The Electric Mountain Bike Association's  OC Parks Action Committee has been meeting weekly. We are making progress and will be speaking and presenting our petition with over 3700 signatures at the Public comments section of the Oct 3, 2019 7PM meeting of the OC Parks supervisors. Please join and support us. Your membership is free. Your contributions help our association continue this fight. Here is what one committee member learned this week:

Called the Lake Tahoe USFS and had a interesting conversation....
Was told to talk to Joseph Flannery who was the one that initiated the pilot program to open up USFS trails to e-bikes. I spoke to his secretary and she was very enlightening! She said the program to open up the trails to e-bikes was so successful that Flannery is trying to get this done NATIONALLY! She said there has been zero impact in allowing e-bikes. In fact, mountain biking participation has increased, primarily in the middle to upper age group because of the benefits of e-bikes (as we are pointing out!). More people are riding than before. They also want to expand access to e-bikes. Lake Tahoe is an advocate to allowing e-bikes in the USFS territory because of the success of the program. I have an email out to Joseph Flannery and will report more when I talk with him.
I went on to ask his secretary if I rode my e-bike in USFS land, would I be cited with a ticket. Surprisingly, she said that at the moment the USFS does NOT have the authority (at least at Tahoe) to issue tickets! But she said that can also be district specific. But so far, she has not seen any higher up decree that says e-bikes are to be cited! I mentioned that I think the e-bike ban is more due to lack of education to the individuals making the decisions. She totally agreed and said once you ride one, you understand that it is not a "motorized vehicle" that the USFS bans.
So those were encouraging words and I will add to this notification when I hear more. I will also be up at Big Bear this weekend and I will try to talk to the administrators about issues they had with e-bikes... currently allowed at Snow Summit!