St. Joseph County takes a step towards allowing off-road vehicles on county roads

SOUTH BEND, Ind. -- At Tuesday evening’s St. Joseph County committee meeting, members had a second reading and moved to pass the off-road vehicle ordinance to the full council with a favorable recommendation.

This comes after The Michiana Trail Riders Coalition, an adventure-based club that gets together to ride off-road vehicles and snowmobiles all around Michiana, brought the ordinance to the council in Nov.

The rules and regulations that allow off-road vehicles, like snowmobiles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), on public roads are established in almost every surrounding county, but not St. Joseph.

“We’re happy and excited to get something passed so we’re open to whatever they want to suggest, nothing that they’re offering is out of the ordinary I’d say from any other county that’s in the area,” said Jacob Narkawicz, President of Michiana Trail Riders Coalition.

Some of the rules the ordinance outlines includes that drivers must pay to register the off-road vehicles and have decals to prove it, the owners must be financially responsible enough to pay fees if an accident occurred and to keep up maintenance with the vehicle, and they must adhere to all traffic laws, among a multitude of other regulations.

“We wanna make sure that we’re keeping not only the people riding the vehicles safe, but you know the kids driving to school on Cleveland Road for example in my district or coming home from school, um the truck drivers that these folks are going to encounter. We want to make sure that the rules are in place so that everybody’s as safe as possible,” said St. Joseph County Council President, Dan Schaetzle.

The next full county council meeting will be held on March 11th, which should be the last opportunity for public comment before the bill is voted on at the meeting.

To view the entire ordinance, click here and scroll to the bottom.