well i do go shooting but i go shoot in hart park so i guess ima loose that local shooting spot 2

 

Here's the article

BPD planning to crack down on off-roading

Officers will patrol bluffs, ticket in attempt to keep people off private property

By JAMES BURGER, Californian staff writer
e-mail: jburger@bakersfield.com

Posted: Thursday March 18th, 2004, 10:45 PM
Last Updated: Friday March 19th, 2004, 12:18 PM

The Kern River bluffs are now off-limits to off-road vehicles.
For the past couple of months, no-trespassing signs have gone up, been torn down and gone up again. Fences have been squashed and rebuilt.

Bakersfield police officers have issued warnings that riders, many who have motored across the bluffs for decades, are violating the law and will be punished.

Now police are getting serious.

This weekend, officers will be out on the bluffs issuing tickets to motorcyclists for trespassing on private property. Bakersfield police Capt. Tim Taylor said riders without proper identification could be arrested and have their motorcycles or quad-runners taken away.

Enforcement will concentrate around Hang Glider Hill, the flat staging area south of Alfred Harrell Highway near the Kern County Soccer Park and areas near the old city landfill west of Fairfax Road. Land north of Paladino Drive between Fairfax Road and Morning Drive will not be as closely enforced, police said.

Patricia Stockton Leddy, whose family owns the land around Hang Glider Hill, is relieved that police are stepping in.

"I think it's a brilliant idea. It's about time," she said.

Hikers, bicyclists and runners -- who also are trespassing -- will not be ticketed. They are not the problem, police said.

Capt. Taylor said motorcyclists have been destroying fences and no-trespassing signs. They have been riding, illegally, across the Kern River Bike Path that runs through the bluffs between Alfred Harrell Highway and Paladino Drive.

There has been a rash of complaints about riders from the neighborhoods that have begun encroaching on their hillside playgrounds.

Councilman Mike Maggard said the complaints, the vandalism and near-collisions between motorcycles and bicycles on the bike path have forced the city to crack down on off-roaders.

Off-roading "would have gone on a lot longer without enforcement if it hadn't been for the vandalism and the endangering of people's lives," Maggard said. "A few riders have caused restrictions to be placed on everyone. The majority of the riders are responsible."

Maggard said people who live in the Juliet Thorner School area, the Rio Bravo tennis club area and north of Panorama Drive between Morning Drive and Wenatchee Avenue have turned in most of the complaints.

The mass of weekend riders is just fine, as long as they stick to the hills, said Andy Carrasco, who lives around the corner from Thorner. Problems arise, however, when riders from the neighborhood drive through the streets on their way to the nearby hills, instead of carting their motorcycles or quads with trucks. It creates a racket in the weekend's early morning hours and kicks up dust, he said.

Although he enjoys watching the action from a distance, Carrasco said he wishes some of the riders would have more respect for their neighbors.

"Nobody around here would have a problem if they did it the right way," he said.

The bluffs run along the south side of Alfred Harrell Highway past the California Living Museum and the soccer park all the way to Hart Park.

Motorcyclists, hikers, bikers, hang gliders and runners have used the open, scenic hillsides as an outdoor playground for decades.

The land always has been privately owned and people using the area for recreation have had to trespass to do it.

But the de-facto public use of the land was never really questioned until three years ago, when a developer proposed the City in the Hills project along Alfred Harrell Highway.

Other developers -- encouraged by a white-hot home market and the construction of a water treatment plant near the bluffs -- rushed to propose projects of their own. It was clear from the beginning that new homes would push motorcycles and quad-runners off the bluffs.

Dick Taylor, spokesman for the Kern Off Highway Vehicle Association, said most off-roaders don't understand that they are trespassing.

The sport is vastly popular in Kern County where, Taylor said, there were 26,514 off-highway vehicles registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

In May 2001, the DMV listed only 18,000 off-highway vehicles in Kern County.

Taylor said he has seen pictures of people riding and driving on the bluffs that date back to the 1920s. He said being kicked off the bluffs will be a "woefully painful thing" for riders.

"I can understand why people may be confused. They may say, 'Heck we've been going here for decades,'" Taylor said. "And frankly I felt that way too until I realized that the area was private property."

The solution to the problem, Taylor said, is to build a fully legal off-highway park somewhere within a 20-minute drive of Bakersfield.

He has been spearheading the effort for several years and already has rounded up more than $2 million for land acquisition. But it seems the campaign hasn't reached fruition in time to give riders an option to the bluffs.

And Taylor said there are no legal options to the bluffs in the Bakersfield area. Riders who want to honor the laws and avoid the bluffs will have to decide between driving to off-highway parks near Taft, Gorman or California City.

But nobody is saying that a few traffic tickets is likely to end decades of off-road tradition on the bluffs.

"We've been going out there quite a bit and trying to talk to them and, for the most part, its falling on deaf ears," said Capt. Taylor. "We've got off-roaders going in there tearing up people's fences and harassing people on the bike path."

Henry Gallego, who has lived in the Paladino Drive area for 17 years, agreed. He owns several motorcycles and quads and said he thinks the new crackdown on off-roading is terrible.

"Everybody out here is going to keep on riding," he said. "This is a haven for kids and families."

An avid motorcyclist since he was 11 years old, Gallego said his grandchildren love to come ride on the weekends. The vast majority of off-roaders are courteous of runners, bikers and livestock, he said.

Most also are responsible citizens who respect private property rights, said Taylor. Once the new off-highway vehicle park is built, most of the illegal riding on the bluffs will end, he added. But, he said, there will always be a few bad eggs.

-- Staff writer Misty Williams contributed to this report.

 

well it is true people do vandalize its only a few ppl though like when i ride i always see people messing around. Well i think ive seen you before in ur 250r in near the gasoline station. I have a black and red banshee. Do u know any other places like they mentioned taft and california city can you plz give me some info on that. They also mentioned they were building a new off roa park. thanks

 

If only the jerks who caused this to happen would have been more respectful, there wouldn't be a problem right now, they just had to ruin it for everyone!
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that sucks because i'm supposed to be going back to Bako this weekend to visit the parents and me and a homey had planned to go riding this Saturday around Hanglider Hill and Mesa Marin areas.

 

"Hart Park" isn't my favorite place to ride, but it really chaps my hide that they are doing selective enforcement. Other people who are trespassing aren't being cited. Hopefully we can get an OHV park going somewhere in Central CA. I'm up in Clovis (Fresno) and about the only legal places to ride is at least a half-hour drive north up into the Forest. With the budget completely tweaked out of wack I think we have several years until they even think about it.

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I believe Mesa Marin is still open to ride. I did send my opinion to the local paper and hope they print my article. It all melts down to the Sierra Club, they want to start charging fees per new houses being built there.

 

You could probably get the ticket thrown out because of the selective enforcement.

 

The only way I could see them getting by is if the property owners said that is was ok for the others to be there. But then again, they'd have to post signs that say such and not just a general no tresspassing sign.

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