End may be in sight for longstanding Tunbridge trails dispute

This story by Christina Dolan was first published i n the Valley News on August 11.

TUNBRIDGE — The Vermont Supreme Court is leaving it up to a lower court judge to decide whether the town of Tunbridge has the “right to maintain and repair legal trails within its borders.”

The 5-0 decision released Aug. 2 paves the way for a resolution to a long and costly dispute between the town of Tunbridge and the owners of a former dairy farm who have objected to bicyclists using a town trail that runs through their property.

John Echeverria and Carin Pratt, who have owned the 325-acre Dodge Farm at the top of Strafford Road since 2015, have argued in court that the Tunbridge Selectboard lacks the authority to maintain or designate appropriate use of legal trails in town.

The couple lives in nearby Strafford and rents the property to a Tunbridge resident.

“We are grateful that the Vermont Supreme Court is giving us the opportunity to resolve our dispute with the town,” Echeverria, a professor of property law at Vermont Law and Graduate School in South Royalton, said last week. “We are confident that we will prevail.”

“Our contention is that under the Vermont statutes, the authority to maintain and repair legal trails rests exclusively with the landowners,” Echeverria added.

Tunbridge officials argue that legal trails are akin to roadways and can be maintained as such.

“According to (Vermont) statute, we can allow anything we want” on town trails, Selectboard Chairman Gary Mullen said in an interview on Friday.

In its ruling, the Supreme Court referred to a town policy that “permits use of the public trails for walking only. In 2020 or 2021, bicycling advocates launched a campaign to persuade the town to expand the public uses of legal trails to include bicycling.”

Echeverria and Pratt opposed “opening the legal trails to bicycle use,” the court wrote. It’s led to more than two years of legal wrangling.

Echeverria and Pratt have twice brought their case to Vermont Superior Court, which dismissed their complaints as “unripe” for adjudication. In legal terms, that means the matter is premature, because there wasn’t a specific dispute for the court to intervene in.

Since the town hadn’t expressed any intent to perform maintenance work on the trail that crosses the couple’s property, the complaint was hypothetical, Judge Elizabeth Mann ruled.

In August 2022, however, the Selecboard adopted a new trails policy while the initial lawsuit was pending. The policy asserted the town’s right to repair and maintain trails. The Supreme Court found the policy to mean the town intended to “enter onto plaintiff’s property for the purpose of improving trails.”

As a result, the case is sufficiently “ripe” to be decided, the justices said, and both parties will “benefit” from having the question resolved.

The couple wants public use of the three-quarter-mile Orchard Trail — a former Class 4 road —to be limited to walkers and runners.

The Selectboard would prefer to allow “mostly foot traffic and possibly bicycles and horse riding,” Mullen said.

The town discontinued the Class 4 road on the couple’s property more than 50 years ago, rendering it a public right-of-way accessible for recreational use.

A town is not obligated to maintain a legal trail, according to Vermont statute.

Even on Class 4 roads that are typically not maintained, the town may have an interest in doing culvert work or ditching to prevent erosion, and “we would do the same thing on a legal trail,” if necessary, Mullen said.

For his part, Echeverria would like trees that naturally fall across the trail over time to remain in place, naturally restricting the use of the trail by bicycles and other wheeled vehicles.

The couple is concerned that allowing bicycles on the trail would be disruptive since the trail passes close to their house, Echeverria said.

“These are narrow, simple, primitive trails that cross our land and we want to preserve them,” he said. “We don’t want to see them expanded into recreational superhighways.”

Echeverria said that he would be willing to allow an alternate trail on his property for use by bicyclists that does not pass as close to the house.

Mullen dismissed that idea by asserting that “we already have a trail,” that belongs to the town and is open to public use.

“A public right of way is a public asset and the public is served by keeping it open,” he said.

The town has spent $35,000 in legal fees so far, Mullen said.

“We lost the Supreme Court decision, but that might be a good thing in the end,” he said, if it results in a resolution to the dispute.

Read the story on VTDigger here: End may be in sight for longstanding Tunbridge trails dispute .