Oneida County forestry dept., committee clash on code

News analysis

It hasn’t snowed much, and significant snow might or might not be on the way, but Oneida County snowmobile trails are open as of today, which is a big delight for snowmobilers and a big relief to many area businesses.

But the controversy that has surrounded the county-funded trail system isn’t going away any time soon, and one of the central issues that has come into focus is where the authority to open and close the trails resides.

The controversy ignited when the Oneida County Snowmobile Council voted against opening the county trail system due to poor snow conditions, especially in the southern part of the county. The vote was 6-4 to open the trails, but the council’s bylaws mandate a supermajority of seven out of 10 “yes” votes to open the system. That angered those in the northern half of the county, where the snow, while not ideal, rendered the trails rideable.

Prompted by a public outcry, the county’s forestry committee held a special committee meeting on January 27, voting 3-1 to override the council’s decision, thereby opening the trail system but allowing individual clubs to opt out and stay closed. The forestry committee based its vote on a belief that the ultimate authority to open and close county-funded trails resides with the county and not the council.

Still, the snowmobile council held another vote, which again failed to meet the supermajority threshold. Despite the forestry committee’s vote, all club trails stayed closed after that vote, presumably to abide by the bylaws of the snowmobile council.

The controversy deepened when it came to light that one of the “no” votes came from the Bo-Boen Club based in St. Germain. In contrast to its Oneida County vote, that club voted to open Vilas County trails, and, it was revealed, the club also asked the Oneida County Snowmobile Council and the county’s forestry department for special permission to open three miles of the Highline Trail in Oneida County, near St. Germain, despite its vote to keep the rest of the system closed. That permission was granted.

Those votes prompted a quick response from Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski. 

“Of course they want to keep all the business up by St. Germain and Vilas,” Holewinski said. “So it’s a wrong system when you’ve got conflict between who’s going to open and who’s not going to open.”

Two questions persist: Who does have ultimate authority in the opening of the trails? And: Who sets Oneida County forestry department policy, unelected forestry department officials or the elected supervisors of the forestry committee?

The answers depend upon whom you ask. Ask the state and the answer is clear — the state vests the authority and funding for trails in the counties, and it’s their call to make on trail openings and closures.

Ask the Oneida County forestry committee — the elected county supervisors who supposedly oversee the county forestry department and set its policy — and they say, at least according to a majority vote of the committee on January 27, that the county makes the call.

Ask the Oneida County forestry department, and they have a different answer entirely, namely, that the county and the county’s snowmobile council must both approve openings and closures, the forestry committee’s vote notwithstanding.

Ask the county’s corporation counsel who has the authority, and it’s not certain because, as far as we know, no one did ask him, except this newspaper. The corporation counsel did not respond to a message asking if anyone else contacted him and what his interpretation might be.

What the state says

According to the state DNR, snowmobile trail aids grants must issue to counties or tribes. The money awarded in grants to Wisconsin counties comes from snowmobile registrations, trail pass revenue, and gas tax from some of the gas used in snowmobiles, the DNR states. The grants are used to reimburse more than 600 snowmobile clubs for expenses.

According to a January 29 email from Snowmobile Grant Program manager Jillian Steffes, the state considers the county to be the authority for opening and closing trails. Steffes was responding to an inquiry from Oneida County Snowmobile Trail coordinator and assistant forestry director Eric Rady.

In his email, Rady informed Steffes that he had received a question from a county board supervisor: “If the Oneida County trail system as a whole, were to be closed but one particular club wants to open and that particular club did maintain (sign, brush, groom, pack, open interior gates, close all other exterior trails properly and legally) their specific trails, would they be allowed to get funding for doing work on their trails while the Oneida County snowmobile trail system and all other clubs are closed?”

Steffes said the DNR’s agreement was with the county only, and the county could make the call if it agreed, with certain requirements.

“Our agreement is with the county, and the club would be paid for doing work on behalf of the county,” Steffes wrote. “So the county would have to be in agreement with this particular group of trails being open, and it would need to be publicly advertised as such so that all members of the snowmobile community were aware these trails are open.”

Opening one club’s trails wasn’t ideal, Steffes continued, but it was not forbidden.

“We prefer counties open/close all their trails (within reason) on a countywide basis if possible, but a county CAN open/close ‘zones’ so if this were to be considered a designated zone, it could be managed separately in that regard,” she wrote.

In addition, Steffes added, the club already could receive reimbursement from the county for work spent preparing the trails for opening, so she thought — and inquired — that the only difference would be additional grooming.

Conflicts between clubs about opening and closing just come with the territory, Steffes advised.

“I know you’d rather not have the county stuck in the middle of an individual club vs. the rest of the county’s clubs, but I’m afraid it’s the nature of the beast with these ‘county snowmobile trail aids’ grants,” she wrote. “That being said, you still have our full support to manage your trail system as you need to from a sustainability and practicality standpoint. If it is not appropriate to open the trails, you are under no obligation to open them due to club pressure, and as such do not have to approve additional grooming entries.”

In other words, it’s the county’s call to open and close the trails, by zone or club or countywide, no matter club pressure. As a practical matter, each club could represent a zone.

The forestry committee

A majority of the county forestry committee essentially enshrined that policy in a formal vote at the January 27 special meeting it held. Specifically, the committee voted to open the county’s state-funded snowmobile trail system, giving individual clubs the option to stay closed or to open but overriding a vote the previous week by the Oneida County Snowmobile Council to keep all the trails closed due to snow conditions.

That vote aligned with Steffes’ position that the snowmobile clubs were merely doing work on behalf of the county, that the county could open/close trails for one club or sets of trails as designated zones, and that the DNR would give the county “full support to manage your trail system as you need to from a sustainability and practicality standpoint.”

The vote by the forestry committee to open the trail system but allow individual clubs the right to opt out prevailed 3-1, with committee members Collette Sorgel and Mitch Ives joining committee chairman Bob Almekinder in voting yes, while committee member Chris Schultz voted no. Member Robert Briggs was absent.

During deliberation over the motion, a question was raised whether the forestry committee could override the snowmobile council’s vote. Almekinder said there was a serious question about the legality of the snowmobile council’s bylaws and the council’s authority to control the opening and closing of the state-funded trails.

“The question was brought up whether or not the way that the snowmobile clubs vote is even legal,” Almekinder said. “I looked into it, and we decided to go ahead with this meeting. I was assured that I’m on solid ground.”

It’s unclear where Almekinder received his assurance that the committee was on solid ground. Corporation counsel Michael Fugle wasn’t at the meeting, and later said that he did not provide that advice.

Despite the DNR’s position, and despite the committee’s vote to assert its legal authority over trail openings and closings, there was a complication: the county code, in which it could be argued that the county ceded its sole authority and gave the snowmobile council joint authority over trail openings and closings.

On the one hand, the code states that approved snowmobile are trails that “receive state funding under Ch. 350 and are sponsored by the Oneida County Forestry Department or trails in which Oneida County holds the land use agreement, or trails on land owned by Oneida County.”

So that appears to give control of the trails completely to the county as the state-sponsored party with the money, or with the land use agreement or through ownership.

However, the next section of the code states that the official open and closing dates are those dates “selected by the Oneida County Forestry Department in conjunction with the Oneida County Snowmobile Council and which is published on the Oneida County website, designating the approved snowmobile trails [closed or open] for snowmobile use.”

The question is, what does “in conjunction with” mean?

In some dictionary meanings, and to many observers — and apparently to the forestry committee — it means “in close association or consultation with.” The grammatical construction supports that interpretation: Rather than stating that the dates are selected by the department and the council, the language explicitly states that the dates are selected by the Oneida County Forestry Department, and then adds the council in a more subordinate context, as if in the sense of “in close consultation with.”

Others say the language “in conjunction with” straightforwardly means “and.” At the January 7 meeting, county forestry director Jill Nemec appeared to lean that way.

“And I think I’m still very foggy on exactly what the department’s role is,” Nemec said. “I don’t know that we can mandate the clubs to do something. I don’t know that whatever we’ve got is set up that way. Maybe it is. I’ve been looking into it for a while, since Friday, and I haven’t found anything yet that says the county has official authority over clubs. From everything that I can see, it’s a partnership. We work in conjunction with them.”

The important thing is, Nemec said, if the committee moved forward and opened the trails, then the department and the committee have to try to get the clubs on board to do so, too. 

“And some clubs already are, but they work through their council,” she said. “So it’s the council as a whole that decides that with input from each club. So I don’t know what that level of difficulty is to get them to help out.”

Almekinder again said that the question was whether the council’s bylaws and policies were legal.

So who makes department policy?

Whatever the proper interpretation, Nemec’s comments made clear she did not think the committee’s vote meant anything more than an expressed desire — though the meeting was convened to actually open the trails, not wish them to be — and Rady, in following up on his email exchange with Steffes, not only took the same position but asserted it as department policy.

That begs the question, can Nemec and Rady declare department policy on their own if they don’t agree with a committee vote? 

After Steffes had responded to Rady, on January 31 Rady forwarded her response to county board chairman Scott Holewinski, to corporation counsel Michael Fugle, and to Nemec, and then offered his interpretation that the forestry committee was wrong.

He asserted that not just as his opinion, but as the official interpretation of the forestry department, despite the forestry committee’s vote to the contrary.

“Our department’s opinion and interpretation of how this works is that both the County AND the council would need to be on board with individual clubs/segments opening trails if our system as a whole is closed,” Rady wrote.  

It’s not that Steffes was wrong, Rady wrote, just that the county code and the council’s bylaws were not factored into the situation.

“Jillian’s [Steffes] email below references that ‘…the County would have to be in agreement with this particular group of trails being open’ is accurate, but because of how the trail opening policy and our county code are written, both the Forestry Department and the Snowmobile Council would both need to agree for one club to open in order for a solo club to get paid,” he wrote. “The way that the council is structured now, the club would need to bring the request to open segments of their trails forward to the council and they would decide as a group if it would be allowed.  If the county approves it but the council decides against it, then the trail doesn’t open because we need both organizations to say yes.”

Given that position, questions had been raised about the ability of the Bo-Boen Club to open the three-mile segment of the Highline Trail in Oneida County close to St. Germain, where that club is based. Rady said it was a unique situation and actually the policy he had just outlined had been followed.

“The reasoning for the 3-mile ‘Highline’ section south of St. Germain being allowed to open is because both groups (County & Council) knew about it and are in agreement with it,” he wrote. “Because the Council and County approved this, the club can get paid for grooming/maintaining that small segment even though the rest of the trail system is officially closed.”

Opening that segment of the trail was a matter of practicality, Rady wrote.  

“There are numerous club trails and other entry points feeding into the Oneida segment of this trail, and it would be incredibly difficult for the club to close that off,” he wrote. “They would have to close a lot of spur trails in Vilas County for that to happen, and try to restrict access points at every single business along that stretch of trail.”

It was not a new occurrence, Rady insisted, “opening of this segment before the rest of the Oneida system being open has occurred many times in years past.”

In an email to this reporter clarifying authorship of the above emails — it wasn’t clear to this reporter what was coming from Rady and what was coming from the state — Nemec did not disagree that Rady’s assessment was in fact department policy.

“The email from Eric on 1/31/25 forwards Jillian’s response from 1/29/25, but also provides our opinion and interpretation regarding partially opening trails, specifically the ‘Highline Trail,’ which we’ve received questions about from both you and county supervisors,” Nemec wrote.

In other words, the department’s interpretation is being given to the public and to other county officials, not the committee’s interpretation.

That prompted a follow-up inquiry to Nemec, namely, given that the code language is being interpreted in one way by the forestry committee and in another way by the forestry department, and the forestry department’s official position did not change after the forestry committee vote, who sets department policy?

“So my question is, who made that interpretation?” this reporter’s email asked. “Did the corporation counsel give input or render an opinion to the department? It doesn’t seem to be the forestry committee, given their vote last week. Is it Rady’s interpretation, and has this interpretation come into play in the past? I know it is the department’s opinion and interpretation, I would just like to know how that opinion and interpretation came to be the official one for the department.”

Nemec did not respond to the question by press time.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.