The Yavapai County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a $796,570 appropriation, including a $557,370 two-year state grant, to fund a full-time deputy for the Yavapai County Sheriff’s Office for OHV law enforcement during its Wednesday, June 4 meeting.
“[YCSO] was awarded funding through the Arizona State Park Board OHV Law Enforcement Assistance Program for a project that will help OHV enforcement in our rural areas,” YCSO Chief Deputy Jeff Newnum said. “The grant, it’ll address the need for continued dedicated enforcement in those areas. [The award] will give us one full-time equivalent deputy to be out there, as well as funding some of the equipment that goes along with that, including a side-by-side [UTV] that would be fully equipped for enforcement purposes.”
The project costs will include $239,200 in county contributions consisting of staff time, $108,100 for equipment including 12 trail cameras and $10,000 for what were described as educational materials.
“The people are screaming for this, and it’s getting tore up out there,” District 4 Supervisor Chris Kuknyo [R] said. “A lot of people are renting these things. I don’t know if there’s any way to hold the renters accountable for some of the actions of who they rent to. But I know Sedona has been having a hard time with this.”
Kuknyo also said that the north side of District 4 from north of Prescott to Seligman “has been having a hard time.”
Newnum said that the new deputy will be assigned to the YCSO Forest Patrol Squad, which, according to the YCSO website, performs technical rope rescue, swift water rescue and helicopter rescue and supplies 4×4 and off-highway vehicle teams, a mountain bike team, hiker and ground search teams and fixed-wing aircraft support.
“I’m excited to see this move forward,” District 3 Supervisor Nikki Check [D] said. “It’s not the end-all, be-all for addressing OHV impacts, but it’s a great start. I’m often hesitant to fund positions with soft dollars such as this, but it’s such an incredible need … [We] want to be dedicated and finding permanent solutions to make sure that we’re doing what we can as a county to address this issue, even though it’s broad and touches upon a number of agencies.”
Newnum said that YCSO is looking “for any way that we can add additional resources” for OHV enforcement.
The board had previously approved submitting the grant application on April 16.
“This is the culmination of about three years of work that I have, along with my staff, completed at the Arizona legislature, and essentially the OHV issue statewide, and certainly here in Yavapai County, has been on top of mind for many of the residents,” Sheriff David Rhodes had said to the board during the April 16 meeting.
Rhodes had stated that the COVID-19 pandemic response had coincided with the number of licensed OHVs in Arizona increasing from 100,000 to 250,000 and that the increase had caused “this burgeoning cost of increased OHV enforcement as it started to trickle back to the county,” but did not provide the costs for that enforcement for either YCSO or other rural areas of the state.
Rhodes attributed the grant award to the work of the Arizona Off-Highway Vehicle Study Committee, a legislative study committee of which he is a member, for convincing legislators to allocate funds from OHV registration to police forces.
“Each county is putting together their own program as how they want to address this,” Rhodes said. “How I have set this up is that we are going to have a new … certified deputy that is your OHV coordinator.”
Rhodes also said that a helicopter YCSO “recently purchased” could contribute to OHV enforcement.
“I have been told by the Arizona State Parks Board they intend to continue to fund this for the counties in perpetuity, but they can only approve it so much at a time,” Rhodes said. “We have ran legislation at the Arizona legislature that would dedicate funding specifically to the counties for this enforcement. We’ll see how that turns out.”
YCSO had not responded to follow-up questions about their OHV enforcement and jurisdiction by press time.
