A cheap shot from the losing side
Well, I got slammed by a letter writer to The Appleton Post-Crescent yesterday, but not for my column in Sunday’s paper. The letter writer, Town of Black Creek official Gary Bunnell, doesn’t spell it out, but he was a leading advocate of allowing ATVs on the Seymour-New London rail-trail and was disappointed by the lopsided Outagamie County vote against motorized use of it.
Bunnell writes:
Back in March, you couldn’t swing a cat in this town without hitting a silent sports enthusiast. Now that the decision has made by the Outagamie County Board to restrict all-terrain vehicles from the Seymour-New London Trail, the hikers and bikers have vanished.
The likes of Joel Patenaude, editor of Silent Sports magazine, and Vickie Milde of Fox Cities Greenways Inc. certainly painted their pictures of what the trail could be, but I guess they forgot about the follow-through.
Like any good free throw or 10-foot putt, you have to follow though or you will come up short, and they did. Unfortunately, many residents of the northern portion of Outagamie, as well as ATV enthusiasts, expected it.
Almost three months have passed and the trail remains untouched. You can hardly see the stone on the grade due to the length of the grass. I have yet to see any sort of effort toward the trail after the silent sportsmen made the promises. Why? Because the people who aren’t afraid to volunteer their time and get their hands dirty were squeezed out. …
Perhaps the county supervisors who voted against a multi-use trail shouldn’t have listened to the squeakiest wheels, but instead should have voted for common sense. If I made that horrible of a decision, I would resign.
Bravo, Mr. Bunnell. Bravo.
Seriously, I’m impressed with his latest salvo, coming as it does after so much sparring through the media as Bunnell and I did. Had I wound up on the losing side, I, too, would have been tempted to take a cheap shot at him. It is odd, however, Bunnell chose to be so adversarial just three weeks after I asked him if he would be interested in helping organize a Friends of the Seymour-New London Trail group. This was the response he posted (writing as PuppyChow II) on the Silent Sports messageboard:
“I will probably have a tough time spearheading something that I didn’t believe in. Will I contribute? Of, course, but I’m not going to be the driving force.”
Bunnell didn’t mention his plans to shoot spitballs at those actually interested in getting the trail developed.
As a local watchdog – if not a constructive contributor – I suppose his goading serves a purpose. We do need to start identifying and securing the funds necessary to develop the trail (how much of that could have been completed in just three months … well, Bunnell’s the expert, I guess). Unbeknowst to Bunnell – only because he didn’t bother to call me or Vickie before firing off his letter attacking us by name – personal issues have kept Vicki and I from getting the Friends group ball rolling.
Vickie has been in North Dakota since early May when her elderly father fell and broke his neck. She and her siblings are there helping their parents through the surgery and a change of residence.
Despite dealing with all that, Vickie emailed me asking that I “inform Gary that we have not forgotten about our committment to the trail.”
Thanks, Mr. Bunnell, for reminding us what our priorities really ought to be.
– Joel Patenaude