Deer Lake to address ATV concerns

The mayor of Deer Lake says residents are tired of ATVs on the roads, and the town willholdits first meeting Monday night to discuss it.

Dean Ball said alot of riders are using residential streets to get tothetrail system, and he's received calls about young people driving recklessly.

He said the town wants to remainATV-friendly, so it willwork with driversand RCMP ona solution.

"We have a lot of frustrated residents, and I can certainly understand [it when] the phone rings and you've got some irate taxpayer that's within his or her rights complaining, and I certainly sympathize in a lot of cases, so this first meeting tonight will be to see, to put a sort of a plan in place on how in-depth we go here with this," Ball said.

Ball thinks it's a case of just a few people exacerbating the situation.

"In my opinion, you have a few bad apples that are making the situation a lot worse for everybody, and we certainly don't want again and I can't say it enough that we're not looking to shut this industry, I will call it, down," he said.

"But we have to get a handle before somebody is seriously hurt. We have to get a message out to our kids that this is not acceptable and we will not be permitting it."

Ball said he does not want to ban the use of ATVs in Deer Lake, but there needs to be aresolution.