanding of the law. Representative Burke?

[Mollie S. Burke (Member)]: Well, I'll just want to bring you out the between the wording of allowed or required.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: Specific Well, can go back and look at it, but it names the rail trails and it names snowmobiling. I would say that the intent from that bill is snowmobiling is allowed on a Vermont rail trail. We have a lawyer, we can ask But we did dig into that.

[Chittenden (Derby resident and Beebe Spur landowner)]: Just wrote to Damien,

[Phil Pouech (Ranking Member)]: we can have income. Exactly what the law says.

[Matt Walker (Chair)]: That is the understanding of what research that I've done. Okay, thank you very much for making the trip and for the Thank thank you. Representative Page, thank you very much. We are adjourned as