Memorandums of clarity

Where you don't want to find yourself.

One of the easiest ways to help cities and land managers to feel more comfortable with urban mountain biking is to feel like they have control over mountain biking, but also that it’s not totally on them.  From the standpoint of a mountain biking club and the land manager the maintenance of, management of and control of trails, being partners can bring great benefits to all involved.
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How can you codify a partnership between your local mountain biking club and the land managers?  With a document called a “Memorandum of Understanding".  Let’s look at what a memorandum of understanding is and how you can create one that is both useful and simple to understand for all parties.

​What is a Memorandum of Understanding?

​Here is the definition of Memorandum of Understanding per Wikipedia:

​A memorandum of understanding (MoU) is an agreement between two (bilateral) or more (multilateral) parties. It expresses a convergence of will between the parties, indicating an intended common line of action. It is often used in cases where parties either do not imply a legal commitment or in situations where the parties cannot create a legally enforceable agreement. It is a more formal alternative to a gentlemen's agreement.

Let’s simplify that a bit.  A memorandum of understanding is a document that allows multiple parties to agree to a set of requirements or a course of action over definable period of time.  It allows Party A to say, “This is what I will do,” and Party B to say, “If you do that, I will do this”.
A memorandum of understanding has 3 basic parts to it:

• A definition of the parties to the document and their respective responsibilities
• A listing of both parties’ “give and take”, that is the responsibilities to each other
• A description of when the document goes into effect, when it expires and what happens if one or either party wishes to end the agreement

Where this gets a bit complicated is what should actually be included in the responsibilities, both singularly as the parties, and to each other.  That part of the document will be the subject of many revisions as the parties discuss what they want to be responsible for and how their respective responsibilities will interact.  While it’s tempting to get super detailed on the interaction and process part of the document, for most items a land manager and mountain biking club will need to agree on, its often best to give both parties flexibility.  If you get too detailed in the process and that process changes, the memorandum would have to be terminated and new memorandum would have to be issued.  Therefore, most clubs make reference to process and planning documents outside the memorandum.  This allows these documents to change as needed without having to alter the memorandum of understanding.

The memorandum of understanding should be reviewed by a lawyer because ‘Murica and you (or the land manager) don’t want to get caught in a bind because one or both of you inadvertently agreed to something.  There are boilerplates and examples, including the one attached below, but just setting your word processor to “search and replace” will get you into trouble fast.  Think of boilerplates and examples as the starting point, not as an “almost there” document.

​Addendum are awesome

A simple way to extend the usability of memorandums of understanding is to include a paragraph within the mutually agreed section that allows the additions of addendum to the memorandums at any time.  This allows the addition of any type of “extension” onto the memorandum without altering or rebuilding the original document.  These addendum can either be a permanent attachment to the memorandum or a temporary one.
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Where would this ability be useful?  Imagine for a moment that there is some construction work on a part of the land you have trails on.  An addendum could be added onto the memorandum of understanding allowing a temporary access trail around the construction to be created and give clear instructions for its use, maintenance and decommissioning after the construction work is finished.  The addendum could have an expiration date or be removed when the memorandum of understanding gets renewed.  This solution is also helpful where specific points of management are needed to be included, but with more authority attached to them than just a memo or directive.

​Let’s boilerplate this puppy

​Now that we have talked about memorandums of understanding and addendum, here is a boilerplate memorandum of understanding with prebuilt addendum for common issues and management situations.

mou_boilerplate_-_2017_revision.rtf
File Size:	197 kb
File Type:	rtf

Download File

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This memorandum started its life as one used by the Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association.  It then was updated and changed to fit the requirements of various clubs in the upper Midwest, where it has lived a long and fruitful life.  The addendum were created and added over time as there was the need.  Not included in this package is the very long winter fat bike grooming addendum.

Every land manager and mountain biking club relationship should be built on trust.  But trust only gets you so far.  Personnel and directors will change with the land manager.  Volunteers and board members will come and go.  So, it’s best to have everything understood and hashed out between all the interested parties so there is no confusion later.  Memorandums of Understanding are the best way to do this.  If you have an existing set of trails and are operating without a memorandum of understanding, please take this article as a wake-up call and start working on one today.