Bo-Boen Club received special permission to open its Oneida trails

In bombshell emails obtained by The Lakeland Times, the state Department of Natural Resources gave permission to the president of the Bo-Boen Snowmobile Club to open a three-mile stretch of snowmobile trail in Oneida County, despite that club’s deciding vote last week against opening the countywide trail system because of poor snow conditions.

The club is based in St Germain in Vilas County, which has opened its trails, but has trail segments Oneida County, which gives it a seat and vote on the Oneida County Snowmobile Council.

This past week the council brushed aside an Oneida County forestry committee vote to let clubs decide for themselves whether to open their trails, voting twice to keep the entire trail system closed. According to the club’s by-laws, the funded trail system is all-or-nothing, meaning all trails open or none do, except in rare circumstances.

The actual vote was 6-4 twice to open the trails. But the by-laws require seven out of 10 votes to open, meaning the vote failed. 

One of the ‘no’ votes, which made it a deciding vote, came from the Bo-Boen Club, despite that club’s Vilas County trails being open and despite getting special permission to open three miles of its Oneida County trails.

The council vote had incensed Oneida County board chairman Scott Holewinski, who said he was amazed that one club based in Vilas County but with trails in both counties voted ‘no’ on opening trails in Oneida County though their trails in Vilas were open. 

He observed that there was as much snow in northern Oneida County as there was in southern Vilas County.

“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.”

Explosive emails

Now, in the emails obtained by The Times, it turns out that the president of the Bo-Boen club, Roger Klein, received permission to open the three-mile stretch known as the High Line trail on January 17, approximately a week before the club voted to keep the rest of the county’s trails closed.

Klein made the request in a January 16 email to Beth Feind, the DNR property manager for the Division of Forestry, Northern Highland American Legion State Forest.

“I am asking for permission to use the High Line trail between Hwy J and Hwy O where it parallels St. Hwy 70 as we have in past years,” Klein wrote. “This is in Oneida County, which has not opened its trails yet. Vilas County will open tomorrow, January 17th, at 8 am.”

Klein said he had talked with Eric Rady, the Oneida County assistant forestry director and snowmobile trail coordinator, and Rady wanted to be sure the DNR was still OK with that arrangement.

“This has been the arrangement for many years,” Klein wrote. “We have many businesses along Hwy 70 where this is the only way for snowmobiles to access their businesses.”

On a follow-up email, Klein said the club had blocked snowmobile access into other areas.

“I was wondering if you had a chance to look at the High Line tail [sic],” he wrote. “We have locked the gates on the bridges and put out barrels and fencing to keep snowmobilers from going into Sugar Camp and Lake Tom.”

That same afternoon, Feind approved the request.

“Forestry Property Management gives the county an ‘okay’ to open this 3-mile segment of trail in Oneida County on the conditions stated below,” Feind wrote. “And an additional requirement that the club/county sends a map to me, prior to opening the segment, with the exact ‘early open’ route.”

The conditions included making sure all adjacent landowners were OK with the early opening, contacting the local sheriff’s department to discuss and make sure they were OK with the change, and making sure that all adjacent or intersecting trails near the 3-mile open trail segment were properly closed, as well as making it very clear to trail users that the adjacent or intersecting trails were not open.

On Wednesday afternoon, Holewinski told The Times that he wondered how the Bo-Boen club — which voted no to open any of the trails — could open that stretch in the county, which he said is three of the 14 miles of trail they have in Oneida County.

“Evidently, they didn’t need council approval, even though the bylaws say they are going to open all the trails at one time,” Holewinski said. 

Holewinski said the president of the snowmobile council is from St. Germain.

“So they got the permission to run that, but then they turn around and vote no on the rest of the trails,” he said. “Well, isn’t that smart? Because now you keep all that tourism in Vilas County.”

Holewinski said he thought the whole thing might represent “a little bit of a conflict.”

“You're benefiting by saying ‘no,’ because you’re not only getting your trails open in Vilas, you’re opening up trails in Oneida County,” he said.

Holewinski said he had also heard that, on the Bearskin Trail, similar permission was requested but denied by the Northern Highland American Legion State Forest: “So why does one area get approved and one area not get approved by the same outfit?”

The Times could not independently confirm such a request and denial by press time.

As he did at the forestry committee meeting earlier in the week, Holewinski said trails in the northern half of Oneida County could be opened.

“This is a total mess because the northern part of Oneida County has just as much snow as the southern part of Vilas,” he said. “When you drive around, I looked at trails. I didn’t see any dirt on the trails all the way from Eagle River along 70, all the way on G. They’re all nice looking trails to me. They’re flat. They’ve got holes in them. They’re actually probably pretty nice to ride.”

Holewinski said the process was not working for the people of Oneida County.

“It comes down to how non-elected people can control the economy of the county by using safety as a measure,” he said. “And that we’re going lose the landowners permission, but so much of this is on national forest and DNR land and Commissioner of Public Lands.”

How many landowners are going to stop? Holewinski asked.

“They use that and they throw it out that they’re going to lose their landowners,” he said. “Well, it’s up to the clubs to get it in each town. If they can’t, they can’t. They need to figure it out town by town.”

Holewinski said the easiest thing to do would be to split the county between north and south. He also said it was hard to get a supermajority vote on the snowmobile council.

“And then you’ve got one who can open up, who doesn’t want to open up Oneida County,” he said. “I don’t even know why we allowed them to have those sections in Oneida County.”

Holewinski said that, while change might not be possible this winter, a good look will be warranted after the season.

“I can bet that we’re going to be looking at this next summer, the county code, not the snowmobile clubs, but we’re going to change the county code somehow and have it that we have to work in conjunction with them,” he said. 

At Monday’s forestry committee meeting, Holewinski had said exactly what Klein had said in his special request to the DNR — that the economy was hurting.

“And I believe we need to open these up,” Holewinski said. “The businesses are suffering. It’s two years in a row and you’ve got one county across the road open and you won’t let that snowmobile traffic come down here.”

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