Braaap, not braaat take II

The city of Wasilla has spent the better part of the past year debating what to do about users of all-terrain vehicles along the city’s designated use corridors.

The conversation was started by the Wasilla Police Department because Chief Gene Belden said his officers were spending a large percent of their time responding to complaints from Wasilla residents on the receiving end of ATV users’ bad riding habits.

The Planning Commission took up the request and voted to ban ATV use in the city. Palmer long ago banned ATVs and snowmachines in city limits. But they are legal to ride along Mat-Su Borough and state roads. The state regulates ATVs, but enforcing those rules is understandably not a priority for Alaska State Troopers.

When the proposed ban reached the city council, the hue and cry from Wasilla residents and business owners was enough to back the council away from the ban put forward by its planning commission.

Instead of an outright ban, the council voted to form a task force of residents to consider the problem and propose solutions. The ATV task force has now put forward its recommendations.

Of note to us is how similar the new rules are to the old ones. We’re skeptical that the police have been given the improved tools they asked for to curtail problem users.

Like the troopers, Wasilla Police also have finite resources to respond to all the calls for police assistance in the city. We’d like to see the need for police to respond and deal with drunken 15 year olds riding ATVs in traffic on city roads become a problem of the past. We’d like to see kids getting hit in traffic on illegal dirt bikes become a thing of the past. We’d like users to respect property, public and private.

The city’s updated rules require helmets, registration and chaperones for minor riders. And they limit the hours of operation for ATVs.

But, ultimately, they aren’t significantly different from the rules that have been on the books for years. The same rules that riders routinely ignore now. And when challenged on their illegal behavior, they respond with rude gestures, swearing and spraying gravel at any who dare call a braaat a braaat.

We’ve said it before, we are all for braaap. But we are weary of braaats.

Bad behavior from ATV users isn’t contained within city limits. We see them operating illegally on paved walkways, on city streets, on borough roads, on state highways and crossing salmon streams. Often, the riders are cruising past signs that say motorized use is prohibited on the bike path they are riding on, or posted at the salmon stream to indicate it is illegal to cross there.

The signs don’t matter. The laws don’t matter. Private property doesn’t matter and public property matters even less.

We hear ATV users argue that it’s just a few riders who give the whole group a bad name. Nevertheless, this is a reputation based on years of careless behavior by riders. Every year the new machines go faster and have more power to shred our trails and streams. But as Stan Lee famously said, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

It is the ATV users themselves who have the power to change their reputation as braaats. Yes, we’d like to see police write a few more tickets to remind users of the rules, but the onus is on riders themselves to change their behavior. And it’s up to parents to teach their children — braaap, not braaat.