Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1970's

• E Don't ~ t Opinion i send Christmas cards.." . reach 55,~OO friends this way. Ji~.:~ Land use: Bow one county r -« solved the problem f)1\f"v\N Here's the deal: The special part: You can run this ad in any or all of our December issues! But hurry! Christmas will be here before you kn ow it! We will give yo u anyone of these ads expressing appreciation to y our customers for onl y $25 each. (Reg. $36.50) Don loan 's account of how bik ers in San Mateo County won key concessions fr om th e local bureaucracy spans a multi-year eff ort of trail-and-error groping by f ew dedicated bik ers as th ey learned their way through the bureaucratic maz e. Was it all worth it? Could there have been a better way ? Don 's conclusion at th e end of his piece may startle you. a San Mateo County is the smaIl county which lies in the heart of the San Francisco Peninsula. A busy metropolis of over 250,000 people stretches from San Francisco to the San Jose area . As an antidote for the urban rat race , the county conveniently has its ~easons to our cust omers & f riends • (your nam e, address, ph one no.) ~eZlsons Seasons Gl'eetillgs 6re~ting:i to my customers & friends to o ur cus to me rs & fr iends 6 5 (yo llr nam e, add ress, p h one 11 0.) (yo ur name, addr ess, pho ne no. ] <.. Cycle News West Advertising Dept. P.O. Box 498 Long Beach, CA 90801 Just fill out the coupon below and rush it to: r~~YcleN~~In~~~~s::G~ting ----------~~ - o Circle your ad choice No .1 No . 2 - No.3 Name No.4 No .5 _ Address ... City ~hone . 36 L~~------------- No .6 - -- - - - - - State Zip ' _ __------_--------J own ba c kyard pl ayground and farm, which has been set aside as a Resource Man agem en t Zone. This expanse of open sp aces includes thousands of acres of redwood forests, 50 miles of foggy Pacific coastl ine, very few people, and a vast area of rolling coastal fo o thills, which is mostly marginal gra zing land bu t better described b y "Pap a Wealy " as "primo northern California riding. " There have ne ver been an y legal riding areas in San Mateo County for off-road motorcycles. O f course many of us have done a lot of super riding anyway , and even staged organized events whether legal or not. Nonetheless, members of the Pacifica Motorcycle Assoc., an act ive and progressive club which has operated illegally (but sucessfully) on a 200 acre rocky cliff on our north coast, initiated pressure on coun ty officails to respond to the needs · of off-road vehicles. The result was the formation of a volunteer citizens committee by the Board of . comprised only of Supervisors, motorcycle enthusiasts to work with the Parks and Recreation Department. The history of events following the organ izat ion of th at committee and the subsequent clo sing of the Knob Hill Ranch 1200 acre riding area should be a valuable reference for motorcyclists in other co un ties facing their own land use pr oblem s. San Mateo County . had previously been on record as totally against motorcycle recreation. In 1970, as result of pressures from motorcyclists, county policy was enacted which all but eliminated the possibility of ever having a legal riding area. Hundreds of motorcyclists had packed the Board of Supervisors public hearing a nd lined the streets outside while the group's attorn ey was losing his shouting match withBoard members inside. After many of us wheelied away in disgust down main street, we came back five years later with different tactics, better timing and with different results. We started with the Citi~ens Off-road Vehicle Committee, headed by a hard-working, dedicated motorcycle activist and co-founder of the P.M.A. Chuck Gust. Through Chuck's persistent efforts along with myself and four other members (from an original 12 man ~ committee) we compiled a very thorough study of the off-road vehicle problem in our county and presented our findings and recommendations to the Parks and Recreation Commission several months later. Even though we had favorable in-house support, we spent six months with Parks and Recreation , four months with the Planning Department, and two months waiting for a final decision from the Board of Supervisors. The Committee's report is an excellent document and is available upon request from the county. Our basic ammunition was the obvious lack of reponsible government action in response to the 120% increase in motorcycle sales over the last five y ears and the obligation of government to properly use off-highway vehicle tax money. In addition to ' green sticker fu nds, every co un ty has general fund tax money which can also be used to develop motorcycle recreat io n facilities. After all, motorcycling is a major sport now and our govern m en t spends tax dollars to acquire and operate public beaches, redwood parks and forests, airports, harbors, golf courses, pl aygrounds, bicycle, horse and hiking trails, and zero for our sport. However, the first obstacle of the committee was the need to change outdated county zo n ing policy, which was eliminating the availability of thousands 0 f acres of open land to motorcycle sport because of zoning restrictions. Zoning is the process whereby a handful of people tell everyone else what they can or can't do with their own property. In this county, the city people have taken all the open space, rural areas in their "backyard" and put it in the special "R.M. zone" to save it. If you want to do something with your land, you first purchase a permit application, then spend thousands of dollars on reports, studies, and mountains of environmental double I talk - and then wait four months to year or more for an answer. This time ' frame is necessary to keep the governmental employees over-worked, underpaid, and too busy to be efficient, while the applicant waits for numerous public hearings while the entire process repeats itsel f two or three times, during which everyone hopes the project will go broke or give up. After a one-year struggle, we have won this exception. The county will now allow, and requires, ' any prospective riding area to ' apply for a permit to operate - whether large or small, public or private, commercial or non-profit. Though seemingly an anti-climatic success, changing county motorcycle park policies and opening new doors . with county officials has been a major accomplishment, and may well be a precenden t for other counties, statewide. Th e main concentration of the committee's efforts, and critical to the re-opening of Knob Hill Ranch, was to change county policy which prohibited any motorcycle activities on lan ds under co ntra ct of the California Land Conservation Act of 1965 (Williamson Act) A similar effort was initiated at the st ate level by Assemblyman Chapple at M.O.R.E.'s request, but was defeated in committee. However, in San Mateo County we succeeded in changing implem en tat io n a:

• Cover