Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2002
By: Dale M. King
Source: Delray Beach News
Boca Raton steps up enforcement to stop off-road vehicles from using future park site
A section of the T-Rex Technology Center at Boca Raton is a tempting place to ride an all-terrain vehicle.
With its soft, sandy soil, abundance of scrub brush and occasional hills, it seems a perfect spot to crank up the ATV.
There’s only one problem: The property belongs to the City of Boca Raton. And trespassing with an off-road vehicle – in any fashion – is illegal.
In fact, the city has a couple of ordinances that affect ATV operators. Not only is it illegal to use the land – which is destined to become a massive park – but a city law regulates the type of loud noise associated with the vehicles.
The city is stepping up its enforcement of ATV use on the property at the request of City Councilman Dave Freudenberg, who came upon more than a half-dozen people using them at the site this past weekend.
“My wife and I were on our way to dinner Saturday when we saw a couple of pickup trucks there on the north side of the property, near the generator plant.”
He said he was not out looking for illegal ATV riders but happened to notice them from the road.
On Sunday, Freudenberg was back and noticed more people on the land with the ground-ripping off-roaders.
“I heard the vehicles on the property over the din of I-95,” he said.
“Three ATV’s came out with two pickup trucks. They went around the fence where it is broken. I followed them home.”
Freudenberg said he told them they were trespassing on city property. They responded that they did not know it was illegal, he said.
Boca Raton Police spokesman Jeff Kelly said the department received Freudenberg’s complaint and assigned it to Capt. Michele Miuccio whose district includes the massive T-Rex development, which once was part of the old IBM campus.
The city “spent $45 million to buy the land,” said Freudenberg. “We don�t want to have to spend another million to fix it.”
He said ATV’s tear ruts in the earth that make it difficult to plant vegetation without first fixing the damage.
Just last week, the council received a report from the Parks & Recreation Board urging the city to begin developing walking trails at the site, which could eventually become home to athletic fields, a golf training center, a dog park, a new library and a variety of other uses. During hearings earlier this year on proposed uses of the site, several people suggested creating a facility for off-road vehicles and motor-cross bicycles.
The P&R Board has since rejected uses that involve motorized vehicles.
Police spokesman Kelly said the department has its own ATV’s that are used by patrol officers to check the site.
He noticed that a city ordinance on off-road vehicles makes it “unlawful to park, operate, use or maintain” them “on any undeveloped property within the city.”
The noise ordinance, Kelly said, prohibits the use of “any motorcycle, trail bike, mini-bike, scooter… which emits frequency or long continued noise that exceeds 75 decibels from a distance of 50 feet or which disturbs the comfort and repose of any person in the vicinity.”