This story by Clare Shanahan was first published in the Valley News on Feb. 24.
TUNBRIDGE — The Vermont Supreme Court reaffirmed municipalities’ rights to maintain public trails in the latest ruling in a years-long legal battle over two trails in Tunbridge.
In the nine-page decision issued last Friday, the court upheld a July Superior Court ruling that Vermont towns have the right to maintain public legal trails on private property and rejected an argument that past statute stripped towns of this right.
“We conclude that because the Town trails are public rights-of-way under the controlling statute, the Town has authority to maintain them to ensure the public’s access to the trails for the purpose intended,” Associate Justice William Cohen wrote.
If towns could not maintain or repair public trails under state law, “it would defeat the purpose of a public easement,” and “This reading of the statute would essentially make the system of public trails ineffective and superfluous.”
To bolster the argument, Cohen ruled that Vermont statute gives towns the authority to “regulate how trails are used” and exempts towns from liability around maintenance and repair, Cohen wrote.
“It would not make sense for a town to be able to regulate the use of a trail but not have the power to conduct the maintenance and repair required to support those uses,” and “there would be no purpose in releasing towns from liability for failure to do so,” Cohen argued.
The ruling against landowners John Echeverria and Carin Pratt is the most recent decision in a dispute that started at the town level in 2020.
The couple have owned the 325-acre Dodge Farm in Tunbridge since 2015. Two town trails cross the property. The couple maintained both for public use from 2015 to 2020, but stopped maintaining them in 2020 after they became embroiled in debate over whether bicyclists should be allowed on the trails.
Echeverria, a property rights lawyer and professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, and Pratt first brought the issue into the court system in 2022, where a Windsor County Superior Court judge dismissed the case because there was no specific dispute for the court to intervene on.
In 2022, Tunbridge established a trails policy explicitly dictating its right to maintain the trails, which allowed the courts to take up the case.
As of July, Tunbridge had spent nearly $60,000 to litigate the case and the Orchard and Dodge Trails which cross the couple’s property were suffering from uncleared overgrowth and fallen trees.
Neither Echeverria nor Tunbridge Selectboard Chair Gary Mullen responded to requests for comment by deadline.
A judge in Windsor County Superior Court ruled in favor of the town in July, relying on a winding historical analysis of trail maintenance rights in Vermont.
In a 21-page appeal filed in August, the landowners’ attorney Geoffrey Vitt argued that Vermont statute does not give towns the right to maintain legal trails and this right is not implied. In 1986 amendments to Title 19 of the Vermont statutes annotated, the Legislature removed specific references to trails which shows that the Legislature intended to strip towns of the right to maintain trails, Vitt argued.
“Because towns derive their authorities from the legislature, the legislature can
eliminate any authority it has previously granted to towns,” the appeal said. “This is precisely what the legislature did in 1986 with respect to (former) town authority to maintain trails.”
Amid the debate around the Dodge Farm, the state Legislature sought to clarify state law governing municipalities’ authority to maintain legal trails. Friday’s ruling aligns with new legislation to take effect in April.
The statute the Legislature passed last June says that municipalities “shall have the authority to maintain trails but shall not be responsible for any maintenance, including culverts and bridges.” The law applies to “legal trails,” or trails that were converted from former public roads.
There are more than 500 miles of legal trails across the state and four trails of this kind in Tunbridge.
Towns and legislators in the Upper Valley and across Vermont have been looking onto the case and anxiously anticipating the result.
Nearby Pomfret submitted a brief in support of the Tunbridge Selectboard in September, affirming the importance of towns’ ability to maintain legal trails. As a nearby town that maintains more than 5 miles of legal trails, Pomfret has a vested interest in the case that will help clarify towns’ rights to maintain these trails, the Pomfret Selectboard wrote in the letter.
“Appellants’ cramped interpretation would wipe away settled municipal practice, endanger public safety, undermine the public interest, and sow immediate chaos,” the letter argued.
Unlike Tunbridge, which until 2022 had not maintained the town’s legal trails, Pomfret has historically maintained the trails in town “without legal challenge,” showing its right to do so, the Pomfret Selectboard argued. Removing this right would cause public safety and emergency access concerns.
The Vermont League of Cities and Towns also submitted a letter in support of the town, arguing that a ruling against Tunbridge would “render these municipally owned rights-of-way effectively useless,” and “subject their maintenance and, in effect, their use to the indiscriminate whims of a disparate collection of abutting property owners.”
“It is illogical and against sound policy for a municipality to have regulatory authority over trails and yet be unable to maintain them,” the letter argued.
Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark and Vermont Solicitor General Jonathan Rose also submitted a joint letter affirming the original Superior Court decision on behalf of the state of Vermont.
“Vermont law is clear: the public has a right to use legal trails,” Rose wrote. “And the law is equally clear that the right to use a right-of-way necessarily includes the right to maintain it.”
Under state law, Echeverria and Pratt have two weeks to file a motion for reargument before the Vermont Supreme Court.
