VICTOR — Victor's city council accepted the two AJ Trail easements that provide legal access to public land above town Wednesday night and approved a maintenance agreement with Mountain Bike the Tetons and Teton Valley Trails and Pathways, each by a 2-1 vote. The easements grant hikers and mountain bikers a route from Cemetery Road onto Bureau of Land Management ground, resolving a corner-crossing problem that has existed since volunteers built the AJ Linnell Trail in 2015.
Council member Emily Sustick made all three motions, and Stacy Hulsing seconded them. Amy Ross voted against each. Erica Linnell, whose late husband the trail is named for, abstained.
Mayor Sue Muncaster said the city had received "over 150 comments" on the item, "about 500 pages at last count."
Muncaster asked twice during deliberation whether anyone wanted to attach conditions to the approvals. "Are there concrete conditions? Is there anything that is within our authority that you would like to recommend?" No council member moved to attach any.
The easements explicitly disallow e-bikes. However, the BLM trails allow them, and the AJ Trail is the only legal access to the BLM land. Holly Bender, who granted one of the two easements, asked the council to "get to the bottom of the e-bike issue," which she called a conflict.
Before the meeting, Bender had written to the council with three questions. She asked how many miles the 2024 plan approved, how the BLM's route designations squared with the e-bike access the project has been marketed as offering, and whether Idaho Fish and Game had been given the chance to weigh in on ground she described as winter range and calving habitat for elk and mule deer. Those questions should be "answered, on the record, before the Council finalizes anything."
TVTAP has no authority to police the trail. Executive Director Dan Verbeek told the council, "We don't have enforcement capability. We have outreach and education opportunities," adding that his board asked for that point to be written into the agreement.
Matt Pieron, Fish and Game's regional supervisor, spoke before his agency's presentation to say it holds no authority over the trails in question. "We do not have regulatory authority over lands," he said. "That's why the partnerships that we have with land management agencies are so important." Pieron said some of what the council was about to hear "may seem slightly at odds with what you just heard from the BLM," and asked it not to read the two agencies that way, describing Fish and Game's role as supplying decision makers "one piece of the information, of many pieces of information." He added: "I respect that decision space, but we don't always agree."
