Park board approves new rules for attorney review

The Hill County Park Board Monday approved sending a new draft of rules for Beaver Creek Park to the county for review and approval, despite a comment from the public that it could be opening itself up to major criticism.

The board reviewed a draft of rule updates, made some minor amendments then unanimously voted to send them to the Hill County Commission for approval.

Lou Hagener, who worked on supervising public land while employed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said during the public comment period at the end of the meeting that the rules, as written, prohibit many uses of the park.

“Your language is such that you’re just asking for trouble,” Hagener said.

Most of the changes update language in the existing rules, with few new rules written.

Some proposed rules include:

• Setting a 15 mph speed limit on nonposted access roads in the park

• Specifying that the large reservable campgrounds can be reserved at any time and that reservations at that site have priority for use of the sites

• Requiring that dogs must be on leashes unless in a fenced or confined area

• Requiring that vehicles cannot be at a site longer than 14 out of 30 days and that vehicles left unattended for more than 48 hours will be considered abandoned and will be towed at the owner’s expense in either case.

Some other rules, which Hagener pointed out, are that no offroad vehicle use, other than snowmobiles or ATVs in the winter when certain conditions are met, is allowed other than administrative use, and that live vegetation or standing dead trees cannot be cut down without prior approval and topsoil cannot be disturbed.

The vegetation rule, which is designed to prevent people from cutting down trees, as written prohibits common uses including all berry picking and haying the park, Hagener said, adding that the rule on vehicles also prevents haying and the language conflicts with grazing.

“If this were written for public land, that would be the end of all grazing on public land,” he said.

Board Chair Steve Mariani said the problems Hagener said could arise were not the intent of the board.

Mariani said he doesn’t think Hagener is wrong — he said he did look at Hagener’s suggestions he provided to board members in advance of Monday’s meeting — but the board can’t cover every contingency. It needs to find a compromise, he said.

“At this point, it’s better than it was, and it’s moving in the right direction,” Mariani said.

“I think we’ve made great progress”

Audience member Lowell Alcock said he believes the board is trying to improve the park, but it needs to look at unintended consequences.

Board member Jeff LaVoi, a Hill County commissioner, also said it was not the intent of the board to prohibit uses such as Hagener suggests. He also said that any rules are open to interpretation.

LaVoi suggested requesting the Hill County Attorney to look at unintended consequences due to the language when the attorney reviews the draft before it goes to the Hill County Commission.