Parks and Recreation Commission - Regular Meeting

Okay. Now I can do it. Okay. All right.

Sorry.

Is Danny out there? No, he's not. He's not coming today.

All right. So, once again, I will call the meeting to order the Park and Rec Commission.

And could we do a roll call, please?

Yes.

Commissioner Mullins-Becker? Present. Commissioner Donovan?

Here.

Commissioner Lowry? Here. Commissioner Hospitalier?

Here.

Commissioner Laughlin is absent.

All right, very good. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you, Eileen.

You're very kind. OK. We're now going to move on to the adoption of the agenda and approval of the consent calendar. I will put it to our commissioners. Do you have any changes that you want to see?

Any comments in regards to it? Public comment first.

Now I'm taking public comment. A consent calendar. Individuals will have three minutes to address the commission. Public comment will be taken first from those participating in the room and then from those participating by Zoom. For those participating by Zoom, please make sure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you are joining the meeting by phone, press star nine to indicate a desire to comment. If you're joining by Zoom, press the raise hand button to indicate a desire to comment. Please voluntarily state your name for the record, reserve any comment in the room on the consent calendar. No comments by Zoom.

Yeah, bring it back to the commission. Can I get a motion for the adoption of the agenda approved?

Right. One more time. Okay. I second. Okay, we're good. Oh, yeah. Call the call. What's that?

We don't have to. We only really have to do that because Danny is on Zoom. So we don't really have to do that. OK. Open forum. Now taking public comment on open forum. Individuals will have three minutes to address the commission. Public comment will be taken first from those participating in the room and then those participating by Zoom. For those participating by Zoom, please make sure you unmute yourself when called upon. If you're joining the meeting by phone, press star nine to indicate or comment. If you're joining by Zoom, press the return button to indicate or comment. Please voluntarily say your name. Russia. No comment.

Okay, moving on to agenda item. And for is part of the vision of the Chief Administrative Office recommends initial review the list of volunteers for nominations by district and select a volunteer for each district to recognize.

Everybody has a copy of the volunteer recognition nomination list. So essentially what we're trying to do here is make a selection, like Donna said, for a volunteer from each district that we could highlight their acts of service, something that we would like to include in the Parks Commission and the report. So this selection would be kind of 2025 and then year to date. I think that's what we discussed. And then in the subsequent year, it'd be kind of from fiscal year through the end of the year. So that'll be kind of how we get into it. And then it'll be kind of on that revolving annual cycle there. So, you know, as far as how we want to go ahead and make these selections, I'm kind of open to what the commission thinks. We could start in District 1 and work our way down. I don't know if you guys want to decide collectively on each one or if you want to let the representative of each district select for their individual district. That's how I'm sort of feeling about how you wanted to make the selection. You feel strongly about each commissioner making their own selection? Do you guys want to do it collectively or I kind of decided that it was going to be by district.

By district, but I think we'll agree collectively.

Yeah, the one for each district. So do you want that district's commissioner to select that solely, or do you guys want to agree amongst yourself per district who it should be?

My suggestion would be that the commissioner for that district recommends somebody to discuss it and agree from the floor if we think that person's full of water to drink. Just speaking for District 1, we don't have a lot of county projects in District 1, so I have no nominations.

Yeah, and similarly with District 5, it's pretty mean. You don't have a whole lot to pick from. So maybe I like the idea when the commissioner for that district kind of makes that first, hey, I think this might be one, and then the commissioners can discuss and see if there's concurrence and

If you make a selection that way. I think so.

Are we going to have a cap on how many? I do recommend it be just one. One for each district. One for each district, correct.

If the district doesn't really have projects, is it going to be from another district then? So I would say like, Maybe from the all district projects. So there's several there for the El Dorado Trail, which are in multiple districts. So I would say you'd probably be more so in that bucket, right? So I mean, realistically, District 3, you have a couple to pick from. 4, there's a handful. District 5 is just two different volunteer groups that participated in the volunteer event for the field restoration at Fort Baker Snowline Little League. And then we just have the one installation of the local libraries at Pioneer Park. So I think really the deliberation will happen in District 4, right, where you have a lot to think about going on. So, I mean, if you guys want, maybe start either with all districts, and I can kind of be Wayne-ish, right, because you don't have anything in District 1. If you wanted to kind of take a crack at that, then we can go to District 2, 3, 4, something like that.

No, let's do it that way. That's fine. Do you have anything that you want to add to it, Wayne?

I really don't. There may be a piece of the trail that actually is important. Right, that's what I did. I don't know. Just a thought I have back to how we do this. If a district doesn't have a candidate that we're comfortable with, I mean, this award should be meaningful. just because the district nominates somebody, it needs to shine enough for us to feel it represents a certain threshold. I've got no problem if the district doesn't have anybody because they're not comfortable. Although I can't imagine that happening. It's acceptable as well. But you've also got projects on the trail of four of the five districts. In every district, something is happening. So the I've got to think we're not going to ever run into that problem. Yeah.

So what do you think? I mean, I could kind of like read through the ones that you'd be kind of picking from in that all district category. I think that would help to kind of get it going, kind of go with the description of each one of those volunteers, kind of scope of what they completed. And then maybe one of them rings and it sounds true to you. I'd be happy to chime in. Okay. Yeah. So we'll start at the top here. Yeah. So the first one, this person has consistent dedication, involvement, and support of the Eldorado Trail. This person regularly participates in volunteer events to maintain and improve the trail, including May is Bike Month. They attend public meetings to advocate for the trail and funding and are involved in leading local groups that focus on trail stewardship. The next option is a person that is a long-time trail advocate. They regularly participate, coordinate, and organize trail volunteer events. They work with staff to plan and complete trail projects and planning efforts. They are engaged and participate in discussions around trail stewardship at the Parks Commission, SPTC, JPA, and their board of supervisors. This next person is a long-time trail advocate of the El Dorado Trail. This volunteer attends Parks and Rec Commission meetings, SPTC, JPA meetings, and board of supervisor meetings advocating for trail improvements and funding. They participate in our public trail events and always have a positive attitude.

One more. Next page.

The last one. Through a recommendation from another superstar volunteer, this group made monumental progress on helping the county achieve defensible space standards within the SPTC JPA core. Those would be all the potential awardees.

all district or multi-district that you might want to know. And you're suggesting just one of these or two or what?

Yeah, I mean, I would say probably try to select one.

That's a tough one because they're pretty close. They're all very, you know, reference. in commission meetings and reporting our efforts to do what we do and provide them when appropriate. These are different people.

If you have any clarifying questions, I can do my best to provide any additional deciding factors or anything like that that might sway you one way or another.

what you're thinking about yourself. Well, I know some of these people. I know they're all different people. And I so appreciate everything that you're proposing. That's it. I'm going to use the restroom. I'll be back in about an hour.

I'm a little leaning towards the second. simply because of global participation all the way.

Commission, the SBGC, GPA, and board of advisors, along with, you know, advocating for the trail for a length of period of time and coordinating for it. It just kind of sums it all up. How about you, Tori?

I mean, I have a hard time parsing it out. Honestly, I think the one that my eyes gravitate toward out of that group, because it's all similar, like awesome stuff, is sort of this foundational shift, was like the last one about doing the eventual state space work, which was just like, okay, great. We've been pushing this forward, and then this was a whole other rink we had then, just in terms of uniqueness. I know we discussed ours as maybe being a way of looking at this a little bit more, but I don't think that's an apples to oranges comparison, I'm sure, so you know, are there any other elements from the staff where you would say, like, you know, you can sort of paint this more than what's written here.

It gives us a better understanding of, like, you know, the differences between each of these. That fourth one, and I think it's what you're talking about, that page two, references this group. Yeah. So that one is not an individual. The other three are. Okay. Okay.

For me, I would fall back on, too, what the impact was to your operation. I think I mentioned this in the last meeting. Yeah. Which of the four made the greatest impact?

Positive impact. Positive impact, yeah. Yeah, that's what we did. So, call her ID and let's use Wayne again. Rule Wayne out of the whole situation, I mean.

I'm trying to think of like how I could provide additional information without selecting it on your behalf. Right. It's like, how do I, I think your opinion is important. Yeah. Um, I don't know if I was in your guys' position, I think, you know, as I was reviewing the scope of what would be completed from all of these individuals in the one group, um, the person that was a long time trail advocate regularly participates, coordinates, organizes trail volunteer events. I think in my mind, um, That first thing kind of edged it out. I mean, very consistent with their interests on the trail. And even beyond just like volunteer events, taking it upon themselves to stay involved as an individual. I don't know. I recognize it as the vision manager. So I would probably, if I had to edge one out over another, I would probably, if I had a vote, I would probably go there. Can I ask a question? Sure. Have any of these people already been awarded by us? Not to my knowledge. You know, if we've done anything like this in the past. I don't think we've done it in the past. So this is kind of longitudinal for us. I will say, one of these people have been identified in the past at a county level, like a volunteer of the year, and it would not be the person I'm discussing right now.

This would be a new person.

Let me know your comments on it.

Only that I, uh, or I like it. That's cool. All right. For a long time and regularly participate. Cool. Okay. So you want to see this photo? You made your selection.

Okay, then we have District 2, which there's only one, so... I think...

So you can do the one that's specific to District 2 or the trail projects that are in District 2 as well as other districts.

Yeah. Well, I admire the effort there for the Lowell Library and everything like that.

I feel like that I would have looked for something more substantial in

supporting pioneer park you know some type of development whatever so i think maybe we're going to fall back onto the elder on our trail and what course improvement is in district 2. um so there you're going to have to help us with that definitely um where that would fall in of those did you identify for

to repeat the word. You're going to have a line to. You're looking for it. I don't know where it cuts off or you know where the.

say it would be down from La Trobe going up to the Shiloh Springs, yeah.

So I would say realistically, that would just omit the principal street or the trail. I will be more district for three. For district to probably more of the recent natural trail work like someone said that we did it right down in that area. So that would fall into the second one we have here. This isn't dedication, involvement, sort of build on the trail. Great purchase. It's a volunteer trail including a bike month. We have that. We also have the library.

And then we also have a long time advocate of the elder out of trail this volunteer at 10th park commission meetings.

or have super by advocating for funding to participate in a public trail event. Those are my would be this. One district. This is for District 2.

Yeah, me too. So I'm looking at this one and this one. Is that what we're looking at? For District 2? Yeah. Okay.

Is that 2, 3, 4? 3 was already nominated.

Yes, that's true.

So it would be 2 or 4, right? So you have the first line item and the second item. So I would before. And the reason why I say that is because of the ,, which is relevant to value ..

You guys ready for district three?

Yes.

All right. So we'll start with the two district three items and then we'll do the all district items. I'll start. Yep. This nonprofit group attended and supported May's Bike Month volunteer events, as well as promoting parks division events and their community events focused around biking, Eldorado Trail use, and outdoor recreation. That's one. Another one where this volunteer is a busy pipe swimmer, participated geographically in multiple volunteer work days. He came all the way from Granite Bay to help maintain the bike park and Eldorado Trail. So those are the two district three specific ones. We also have the recommendation from another superstar volunteer.

This group made fundamental progress on helping the county achieve the principal space standard that . It's three, right? Correct. And you also have the third on the list, which is .

and planning efforts, they're engaged in of the site. Consistent dedication, involvement, and support of the El Dorado Trail. Regularly participates in volunteer events to maintain and improve the trail, including May's Bike Month. They attend public meetings to advocate for the trail and for funding, and is involved in leading local groups that focus on trail stewardship.

I'm torn.

I'm torn. I'd say at first I was kind of leaning toward the high schooler who actually came from outside the county to volunteer just because it was an example of how people outside the county partake in our use of our county parks And it shows a big commitment. But on the other hand, I think the key to this whole volunteer recognition as a group, correct me if I'm wrong, is that we're trying to acknowledge people within the county, potentially.

I mean, the stakeholder is the stakeholder, right? Right.

Yeah.

I don't know if that necessarily is I mean, if that means something to you, then you're welcome to incorporate that into kind of your methodology.

Well, being that it's the first year, I think it's important to recognize folks that have been putting in the time in past years also.

We have some very long-time volunteers that do not reside within El Dorado County. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make it more complicated, but that is reality.

John's saying, I'd like to encourage any school kids to go on in the future to volunteer. That's the future of the volunteer base. If you've got people that are volunteering year after year after year, showing up for the first time, advocating, not just showing up for the shovel, helping. They're out there doing the research and having the meetings prepared with information. It's helpful to us.

And of course,

the dedication set. So I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to stick with my district, since we seem to be kind of picking over the Detroit-wide collections, and go with the group attending and supporting

So second, third from the bottom.

That's my recommendation. Can we talk for a while on District 4?

So if you like, I could repeat the all district item.

So we'll start with the first Rubicon Trail Adopt-A-Trail District 4. This group is very active in bringing back the Adopt-A-Trail program for the Rubicon Trail. They adopted one of the largest and most labor-intensive sections of the trail and are one of the groups that are out early in the season, making sure their section is being well cared for, clearing drainages and downed trees. When the opportunity arose to get chainsaw certified by the U.S. Forest Service, multiple members of this club stepped up and got certified. expanding their ability to assist with trail maintenance needs. The next Rubicon Adopt-A-Trail group. This group was also one of the first to respond with interest in bringing back the Adopt-A-Trail program for the Rubicon Trail. Not only do they host large Adopt-A-Trail work party events, they also have made some significant donations to the Rubicon Trail, the Rubicon program, including a new horn winch for our pumper truck and 30 gallons of bio-response for a county sap to apply to make sure the trail stays oil free. just so everyone's aware. Bioresponse is a digestive enzyme that breaks down petroleum products. So when we have oil spills or gear oil on the Rubicon Trail, we can apply this chemical to break down the petroleum products. The next one is another Adopt-A-Trail group there. Active Rubicon Trail advocate that participates in coordinating Adopt-A-Trail work for their club's adoptions. segment as well as assist other clubs with work on their segments when needed, regularly, and then communication with park staff regarding issues on the trail and how they should be remedied. Is this an individual or a club? All of these are clubs. Take that back. First two were clubs. One I just said was an individual.

And the next one will be an individual too.

Oh. Sorry.

It's all right. The next one is another individual. This volunteer was monumental and activated with doctoral programs and room on trail. Hosting beginning of season coordination meeting, defining groups to adopt vacant sections, to arranging data volunteer activities, this person went the extra mile to make the adopted trail program for the group upon which it was set. Another individual, this adopted trail volunteer stepped up for their club and participated in a multi-day U.S. Forest Service chainsaw certification training so that he could be eligible to use a larger variety of equipment. This club's Rubicon Trail adopted segment has large amounts of standing deadwood, which makes the chainsaw certification extra valuable for the program. Then we have, so that was all Rubicon Trail stuff. Now we're on Henningsen Motors Park Trail Cleanup. This volunteer reached out to county staff to partner on, working on several volunteer events to remove invasive scotch broom from Henningsen Lotus Park. This volunteer coordinated the events and volunteers that participated in the day of volunteer activities. So this person has done both scotch broom cleanups at Henningsen Lotus Park, as well as just general park, like trash pickup detail work days like that.

So on HLP, have they done this year over year?

Two years.

This year more so than last. I believe last year we did one Scotch Room event. This year we've done two and then they also did them. And they instigated those. Correct.

That was something that they approached us with a desire to do and then worked with our program coordinator to get it coordinated.

So it's hard for me to evaluate that one versus the other ones because the other ones feel like there's some kinship in all of them. And I'm kind of saying this out loud. for input from the rest of the commissioners as well. Like, I mean, they all sound really fantastic. To me, it feels like, you know, the organization that's listed first, you know, was like, I mean, they really feel like they have carried the most weight as an organization forward. but it seems that's a, trying to compare the two, if that's the case. But then for the individuals on RivetCon Trail, I'm like just reading between the lines that the person that's mentioned is the first one on the second page, like, like really carried, like carried the movement forward. And that's also what I think I read the first, the first organization as well, is it like, so the Adopt-a-Trail program came out, they were like, let's, you know, we really want to jump in on this. And let's try to bring other people along that they were shepherding as well as activating. Yeah.

I would say like, if there was like a org chart, the first volunteer on the second page is probably above the second volunteer chart. And really they were more of like an administrator, right? So they are coordinating groups with sections, making sure dates are getting scheduled. And then, um, just other logistical things, making sure people have a meal to eat and things like that. So, I mean, that was really that person's role. Whereas the other group was more so, we just want to take the hardest section. Yeah. Which is right. So that was kind of .

And I mean, honestly, it feels like some of these, we can review again next year. We're going to keep doing this awesome stuff. Yeah.

So that particular volunteer was not a part of any of the other groups, right? That single volunteer?

Not directly, no. I wasn't here for the discussion. What if we had an organization chemical raid? If it's hard to compare.

Yeah, yeah.

It kind of goes back to what you and I were saying. We've got these groups that have been contributing for years, right? And we're kind of playing catch up with this recognition.

Being that it's the first year, that might make a lot of sense. And then as we go on, pulling forward over the years, as years go on, just some people, I'm going to bring through some of this stuff, some kind of recognition.

Yeah. I feel like Torren brought up a good point. I mean, this isn't the end for any of these people, I assume, right? I would agree with you in that, you know, the appreciation is probably long overdue. We probably should have been doing this sort of thing for a long time, but it's not to say that everyone won't get their shine in time, right?

I like Tori's thought on this as an individual, brought all the other groups together to make sure, you know, to make sure that things happen the way they should happen.

within our adoption program. And these groups are going to continue, whether they get recognized or not, they will continue to work.

No matter how, no matter what, they're just going to do it. And they're just all happy that we have the program going again because it went by the wayside for a long time. So, you know, maybe it's time to just honor that person.

Yeah, I mean, in comparing organizations to people, it's sort of like, what we really, I feel like we really want to recognize is the fulcrums. And I think that an individual, if they are doing that work and lifting and bringing groups along and things like that, that's more essential than a whole group. A whole group can be essential as well.

But like, I don't know, like if you have to do, say which, which one is making the greater impact. Right.

They're all doing such a great job. All of the groups are.

So it's kind of hard to say which one of those did more for,

But when there's individuals doing the big lots. I'm going on the assumption that that's recognized as one group or one individual or other that will be discouraging. Why didn't we correct ours too? My feeling is that it's probably

They can be appreciative of you just giving some sort of adjunct for the type of work.

Hey, you see the types of, even if it's not me, you see what we're doing. Right. And that can be said as part of the presentation. We'll mention. Yeah.

Thanks.

Yeah. And I think that's certainly because this will go in the presentation. Nothing more meaningful than just a picture. Yeah. Yeah.

So if I'm leaning toward, personally leaning toward the individual on the top of page two, can you all do any comparison between that lift that they did versus the person that led the activities in HLB? I'm guessing that the Rubicon's probably the one. Oh, did you say magnitude? Yeah. The scope of the project is. Yeah.

The number of individuals they coordinated with.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the only reason that I was leaning toward HLP at all, not to say that I would, but there's a bunch of organizations that want to see Rubicon come together, and most people go to HLP assuming that the county's just going to take care of it. So it's kind of neat that this person did that, for sure.

Yeah, I agree. I would be in a similar kind of position to you.

But I mean, as amazing as it seems like, I mean, all of these works are. So I would recommend that we use the first individual

on the second page. District five. So I don't even think here at the El Dorado

So the last two on the list here. So the first one is Father and Children came out to volunteer for the Sports Field Prep Workday at Four Bay Park. So this was an event that myself, actually my dad, came out and our ground maintenance supervisor, Eric Sunderland, we did this. I think it was back in January last year or early this year. We applied 250 pounds of fescue seed and 30 yards of compost to the baseball field at Fort Bay Park. And this gentleman brought himself and his children out to help with putting down the seed and then spreading out the compost to the top of the rest of the field there. And then he also, in conversation, when I was working with him, he let me know who to volunteer on the fire personally. The other person is a family that has two children that both play personally in middle league and have volunteered. It was one of the parents and that person's two children. And they did a little bit of additional work. They didn't just help with the top dressing and overseeing the field. They also helped with just like some general cleaning of the park, picking up trash and pink garbage.

Extra credit work there as well.

It kind of sounds like they both did similar, make similar efforts towards fall term. So I almost feel like we need to kind of lean to you on this one because we don't have... Yeah.

Yeah, I don't think. I would say as far as the day of volunteer activity, they were, you know, like occurrences. I think if there was one thing that would push me one way or the other, I mean, the additional volunteers that went to Little League I thought was pretty cool. But you're right. I mean, they're very... I mean, they both volunteered for the same event.

Do they both do the additional cleanup?

No.

That's correct.

Can I ask a left field question? Is there any part of the Rubicon Trail that goes through District 5?

It touches in Tahoma a little bit. Way up there. It's very, very, and it's actually not a section that is adopted, so there's no adoptee, but like the little titch that we have within the basin.

So the one that did that was the umpire, he wasn't part of the cleanup you were talking about?

Yeah, so like pretty much the other group, you know, as I recall, this person's children were helping me and Eric and my dad on the field, raking it out, right, getting the seed put down. While that was happening, their parent was going around and just kind of doing pick-up work at the park to try to help out with trash, brush removal, and stuff like that as the kids were helping with the field prep.

I feel like I want to defer to you, whatever your choice is, because I think you have to stay. Yeah. Yeah. So on the past, four residents have been qualified.

It felt a little unappreciated

Projects have been delayed, promises made, money set aside. And honestly, step up. What would be the optic that you should be shooting for?

It's a family day as well as a day to contribute to the community.

What about combining them and just highlighting Snowline Little League?

That would be a great idea.

Like a volunteer group. You're having trouble kind of picking one or the other. I think just highlighting volunteers at Snowline Little League and then explaining the project.

That's a great suggestion.

I think so too. And that just goes a long way within the community as far as assistance. And it has been delayed for a long time. Okay, so we will combine those two then as a personal one, right? Any other further?

I just want to come back, I guess, like, as I'm reflecting, like, do we feel like the efforts that are going on Rubicon Trail are enough to pull in an organization as well as an individual? Like, I know John, you've suggested that as an overall, but specifically all the efforts that's going in for Rubicon and Justify.

I feel with that, I hear what you're saying, but each one of those adopter trail groups, basically, they're doing the same thing on the trail. And So to try and pull one of them on and say, oh, you did so much more than the others, I think that might cause tension.

So in future years, that would still be a concern? I think so.

Yeah. Unless one of them just absolutely blows Zach away. Right.

I think you're talking about things like that. It's more of the individual. I wouldn't say it's any one specific club. I would say there's individuals in clubs that are that type of person, an advocate.

But I wouldn't say any one club in particular. I mean, they're all just so focused on and wanting to maintain.

Okay.

Do we have any other comments we want to make amongst ourselves here?

There's a quick question. Mr. Median, I've been so long since I've just been in this discussion, I'm not sure if I've remembered it correct. Do we have criteria for how we're picking our volunteers? Is there a purpose for this? I don't know.

I don't think we've dealt with anything specific, like a scoring rubric or something like that. We have a test point to this, and I'll try to measure the impact of the volunteer effort or something like that, but I'm a bad idea.

We did talk about that maybe we needed something to give us as an outline or something. Yes.

And maybe that's something we can work on this next year or next year.

I'd be more comfortable going through it because I've got nothing to compare it to.

From here moving forward, just so that we have it in mind, we want to quantify cumulative hours of volunteer time, number of events. All right.

I mean, I think my reaction is more like we come up with an underlying, like, principles of what we're looking at. We kind of talked about it, right? People that are fulcrums, the people who stepped up for organizations or brought organizations. So, I mean, that could be something that we can create in the near term to be.

tax organization. I don't think we should litter the decision process with a bunch of different criteria. Top three or top five.

I like the idea of cumulative hours spent volunteering.

It helps us. Yes. It helps us make money better. Maybe we can do some research off with other . But that's something that we can't set as part of our goals, maybe. OK, do we have anything else we want to discuss on this? Pretty good.

How are we going to recognize ?

This will be in your annual report presentation in September. September this year, not ? Yeah, September this year. OK. And then next year, we kind of get back on the schedule of where everything will happen in April to align with the National Volunteer Month. So we can also do a final recognition at that point as well.

So in September, we bring these individuals and groups to that Board of Supervisors meeting.

We can invite them. Absolutely. Yeah, we'll notify them.

Somehow they're going to know that we did more than just talk about it.

Yes. Yeah, well, maybe that's the next thing in deciding how to notify them.

We've got certificates. Yeah, certificates.

It wouldn't take much time out of our annual report to recognize these individuals at that time.

Yeah, exactly.

That'd be great.

So we can do that, and then like Shannon says, we'll break through for April next year.

Okay, that sounds good. I didn't want to just send a letter saying congratulations. I know.

We're so happy for you. Okay, anything else on this?

All right, I'm going to open it up to public comment. Now taking public comment on item number four, individuals will have three minutes to address the commission. Public comment will be taken first from those participating in the room and then from those participating by Zoom. For those participating by Zoom, please make sure you unmute yourself or called upon. If you're joining the meeting by phone, press star nine to indicate it is our comment. If you're joining by Zoom, press the raise hand button to indicate it is our comment. Please voluntarily state your name for the record. Please comment in the room on this item. Yes, Jenny McCormick, Friends of Alvarado Trail.

And one of the things I was thinking when you guys went back and forth is that perhaps we could have an award for a student volunteer. So maybe that would solve the issue of someone not who volunteers but has probably limited time. Sure.

I think that's a good idea. Or an organization such as Interact Group. Right.

Or a group that volunteers their membership.

Sure. That's a great idea. Thank you. Sure. Any other public comment?

Any other comment in the room? No. There is no comment by Zoom.

So this is an action item.

So do we want to make a motion for our selection?

It can be generic.

Yeah. I'd make a motion that we accept the recommendations of each of the commissioners. Commissioners collectively.

I'll second.

Perfect. Do you want to do roll call?

We don't need to. I think we should. We don't have to be roll call. No.

Let me just say all in favor.

Okay. All in favor.

All in favor.

Pass it.

Okay, on to the second one here. Parks and Division of the Chief Administrative Office recommends the Commission receive and file an update on the application of the Parks and Trails Master Plan fiscal 2025-26 work plan.

So as you know, we recently completed a Parks and Trails Master Plan, and part of that was a work plan or implementation And with the adoption of the Parks and Trails Master Plan, with the adoption also of all of our goals, objectives, and initiatives, if you look at the attachments that we have here, we kind of have broken into two categories so we kind of have the parks division work plan that's attached and that's kind of an ongoing list of goals from the master plan and then we have the initiatives implementation update and so that's kind of like the running list of what we were working on in the 25 26 year and then a status update on all of those items um a lot of this is is mostly meant to be informative to the commission and also give you guys an opportunity on the list of the master plan initiatives, specifically ones that are in either the ongoing or like future categories that we think we should buddy up with some of the stuff we have going this year. We'd be looking to hear that sort of feedback and then just any sort of comments you guys might have regarding the progress we've made on the initiative this year. I'm hesitant to read them all to you, just because I've been doing a lot of reading, and I'm going to give you another presentation that also includes much more reading. If you would like, I could read them to you, or I could address any questions or anything you guys might have.

I think we'll just go forward with any questions we might have.

I'm going to just go through the list of one, two, three, four, and then stop whenever somebody has a question.

Okay, we can go through. Are you talking about just starting at the top? For the implementation? Yeah. Yeah, so we can do that. So initiative 2.4.4. I have a question.

Are the quarterly meetings working out, or are the CSDs attending the Park District? I would say so, yeah.

I think we actually have one coming up in the next couple weeks.

Yeah, next week. We have, yeah, a quarterly. Pretty well attended.

Yeah. I would say... I don't know. It worked out better than I kind of assumed. We've kind of done the rotation where most participating or regularly participating agencies have all hosted. We've gone and had a meeting up in Sly Park with EID. We've been out to the Bailey Barn. So we went out to the Bailey Barn in Georgetown.

I was there.

Obviously, we went down the other road. They hosted a meeting.

Camera Park CSP hosted a meeting.

Very cool. That's good. Yeah, and it's pretty cool. I mean, obviously there's other organizations or forums for people to coordinate in Parks and Recreation, but some of the feedback we've heard from the other groups is it's nice to just get information for people that are in your same neck of the woods, for lack of a better term, are kind of sharing best practices that are directly applicable to people within our region. CPRS is a great forum. You can learn all sorts of great things, but this is something for us to really kind of share best practices with people like What's working for you in Cameron Park? Maybe that'll work for us up in Abbey County.

I think it's really important. Thank you.

Next one is 1.1. Do we have any comments or questions about that? 2.2.5.

Electric bikes.

this is something that's going to cost our radar or ever changing for more regulation.

I don't think we're ever going to come up with a policy that's going to go forward. But I do think, unfortunately, the answer. So the Sheriff's Department will never.

Yeah, honestly, I've been party to at least one meeting and Most of the coordination, ESO and CHP, seems like they have an agreement a lot of the time. CHP does, like, road patrols for EDSO, and they kind of have, I don't know if they have some sort of joint agreement where they assist one another. But I was a party to at least one coordination meeting between CHP and EDSO. And, yeah, I mean, it was apparent that, you know, they're working hand-in-hand with us there. both aware of kind of the hotspots of where the e-bikers are getting crazy and whatnot and kind of strategizing on how they can get around.

That's not necessarily pertaining to the trails. It's mostly on the roads, right, the side streets and things like that.

Yeah, it seemed like most of the hotspots were down in El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park and not necessarily on the El Dorado Trail, but in the neighborhood of the open space, wherever you can get baggy motorcycle.

Starting to see a lot of agencies that offer training programs to keep working with CHP or the local police department. There's a flyer in there for the CHP. I gave a comment on it. In college, a lot of I think we're going to see a peak where the kids start realizing that their friends are getting hurt. And they'll start being a little more careful. But we're not there yet.

Okay, let's see here. 4.1.3, any comments?

It seems like it's going well.

5.2.2, will the rental charges offset maintenance and operating costs? We've talked about that, a cost recovery project. We'll be doing more on that this year.

There were some statistics that you put in your report earlier on the agenda about the revenue coming in and so forth. It'll be interesting to see that in your year pattern. Yeah, for sure.

Okay, so then we have 1.4.5. Questions in regards to that? 2.2.4. Great traffic project currently listed with the Department of Transportation Improvement Program.

That was good. Yeah. Next one's in progress. 3.2.8.

Five-year part of the Trade Capital Improvement Program. CFE. No maintenance. Um. Is this going to?

We have something underway, and I'm just saying. I'm very happy to see it.

Yeah. That one is essentially between when we started drafting goals, objectives, and initiatives, and when the master plan was actually adopted the Board of Supervisors had actually taken action to revise their policy around the appropriation of transient occupancy tax. That's no longer an option.

Pretty much what they decided was that would be at the Board's discretion and not necessarily giving an appropriation prior to them having that opportunity.

Okay, then one quick one. Yeah.

Any comments on that? 4.1.6.

That's what's going on right now. 4.3.5. And we update to the virtual website. That's ongoing.

That'd be fun to see something later on down the road, you know, what you're doing and how that's looking. And I know we can all look at it very much. Jen and all that.

So easy to cover.

1.4.7, vocation trail science. It's just always something that's out there that we need to address. Point 2.6.

I think maybe it might. Wayne, do you have something in particular that you want to talk about? It looks like you've got identified 4.3.4.

I do. I work with the Elroto County Chamber of Commerce and There are other Chamber of Commerce's tour. We do immediately connecting them all because the business community, our Hill. Yeah, doesn't need to just be counted. OK, so any changes in the county chambers going through a transition right now, right? They were all retired. OK, the next one.

Well, actually, let me ask in 434, is this something where we can feel it? I'm hoping so.

Yeah.

Definitely.

Good question. In the 514 major market effort by Business and Partner Innovation, do we still have an economic development staff in the county? I heard that that was our recommendation or whatever it was.

I believe that went away through our... It's kind of integrated with some of the other... Yeah, I think that went away through our budget process last fiscal year. Okay. I'm not aware if that's come back in some fashion, but I know it's not a full, like, built-out division. Because I believe they had, like, a subdivision in the planning department.

Okay. I don't believe that. I know they equipped, I mean, the Welcome Center and do some things like that. Correct. And I heard for years, the last five years, that That kind of developed as a priority for the county. So I'm just curious for the counties to kind of review provisions. It seems like we're slacking a little bit in that area, and we shouldn't be.

Yeah. OK. 5.1.5. Any questions there? 5.1.7. It hasn't been started yet.

That's an interesting one. That kind of... See how we move forward on that one.

Yeah. If you know anyone interested, send them our way. Okay, all right.

It sounds like something you could really get going with the new Redund Park up there at 4-Day.

It was sexy. Okay, last page here. 3.3.4. Progress. Okay. 7.6.

impact fee nexus study on and that is going to be in regards to even its uh preserve this one is kind of like in a holding pattern so this is one that we brought to the board of supervisors with our cost recovery presentation and at the end of that presentation we gave multiple options to give direction to staff for different funding for want us to look into bond measures. Do you want us to look into, you know, a nexus study for park impact, the property tax, like that. And at that time, the board let us know that not right now. Still on the list, just not something they want us to pursue.

That was a year ago. And for, I'm sorry, 1.4.11, Chris, this is the key, the act part, right?

interesting one on that subject really quickly we had our first monitoring effort this monday that's why we're on the trail we're out there with two of the biologists from the agriculture department to go out and help us with our inspections on the river conch trail so that was cool we got like a first new uh partnership that was a cool one because it's something that like um Mutually beneficial right there up in the you are anyways doing bug inspections and also looking for conscious to kind of pairing that with our inspection.

So we need to do.

Make good sense. To see all the secret concessions, which are the type of vendors. I know that's something But That would be an interesting one.

It's not been successful. What is that? There's a lot of things. And we've only really tried it at HLP. Local businesses.

Local businesses helped.

Yeah, there was a competition thing. They didn't like it because people off the river, they could grab a hot dog and be gone rather than getting in the car and driving. Absolutely. Yeah. I remember that.

I remember that I would have a food truck at my job. Seems like a great revenue stream for us too, though. Yeah, and I've met those trucks.

Yeah, I think it was done in a different fashion. It might be able to become successful. I would also say... Yeah.

But it's something new. And it doesn't necessarily have to be just HLPA.

I think almost starting at the place would be better. That's an RV park. That'd be a really great place.

Baseball game.

Yeah, exactly.

Pioneer. We have so much extra parking there. Let's say I have a snack bar that the league is preparing for. Yeah, we don't think that, but we don't have a snack bar.

So when I worked for the city of Folsom, we had a group out of Sacramento where it was a gentleman, and he had a conglomerate of food trucks. Oh, yeah. Hey, be at whatever. Livermore Park on Thursday night. All right, which trucks do you want? He said, whatever, five or ten different trucks. So it's almost like you have this array of different opportunities. And it kind of turns into an event.

You can kind of get people out of the park and have dinner, whatever. From a Chamber of Commerce standpoint, something like that, if I were out of business, I could be introducing people that maybe wouldn't come up there otherwise to the community. not stay, to feed him, except for that one time. One time once a month, three months, whatever. Maybe he was talking to the chambers. They may be open, but they were not available.

Sure. I have a real quick question, and it's kind of a side note. You mentioned the snack bar there at 4 Bay. Did that get repaired? uh before my time i believe maybe four years ago we had a significant renovation their siding it was and the last one is 3.1.1 uh so i'm going for torbay park chili bar a little trail natural trail and dave trail so projects to complete that those and pursuing opportunities

Okay, any comments from the commissioners? This is a just reviewing with our question, but it's not an action item. So do we have any further questions for staff before we move on to public comment?

All right, let's open it up.

Not taking public comment on item number five, individuals will have three minutes to address the commission. Public comment will be taken first from those participating in the room and then from those participating by Zoom. For those participating by Zoom, please make sure you unmute yourself and call the phone. If you're joining the meeting by phone, press star nine to indicate to start a comment. If you're joining by Zoom, press the raise hand button to indicate to start a comment. Please voluntarily state your name for the record. Any comment in the room? Go ahead.

Eileen Crenn. Two things that we're going through There's going to be a big national rafting competition in Coloma. And I'm wondering if the, it should be pretty important that the recreation commission should at least know about it. And then the other thing is downtown, the arts and culture has a very good display on

Very nicely done. I went and saw it. They did a brilliant job. Do you know when the competition is? It was in the newspaper.

I just saw it. I think it's on August 13th through 16th. That's on right?

I haven't gotten it.

2026 U.S. Whitewater Rafting National Championships. Looks like it's based on a chili bar. Is that not it?

No.

I'll have to look into that. Yeah. Thanks.

Both of those are great. But if anybody gets an opportunity to go see the Rubicon exhibit, please do so. It's through the Ford Gallery. Yeah.

It's down there on the right.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. It was well done. They did a real nice job of displaying the Rubicon and the history behind it all.

I think everyone's doing an excellent job. Yeah.

Okay. All right. Last item we've got here is Parks and Division of the Chief Administrative Office recommends that commission the theater presentation on the road trail. And I'm going to turn this over to Zach because he's going to do this and this part of what you were talking about coming from Or is this something different?

Yeah. So it's got some of the DOT stuff sprinkled in there, just because some of the projects have overlapped there. So Jessica, I don't know. Can you pull up the presentation on the board there?

Yeah.

She's going to have to model for a second here.

So at our last meeting, Commissioner Donovan asked me to put together a presentation, just kind of getting the commissioners up to speed, for lack of a better term, on the Eldorado Trail, like a brief history. And I think the intention of what he was asking was to try to figure out where we're at and where we can get plugged in and try to move this thing forward and just kind of have more comprehensive knowledge of the background of the trail so that the commission is more informed on what they might be able to do or assist with when it comes to trail project. So I said, yes, and you know, here we are today and I will be giving you a presentation on the overview of the El Dorado trail. I guess I just want to preface with that. There's a lot of history here, right? And so I didn't do a 40 slide presentation. And this presentation is really intended to be just kind of peeling that back that first layer of the onion, I'm going to hit the highlights. We're going to have the broad brush sort of approach. But hopefully this kind of precipitates further discussion. Maybe there's subsequent items where we can drill down more into particular things if there's something that speaks particular interest or whatever that might be. So I don't present this as a comprehensive history of everything that's ever happened on the Eldorado Trail. This is more so just trying to get that base level of knowledge out there so that you guys have some foundation was just kind of the preamble there. You can go ahead to the next slide if it's all right. So just a little agenda of what we're going to be going over. So the corridor is owned by multiple agencies. So we'll have a slide on land ownership, who owns what, all that sort of thing, how they're administered. We'll include a little bit of different information on the agencies involved, management, description of the different trail classifications. So that's the second bullet on there. We'll have a slide on that. I'll have a couple slides on the timeline of events. It's kind of like I said, it's not going to be completely comprehensive. We're really trying to hit those major landmarks of how we got to where we are. And then we're just going to kind of go from there, look into some of the challenges that we face or have faced, look at some of the current projects. you may be aware it might be some overlap from what DOT presented previously in here. And then we'll spend a little time on like looking for what steps might we be able to take and what are those kind of things that are on the horizon for us with the El Dorado Trail. Another little note I just jotted down here was just along that line of me taking that broad brush approach, I kind of went down the rabbit hole in Legista, right? And it is a deep rabbit hole. I mean, I've never seen And I didn't continue seven times on a board of supervisors agenda until I took on this project, and so I say that to say that. This is something that has a lot of history there's been lots of discussions and to really get into the minutia of exactly what that is, you would probably want to read that yourself right and so. If there's a specific item that you're interested in, you can always reach out to me. You can ask. I can give you a Legistar item number. But I don't know. Read the staff report. I like reading the public comments because it really gives you the feel of what that conversation was in 2002 or whenever it was. So I don't know. It's kind of just the general overview of like, hey, if there's something you're interested in. It's one good thing about everything being a public record that we do. You can spend some time searching Legistar and probably find You can go ahead and advance, Jackson. So land ownership. Eldorado Trail is a 39-mile multi-use trail, right? It includes both paved and natural surface trails and expands from Camino in the east to the county line in Eldoradoville in the west. Majority of the trail lies within the properties owned by the Sacramento-Placerville Transportation Corridor Joint Powers of Authority. that, we're just going to call it the SPTC JPA from here on out. So that JPA is governed by a five-director board. The member agencies is Sacramento Regional Transit, Sacramento, County of El Dorado, the City of Folsom, the City of Rancho Cordova. So those are the five agencies that have management authority over the SPTC JPA. That's who we get to work with when we're doing anything that's in that section. They meet quarterly, typically down in Folsom in the council chambers, not board chambers there. And their purpose, so says their website, is to provide for the ownership and coordination of public uses of the Placerfield branch and to provide for such reciprocal use agreements and multi-jurisdictional use agreements as may be desired by the member agent. So that's kind of the JPA side, right? And then kind of to... Dig into that relationship a little bit more. How does that affect our administration? So simply what happens is the GPA is the owner of the property, but they grant El Dorado County easement over those portions of the trail within the county's jurisdiction. So each member agency is granted an easement of the properties within their agencies, Sacramento County, their section, all that sort of thing. Maybe not Rancho Cordova because it's probably already in Sac RT because it's the RT corridor in there. But generally speaking, that's the approach of how these properties are managed. And that gives Eldorado County the ability, or so the responsibility of management and maintenance over that section of the trail. So the JPA owns the largest portion of the Eldorado Trail, 32 and a half miles, and goes from the county line in Eldorado Hills to Apex, also known to people like me as Ray Lawyer Drive. So like the parking right here, at Ray Lawyer is essentially the apex. So that's a term that's used commonly. And for those of you that don't know, the apex is essentially right here by the go. So essentially, that's kind of what the JPA looks like in El Dorado Hills. If you look west, so from the county line going west, the JPA continues to the city of Sacramento ending near 65th Street. And a lot of those lower sections are utilized for wet rail. So they're not necessarily a trail corridor, but still used for transportation. Um, so from the apex, so kind of bringing it back up the hill that starts the city of Placerville section. So they have 4.3 miles and they manage from the apex here, right across the street to Jakeway, where we have another parking ride kind of right before you started going up the hill to Camino and Pollock pine. Uh, I would also say shortly before you get to that, uh, highway 50 over crossing. So the city of Placerville is responsible for the management of their own section at 4.3 miles and it is not within the JPA. So the JPA section stops here. From Jakeway, the county picks back up and we're responsible for the remaining 2.2 miles to its current terminus in Camino. So kind of goes JPA, city of Placerville, county. County is still responsible for maintaining the JPA section, but we do have coordination with that other agency, whereas that upper section is really just for us to own and maintain. A couple other facts. So we acquired that upper section from the Michigan California Lumber Company back in 1990. So that was one of the county's acquisitions. Like I said before, Placerville maintains around section of the trail. They do some coordination with the county, but often don't need support and that sort of thing. And then El Dorado County maintains the rest of the trail, like the JPA section, with assistance from staff, volunteers, and the SBTCG. So that's kind of land ownership and the functions of how each one of those agencies administers services on the trail. Go to the next slide. Trail classification. So in the last slide, I said we have natural trail, we have class one trail. So the El Dorado Trail is comprised of two trail types. There's a paved class one portion, and then there's an unpaved natural trail portion. Just some definitions and some information here. So Class One Trail is defined as a paved, completely separated facility. It doesn't need to be delineated. It could be a grade break. Typically, there's some sort of like landscape meeting between a roadway and Class One Trail with some sort of physical separation between a roadway and Class One Trail. And it's primarily designated to bicycle and pedestrian travel. It's required to have a minimum of eight feet Um, but sometimes exceed that sometimes based on traffic, you can have a 10 foot wide classroom trail. It could be 12 feet wide, but the minimum is eight feet. And they also require a shoulder and the shoulder is ideally two or three feet wide. And, um, sometimes we need a shoulder for it. So a lot of. It's part of the facility, right? So like when you're using class one trail, if you go down to like Folsom and even some sort you'll see stenciling, walk left, bike right, right? Like, what's that all about? What if I'm going the other way and the stencil doesn't look right? It's like, well, if you're walking, raise your left hand, walk left, right? It doesn't really matter which way it's stenciled. That's the general idea. And the thought behind that is if I'm walking on the left and Don's biking on the right, as he's riding his bike towards me, I can see him and I can make eye contact with Don and be like, yep, I see you coming. And I can step off to the side onto the shoulder and Don could ride past me And we see each other. Right. But if he's riding behind me. I don't know where Don is. And so I'm like, I can't step on the shoulder. I don't know where it's at. So it's part of how the trail is meant to be used the shoulder is important about traffic flows on class. Roughly 12 and a half miles of the Eldorado Trail is a page class one starts up at Halkin and Camino and ends at the rail park in the town of Eldorado. The Classman Trail goes beyond providing recreational amenities to the community. They also contribute to the county and region's active transportation network. Active transportation really just means human-powered travel. So you can ride a scooter or bike or walk, but that's what we're talking about, the active transportation. And so what it does is it allows residents to use the trail as an alternative means of transportation, rather than having to get in the car and drive to wherever it is they're going, whether you're going to the gym or going to the store. Maybe they want to use a trail. Maybe they're, you know, close to a trailhead and they can hop on their bike and ride it to wherever destination is they're going. Class 1 trails are often more competitive in grant applications as they have a broader benefit, both recreation and transportation. You can also be eligible for both types of grants in transportation and recreation. So that's Class 1 trails.

I have a picture there on the back side. We can give that to you, folks.

So natural trail, you have a little bit more variability, especially with the existing condition of the natural trail that we have right now. In some locations, the existing trail is somewhat irregular, about two feet wide, as the occasional tree root or rock protruding from the trail surface. In other locations where the alignment coincides with the old railroad maintenance road, the trail is relatively flat, 10 feet wide, pretty open and usable. In other locations, it appears to be somewhat non-existent. And often hikers and bikers, rather than trying to find the trail trail, instead walk either immediately adjacent to the railroad or on the railroad track. So kind of have this, I guess, spectrum or range of improvement for that natural trail. Some areas it's wide, some areas it's narrow. A lot of it's based on topography. So the 2014 Natural Trail Implementation Plan calls for a native surface 10 foot wide trail tread with a 2% cross slope. It also recommends a minimum vertical clearance of 12 feet. This can be very hard to achieve in El Dorado County based on our topography and physical restrictions in the areas that we're trying to implement this project. And achieving 10 feet is not always feasible, right? So that's like our goal. We're trying to get to 10 feet, but there are physical restraints that just prevent us from being able to get to that point. So we work towards that as our goal, but with the understanding that there are some areas that just, it's not feasible. There is 26 and a half miles of natural trail, some additional mileage of trail that parallels the paved section in some areas. So like if you're at the rail park, there are sections that have both paved and natural trail. If you go west of the rail park, it's all natural trail. And then like up in the Camino section, it's all class one until you get past Halpin and then it's just that last So it's kind of a little bit of a mix. Definitely from the rail park down, all natural trail. Coming up from the rail park, you will have a little bit of that natural trail paralleling the class one.

Those are the trail classifications. Go ahead.

All right. I'm going to take a breath before we get into this because I'm going to be doing a lot of talking on these next two slides. I can just read there.

Yeah.

I have some information up there. And I'm going to try to not read the information that's on the slide, because that's not how you're supposed to get information. I guess I'm looking at my notes here. And I'm just trying to put it out there again. This is not intended to be a comprehensive timeline. This is just really those highlights of what it was, like the general feel of how things occurred over time to, again, give you guys an idea of how we got to where we're at. Same deal. If there's an item that you're more or less interested in, again, all of this information is in Legistar. You could go back, look up the agenda item. It'll have all the public comments. It'll have attachments, all of those sorts of things. So there's a specific one you're interested in. You can either look it up on Legistar. You could send me an email after the meeting and say, hey, what happened in 1996? Can you send me the agenda item number? And I can send it to you and we can do it that way. So I'll go ahead and start working through these next two slides and keep this going. So As far as my research is concerned, it looked like this really started getting going in like 1990, early 1990s. That's when we bought that piece from Michigan Cal Lumber Co. up in Camino. And in 1991 is also when the SBTC JPA was formed. So most of the documentation on the trail begins in the early 1990s. Like I said, the county acquired property for the upper portion of the trail, and that's from Jigway to Camino from Michigan California Lumber Company. And the SBTC JPA was formed shortly after, in 1991. In 1992, the first sections of the trail were built within the city of Placerville. And I actually reached out to some of our partners, like Jerry Barton at the Transportation Commission. He's been involved with this project for a very long time and provided me with quite a bit of background information, especially on some of those earlier happenings and whatnot. It was kind of interesting to see that the city of Placerville was really kind of at the front of this, it seemed like. A lot of those first projects were kind of happening. through doing research for this project. I was kind of surprised. I didn't know that's how this seemed to be. So I kind of bracketed into like timeframes. So the next kind of chunk of time I'm going to be speaking about is like 1996 to like the 2000s. So in 1996, the SPTC-JPA purchased the Placero branch of the Southern Pacific Railroad. It extends 51 miles from Sacramento to Placerville. and essentially what they did when they bought it was they designated that lower section, so from 65th Street in Sacramento to the Thorpe District in Folsom would be light rail use, and the rest of the corridor was rail banked under the Rails to Trails Act. For those of you that are not aware, the Rails to Trails Act is an act of Congress that preserves unused rail corridors and specifies that the primary use of the rail bank corridor is for trail development until such a time as full-fledged freight rail is reactivated. So it's kind of putting a placeholder on the rails for if and when they may come back in a greater capacity. But in the interim, they would be used for an alternative use, in this case, trail. So just a little bit more information on the procurement there. El Dorado County share, the purchase price was $2.64 million. So in total, county paid $2.64 million. Of that $2.64, $2.24 million was provided by transportation grant funding intended to provide non-motorized transportation facilities and air quality benefits. So we were able to leverage an active transportation funding source to be able to procure our portion or to contribute our portion to procure this property. So pretty much coming from the late 90s into the 2000s, several more segments of trails were completed. including additional segments in the city of Placerville, but then a very significant achievement, which was the Highway 50 overcrossing. So getting into the 2011-2010 timeframe there. In 2011, the Board of Supervisors had several meetings. This was the one I was alluding to with getting the same agenda item. We returned back six or seven times. There was a lot of discussion around segmentation of the JPA corridor and the use of the different segments of the corridor, specifically within El Dorado County. Ultimately, these discussions resulted in a segmentation plan identifying what uses would be supported in what sections of the corridor. The initial segmentation plan broke the El Dorado County portion of the trail into three segments. Segment one was to be trails only. This was a 17 and a half mile segment from Sacramento County line. to where the tracks cross Motherlode Drive and Shingle Springs. So that's like by the speed, you're wise gals if you're a coffee drinker. So that was kind of that first segment. Segment two was to be rails and trails at the six-mile section from where section one left off on Motherlode Drive, Shingle Springs to Missouri Flat Road. Segment three was trails only, and this was Missouri Flat East. So from Missouri Flat, as far as we go east, that was meant to also be trails only. If you're interested in this item, this is board item 10-1169. We will see that come back several times and let you start. I want to say this item was continued several times, ultimately being heard again in May of 2011. And at that meeting, it resulted in the formation of an SPTC oversight committee and the board provided direction to staff to outline the process to remove the rails in the segment one and look into the construction of a trail in that lower section. Fast forward to 2012. In January, the Board of Supervisors considered a license agreement with the Placerville Sacramento Valley Railroad, another acronym, PSVRR, Placerville Sacramento Valley Railroad, for excursion rail use. The Board of Supervisors countered their license request THE LICENSE AGREEMENT REQUEST SO THAT PSBAR COULD OPERATE BETWEEN CHINGLE SPRINGS AND MISSOURI FLAT. THESE DISCUSSIONS CONTINUED AROUND THE LICENSE AGREEMENT FOR MOST OF 2012 AS WELL AS CONVERSATIONS AROUND DISSOLUTION OF SBTCAPA. THAT WAS ON THE SEPTEMBER 24TH, 2012 MEETING AGENDA ITEM NUMBER 12-1184. So kind of bringing it a little bit more in the future here, we're up to 2014. The Board of Supervisors approves a PSVR rail access into the county to do a pancake fundraiser breakfast on the last Sunday of each month, August through December of 2014 within that first segment. So this is giving them the ability to do small amounts of excursion rail on that lower section, and it's really kind of in that Latrobe area. just so you can go ahead to the next slide. So now we're picking up in 2015. In 2015, staff received direction from the Board of Supervisors to conduct an analysis of all options of the El Dorado Trail for the Missouri Flat Road to El Dorado Road corridor and return to the Board with those options. In addition to that, the El Dorado County Transportation Commission completed their alternatives analysis of the corridor in 2015, and it analyzed the different investment scenarios. It also quantified the costs of those scenarios, it extrapolated annual economic benefits, and then gave an idea of what your annual visitation would be under each one of those scenarios. Their analysis showed that building a Class 1 trail off the rail bed would cost almost three times as much as building a trail Building off the rail bed would cost three times as much as building on the rail bed. They also projected estimated demand for both rail and trail uses and found that a paved trail would draw an estimated 812,000 annual visitors, while the excursion rail would draw just 50,000 annual visitors. In 2016, the Board of Supervisors revised the segmentation plan to legislate item number 16-0399, Pretty much to reflect that segment one, the segment that was trails only would be revised and reduced the trails only section to 11 miles and would allow excursion rail use to operate within that first seven mile section from the county line to Latrobe, right? So it's kind of turning section one into two subsections. So you have that first seven mile section, which is joint use rail and trail. And then the remaining section of, what was previously section one is still trails only. So just to kind of give you an idea of what those four revised segments are from 2016. Segment one is from the county line to Latrobe, seven miles multi-use including excursion rail. Segment two is from Latrobe to Motherlode Drive, that's an 11 mile section and it's trails only. Segment three, Motherlode Drive to Missouri Flat Road, it's an eight mile section and that's multi-use including excursion rail. And then segment four is the Missouri Flat Road East, and that's all class one bike path. Later in 2016, Parks Division staff received approval to pursue grant funding for trail improvements from Missouri Flat Road to the town of El Dorado. So getting that class one section improved there was something that worked on it. Getting close to current time here. Fast forwarding a little bit more, in 2022, DOT applies for Prop 68 funds for the El Dorado Trail-Missouri Flat overcrossing. They also have subsequent grant applications that were submitted for the Halkin to Ponderado Road project, as well as the Shingle Springs project. Towards the end of 2022, DOT was awarded grant funding for both the Shingle Springs Class I improvements as well as the Missouri Flat overcross. So 2022 to 2025 are current. Design and construction efforts were ongoing for several projects, Schengel Springs, helping the Pod Grotto, and Missouri Flat Overcrossing, with the first of these projects being completed in May of 2025 with the opening of the Missouri Flat Overcrossing.

That was kind of the rundown on the short history of time as it relates to the El Dorado Trail.

Do you want to have a Gatorade break or something? Next slide. Challenges. So, I mean, obviously any project of this magnitude is going to have challenges and there are several. The five I have outlined on the screen are the main issues that I've seen in my last two plus years as the parks manager for the county. Not to say that there isn't other challenges, but these are the ones that keep coming up and that are frequently discussed and seem like would take some work to get resolved right there's not a real easy quick answer for some of these so for pinch points as you all are aware there's a lot of topography in el dorado county and this poses one of the biggest challenges for trail construction the sbtc gpa corridor is a defined space not getting any bigger or smaller right we're working within what we have and the rails are a fixed facility in those joint use areas With the rails remaining in place in segment three, we need to find ways to accommodate both rails and trail uses in areas that only really seem to be easily suitable for one of the uses. The tunnel cut, which is in the picture here, near Red Hawk is probably the most commonly discussed pitch point. but several others exist in areas where the rails are narrow bench cuts. And so it's pretty much just like a cut into the side of the hill where they pretty much have, you know, the rail bed and an approximate two to one cut slope immediately outside of that track safety zone, kind of going up a hill and then down the slope. So you don't really have that additional lateral space to get an ideally 10 foot wide walking path on, right? That bench just isn't there. And so these areas will need to be evaluated for the feasibility of joint use, as well as be evaluated for possible delivery methods to accommodate all uses in those areas. We've got to figure out a way to get both of those to fit in the 10 pounds of stuff in the five pound bag, that sort of thing. That was kind of pinch points and the highlights there. So storm damage, it's another one that haunts us. The corridor is constantly evolving. Every winter, conditions change. Drainages clog, watercourses move, and erosive actions take place. This is most apparent in the lower section of the trail between Latrobe and the county line, where several large washouts have impacted both the rail and trail alignment, preventing excursion rail use and undermining natural trail construction efforts. That's another one that we grapple with on a regular basis. Maintenance and repairs. Maintenance and repairs are always an issue within the corridor. We have been successful as a county in getting awarded grants for improvements, but this does not help address the issues of ongoing maintenance and repairs, as well as saving for capital replacements. Even in areas where we have experienced support from FEMA in the past to address some of the more severe washouts, we are no longer seeing that support as they have funded similar repairs in the past and seem reluctant to fund the same project over again. uh, multi-use coordination. So multi-use coordination is always a balancing act. Uh, in my time at the county, I've seen the passion, um, of the corridor and all user groups, right? I've seen it firsthand. Um, from trail enthusiasts to those that revel in the living history program of the excursion rail, to equestrians looking to traverse the corridor on horseback. All users have a vested interest in what becomes of the SBTC and want to play an active role in the planning and development efforts of the facility, right? And I feel like that's kind of what the segmentation plan was trying to get at, right? How do we satiate all of these desires of all of these users of this one facility? And so that's, you know, that hasn't gone away. You still have to balance all of those forces and do your best to make sure that you're addressing all of the public's desires, what they would like to see in that. So funding and improvement. I feel like I say this a lot. Funding is always an issue. In El Dorado County, we cannot charge park impact fees, nor do we have any other financing vehicle to provide for these improvements. Historically, we have relied heavily on grant funding for new projects and expansions of facilities within the corridor. But many agencies that at one time were fiscally sound are calling on harder financial times resulting in more applications for our ever-dwindling bucket of grant funds to be dispersed. This then makes us beg the question, if we are looking to make improvements to the corridor, how will we go about funding them now for construction and into the future permanently? Those are our challenges. Jesse, you can go to the next slide. Current projects. So the bottom two you guys probably saw in the presentation from DOT earlier this year. I'll start at the top and I'll give a refresher at the bottom two there. So the natural trail. So the natural trail work is led by the Parks Department. It's an ongoing project. It's technically permitted as two projects. There's an upper section that the county is the permit holder. And then there's a lower section where the SPTC GPA is the permit holder. Currently, we're focusing on that lower section. The SPTC JPA is invested in those permits. They're paying for inspections. They're paying for permit renewals. And we want to make sure that we're making the best use of that money. So if we're doing these permits and we're paying for inspections, I would like to see that wrapped up as quickly as we can so that we can close those permits out and get more into a normal maintenance operation rather than a maintenance and construction operation. Some progress has been made with volunteers and staff efforts. They're ongoing. And really our work is to complete BMP installation on that section of the natural trail. BMPs are known as best management practices. We use that term a lot. And a lot of what we do on the natural trail is similar to what we do on the Rubicon. And it's all around drainage and erosion, right? A lot of these structures are trying to keep people using the facility out of waterways, trying to prevent erosion and make sure that drainages aren't impacting the trail or the road. So it's very similar to some of the other work that we do in other areas. How can the Ponderato? So this project was one of the projects that received CMAC funding for right-of-way and engineering. Currently, DOT has completed environmental and they're in the process of trying to secure construction funding for the project. This is one of the projects that DOT takes the lead on as it is a class one facility and part of an active transportation network. But they do coordinate with County Parks as well as the Transportation Commission, probably more so the Transportation Commission than County Parks, just because they also have a vested interest in active transportation. They're the holder of our active transportation plan, so there's a lot of Coordination between DOT, the Transportation Commission, and the Nelson County Parks. Shingle Springs Drive to South Shingle. So as depicted on the timeline, CNET funds were awarded in 2022 for the design and acquisition of the right of way for this project. Because of funding limitations, this project will more than likely be phased, with phase one being from Shingle Springs Drive to Motherlode Drive. So that's kind of where the gas station is there. kind of coming down by California Montessori Project, or CMP, and then coming up to Motherlode Drive, with phase two of their project being from Motherlode Drive down to South Shingle. I believe they have a community center down there, right? So you're kind of crossing over Motherlode Drive, coming out of the Shingle Springs Depot, crossing over, and then going down the corridor with the terminus being down there off of South Shingle. Currently, DOT is wrapping up the environmental for that project, and provide additional updates to the Parks Commission as the project goes forward. Those are our current projects. Go ahead, Jessica, next slide. That's moving forward. So moving forward, discussions will be had around a planning process for the SPTC. Recently, a questionnaire was routed to all the partner agencies soliciting feedback on what we felt would be a worthwhile use of the JPH funds that have been earmarked for a planning effort. Those questionnaires will be reviewed at the next SPTC JPA board meeting, which is scheduled for August 3rd at Folsom City Hall in the Sydney Council Chamber. So if you are interested in a planning process for the SPTC JPA or you would like to have your voice heard, where that discussion will be happening is at the next JPA meeting on August 3rd down in the city of Folsom. There's also been a lot of interest and inquiries around a 30-acre trailhead in the El Dorado Hills Latrobe area. Park staff, in addition to planning, some of our county supervisors are starting to figure out how to start this discussion around the possibility of supporting this new amenity and what those steps forward could potentially look like, right? Trying to fill out, wheel out, what's the vision here? What is our ability to make this come to fruition? And then how do we go about doing that? Those discussions are forthcoming. And I'll close with something that I said previously, that everything comes back to money. The SBTEC has potential for all of its proposed uses and user groups. How we fund the initial improvements and maintenance for the improvements over time will be probably our biggest challenge. It's something that we'll get to work on for the foreseeable future. You can go to the last slide there, Jess. That's it. Questions and discussion? Donna, you can have this one back. I'm going to drink some water.

That was really very informative. I could follow that timeline for a bit. I think it's beneficial for all of us to hear that timeline. There's quite a bit of history for that whole corridor. And there's been a lot of ups and downs and downs and developing it and there are some areas, as you mentioned in the pinch points, and that there's not much we can do. So how do we best promote that? As many users as we possibly can. It's pretty limited. But very well done. And that had to have been a lot of research going into it, but it's just .

So any other questions from the commissioners here?

Sure. And the main issue. Do you have funding for a chip of steel or overlays on those trails? Because they're like any road. Eventually they start falling apart.

Yeah, not directly. I will say that like if they are doing an adjacent project, like for example, if they were going to go and pave Halkin up in Camino and we have our trail directly adjacent to Halkin. Typically, they reach out and say, hey, Zach, you know, you can save on localization costs. We already have this project there. If you want to add on to it, you know, we're already in the neighborhood sort of thing, but not necessarily dedicated to that.

We should have some other funding source to make it happen.

Yeah.

Good for them. I've heard that there is materials you could put on the railroad tracks that create a trail without diminishing the ability for your railways getting trail use as well. And then last, I want to point out, Steve Perry is with us today. Steve lives in Heritage Village in Elroda Hills near the 30-acre park we've been talking about for several years. And he's very interested in introducing the status acquisition for the county. It's complicated. That 30-acre park is a result of a lawsuit So let's end the developer very generously provided for the acres of wetland. They shouldn't have those on in the first place. But still, it's got a huge potential for trailhead. And the residents that live near that area, age 55 restricted housing, are very interested in the potential for access to the trail. And with the e-bikes and so forth, Using that trail on a regular basis is all I want. Steve, I don't mean to speak it on your behalf, but I suspect that's the reason you're at this meeting.

So it would be a 30-acre park, basically?

It would be a 30-acre site. I hesitate to call it a park because you won't see sports fields and those kinds of things. No, no.

Natural area.

Natural area with a parking lot maybe and maybe a shaded area.

If you don't have to do anything, you might have to sit under a tree.

the whole point of it is that if you're going to have a trailhead trailheads that are cars to stop take their bikes off or whatever equipment they're going to use if they're going to run that's fine too but that's where you park the cars and if you got 60 cars you're going to start sucking up 30 acres pretty fast so how much use is it going to get we don't know but i know one thing we have that property now the county's had it

We had the CSD prior to that. And somehow we gave it away back to the county because of a lawsuit or whatever. I'm not sure. But it's just sitting there ready to be something to be done with it. But it is wetlands.

So it's got to be filled, which means you've got to get the Army 4x chairs from whomever else out there to tell you you can do what you want to do. But anyway, so I'm here just to listen to a quick clarification.

The property was owned by EKT at the time of the coup. you know, in our ownership, the county would accept the settlement agreement that says, let's say maintenance is in place, the county should acquire the property. That's my next research project. It's picking up a little bit. Sorry for my phone.

The other end of the trail, I hear rumblings that there's people in Camino that are very interested in developing a trailhead up there, and they're working with the community foundation, El Dorado Community Foundation.

John, any comments on the presentation? Thank you for the presentation. It definitely was helpful for me as one of the probably newest residents of the Yeah, because I've been asked a lot to do with service. So the only problem with that is you have to remove the tracks to install.

So essentially move them back.

Yeah. So it's very expensive. might be an option. But I'd be very curious to see, you know, as the discussion continues, how many people would actually utilize the path. And I think the only way you probably figure that out is by doing traffic counts on either end of the, where the improved area stops in Alberta County. and where the included areas and stops in the lower section outside of El Dorado County. Because I've heard before that, you know, this would be a worthwhile endeavor. And, oh, you know, there'd be a lot of merchants that would be very happy in El Dorado County if this happened. But I am skeptical because of the fact that most people that are biking are not. necessarily staying for very long. They're passing through, or they have their spot that they're going to turn around and they're going to go back. I just don't know how you're going to quantify that in order to make it sound exciting when you go to see the body of a person suffering. Just speculation, but I wonder if we're out there.

And I'm very curious to hear where this goes.

You stated something that came out of, I think it was the 2015 conversation, about projected tourism usage of train and trail versus paved trail only.

So that information was in the alternative analysis from SVGCJDA. You know, I could send it out to the police commission. They might have some information that might, you know, kind of around what you're talking about, John, but it might be worth a raise at some point.

It was $50,000 additional. I didn't see that.

I didn't touch it all. Paid path would draw an estimated $812,000 annual visitors while excursion row would draw $15,000.

Based on their study. Yeah, I mean, I guess I just want to, like, share and I think just stream of consciousness, like, And this is a tremendously helpful thing that you put together. I think it took a lot of work and I appreciate you doing it. I don't know. So I expected you would have to put in this much effort. I think this is over you, but I think it was extremely uplifting for me because, you know, I've been on the commission for a year now. I've been a resident for almost 10 years. And knowing this trail, it's like, this feels like the greatest untapped asset that we have in town. um, to, to create change. And I understand it's extremely, um, complex as to why it is in the situation that it's in, but I just, I'm curious, you know, you know, what the role we can play as commissioners in trying to, you know, move the conversation forward or just discover there is no synthesis that can never be found.

Um, if that's the case, great. We tried and we, we found that, um, maybe we're already there. I don't know.

Imagine the possibilities and like just that statistic, you know, whether it's still relevant or not, that would be a fundamental change for the county. So, you know, I understand, you know, that there are competing stakeholders and it's hard to to navigate all of that. But I guess just I almost feel like we are a neutral. together in binding synthesis, I'd love to do it.

Yes.

Now seeking public comment on item number six, individuals will have three minutes to address the commission. Public comment will be taken first from those participating in the room and then those participating by Zoom. For those participating by Zoom, make sure you unmute yourself and call the phone. If you're joining the meeting by phone, press star nine to indicate or start a comment. If you're joining by Zoom, press the raise hand button to indicate or start a comment. Please voluntarily state your name for the record. Comments?

Don Rose, I've coordinated volunteer work on the natural trail for about 15 years and also advocated for the paved trail. A couple of comments on rail banking. Rail banking preserves the corridor, but not the rails. And if that section of the corridor, or at least the El Dorado County section of the corridor, had not been rail banked, the rails would have been pulled up and the property ownership would have reverted to the neighboring property owners. But if the owner of a rail bank corridor chooses not to build trails, then it goes back to an abandonment and it reverts to the property owner. So just a couple aspects of the rail banking that are important. Zach mentioned the $12 million per year in economic benefits and the $800,000 per year visits for the paved trail if it was completed. Those are 2015 figures that would only increase partly due to inflation, but also to increasing popularity of biking that happened during COVID and the huge popularity now of e-bikes. Everybody's buying an e-bike, and so there's just a lot more people out riding bike trails. And then the other thing is the potential to run shuttle buses from Folsom up to upper parts of the trail carrying people and bikes. That would increase tourism potentially without increasing automobile traffic. It works well in other locations. And I brought people up to, I live in Carmichael, but I brought groups up to the county to ride the trail. And we always stop for lunch somewhere, Placerville or Shingle Springs. And so there is some real potential economic benefit. The other aspect, potential aspect is connectivity. If the paved trail is completed, cleared out of the county line, or White Rock Road, hopefully in Sacramento County. We connect with Folsom Area Trails. We connect the American River Bike Trail, which connects to the Sacramento River Trail. So we'd have an 80-mile paved bike corridor from Camino down to Freeport, actually. And then there's a plan in the works to build a trail network from Sacramento all the way to San Francisco. So we connect to that and then going east, potential to connect the Pony Expressway Trail, which goes practically all the way to Tahoe, although there's some rough terrain out there that might never be paved, but still we have a cross-trail network that should be a big accomplishment. When Rails to Trails started building a cross-country trail, they ran it through Washington State because they've got a cross-state trail up there. We don't. But there's a real need for planning because You know, the corridor is constrained by width and by topography. There's two rail groups. They've both got pretty ambitious plans for what they want to do, and then there's the paved trail and dirt trail. So how do you fit all this stuff into a constrained space? We need a planning process. We've addressed about 20 creek crossings so far on the natural trail. We've got 70 more to go, plus we've got, you know, a couple of miles of trail to build to get it off the railroad tracks. But it's hard to go out and, well, We really hesitate to go out and recruit volunteers to do all this work when natural trail might get paved over. And that's what happened when they built the first two miles of natural trail off the track from Diamond Springs down to El Dorado. So we need a plan that tells us which side of the track the paved trail is going to go on. I guess we're done. And then there's the bridges.

Maybe you can forward those comments to staff and they can forward those to the rest of us.

any other comments. Yeah, go for it.

Yes, my name is Steve area of the community services district of Colorado Hills. I'm not here representing them. I'm representing just myself. I want you to know that the mountain bike community is huge over our hills. This is not something that's just a little tiny area of thought. My son is the progenitor of the group called cycling development. They coach 250 mountain bike kids with 50 coaches working under the nonprofit. A guy by the name of Clint Clausen, he runs the Clipped In for Life for kids eighth grade and below. My point is that there is a huge need for this stuff, and the need is so great that we actually, we being the mountain bike people, go over to Placer County because they have the state park there along the line, the side of Placer. Paulson Lake and they race weekends with 700 kids. They're racing and filling up motel rooms and doing all that. We don't have a place to actually be interesting enough to get these kids over here and have them practice and so forth. And this gentleman's correct. When these kids are through practicing, they're hungry. And they like to get into some place and eat. And so the point is it's an economic builder. And you've got a lot of people, and I'm giving you the names, and you've got them on record now. The name of my son is Mark Ferry. He's a national champion mountain biker. Yes, I probably am. But he's just done a great job with these kids, and he's one of those guys that, you know, he kind of walks around and the kids follow him. It's just the way it works. So in any case, this stuff's really needed, so I come down here actually to represent him more than anybody else. He's doing a heck of a job at it.

Thank you.

And then any other comments? I'm going to give... This is for Donna. And I just want to say that The El Dorado County Strategic Plan is safe, healthy, and vibrant communities respecting our natural resources and historical heritage. And well, I've been involved in this forever. And there are other people in the community that have been involved in this forever. And I kind of follow what That said, about milestones, in 1983 was when the Rails to Trails Act went into existence. And first we bought the section in Camino from CR Pacific, the lumber mill. And then Max Metzner. worked on the trail from to Camino. And then the Mosquito to the Sierra Pacific helped us acquire that, too. And then the bridge over Weber Creek. And then the trail through town and lower Maine to and the bridge over Weber Creek is when Trails now became friends of El Dorado Trail. And then Missouri Flat to Oriental Page and the bridge over Missouri Flat, which we just had. And I am a big advocate for Dirt Trail because it's cheap, relatively. But as Don says, It's disheartening when we get it all done and then it's paved over. So I have to say.

Thank you for sharing. Any other comments in the room?

I do, sure. Okay, so this is great. A planning process. We're all behind it. One of the things that Dawn and I worked discussing and that we're going to discuss in our meeting coming up for the Friends of El Dorado Trail is that we attended an online thing for having our trails designated as a national recreation trail, which is great. The only issue is that you can't have the sections that cross where you have to go through like the section through town Can't be part of the national trail because it's not on a separate. It's not separated. Right, yes. So that in order to do that, we would have to do three separate sections of the trail because of the fact that it is on the road between Camino and the end of the main street portion and then through town. So anyway, we're looking into that. We're investigating that, which I think will help with hopefully maybe getting us some money, monies, or at least making us more visible. I think we're all in favor of aggressively looking at how we use that 38 parcel in El Dorado Village since that is where people are and hopefully there would be some money that could be found somewhere, hopefully. I don't know if the economic development group, the seed group, is still having meetings. Do you know where they are?

I know they had a meeting maybe right now. Is it right now? Yeah, I want to say I listened to their meeting maybe last month or something. They're still having meetings.

But I think you know, to, even though they have no money, at least they could validate that having trails helps bring money to the county. Having visitors that use trails brings money to the county. And just as a yay, thanks to Ted Larson, who did our video of the trail, It was submitted to Rails to Trails magazine, and I think they're going to be true. It's going to be true. So we're very excited. That's awesome.

Yeah.

Thank you for your comment, and there's no comments on Zoom.

Okay. Well, thank you very much for that. That was very, very interesting. Good job. You're kind of a stepping stone for us in moving forward in our approach to radio and radio. That was the extent of that. Okay, we're um, mission member comments and future event item. Can you write?

Uh, actually, the problem I had back here. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, um, that's fair. Days of reading all the visitors that don't go out of county fair. At least the weather was nice. But that was a good experience. Thank you guys for putting all that together. We got to be apart with state parks and all that. I don't have anything else. I think we talked about future agenda items.

We'll get there. Sure.

I also was at the fair. I think we were alternating days. Yes, we were.

It was a good time.

I had a great time speaking with people and the questions were really good questions. It's amazing how the kids really inquisitive about the trail. That was so much fun. Thanks for assisting us in getting an update

I'm just going back to our previous meeting.

We spoke about our work plan, which was originally flat and supporting the possibility of a county park.

I'm still working on arranging to meet with us.

That would be great. I've got the

in between vacations.

That's why. It would be nice to hear from them to see what their ideas are and what their thought process is. And as Zach says, there is no money, but what could we do to help them get some kind of a community park up there, especially after the help of prayer and that sort of thing.

I don't want to give away too much because I don't want to speak for them, but they do have an They just secured funding for a community center after getting gifted some land by a property owner up there. So that might be something, but more to come. And then I just want to express why I'm happy just to see that the dining space facility is at the final draft as far as design. You know, just wondering if we can have, you know, a look at what's being proposed there in some time in the future meeting. Are you talking about the landing?

Yeah.

He's talking about the landing.

Right.

Just for information.

Sure. It might be helpful to have John come over and do a presentation. I'm sure he'd love to talk to you about that.

That's not a bad idea.

Yeah. Yeah. No, he would do that. Perfect. So, yeah, that's a good idea, too.

Sorry. I'm just feeling a bit reflective. So, the last month, I've been able to go back out and do a family camping trip in Gurley Creek, which is up in my house, right by the beginning of the route-gone trail. Yeah. And I've been able to spend a few river days out on the South Fork. um and so like we are just lucky in the county to have um so much uh great stuff and you know that we're connected to is this commission so i'm appreciative for that but then you know getting into this like talking about the history of um the el dorado trail um and the the huge efforts that volunteers have had and community members have led um decision makers to steps taken um forward to make that happen and then even you know our volunteer recognition thing it's just This county is an amazing place because of tons and tons and tons of effort that I mean, I could never think of, but for these small snapshots of conversations that we have some just super, super appreciate for that comment and announcement that is that

I'd like to thank Jenny for also volunteering at our county fair booth. We really appreciate her time and being with us at our booth to spread education and awareness of parks and trails.

It was fun. It was actually more fun than I thought it would be. Very good. It's a great people-watching thing. It's definitely a great people-watching event up there.

Oh, and just one last thing. We are making progress on our post-federal selection process for the Land and Water Conservation Grant for Corvée. We are entering into informal consultation with the US Fish and Wildlife. There are two federally protected species on the site. So we're entering into that informal consultation. But we have our mitigation measures. And so we think things will be OK there. May I ask what species are we Oh, well, we have a red-legged frog and we have a yellow-legged frog. We got two frogs up there. Ideally, they're not, but there's like habitat potential.

Yeah, okay. Oh, yeah. Red-legged frog.

Yeah, so we're moving along with that.

Anything else, Jen?

You got anything, Jess? For me, just, yeah, appreciation for you all. I mean, you guys have... stepped up a lot with helping us this year from adopted trail stuff to May's bike month stuff to helping with the fair booth. I don't know, it's very inspiring for me. And I think, you know, it makes what we do here more, I don't want to say more worthwhile, but it does make it a little bit more impactful for me. I mean, we have this forum and really it's what you do with it that gives it its value. And so the fact that you guys are like invested and you care and you show up and you do the thing, um to me it makes the commission more valuable right because we're actually doing something with the platform so i just really appreciate the energy and time and effort you guys put into you know helping us out and it also is inspiring to me like you know i had to stretch my legs a little bit to put that presentation together and it was um i feel like i'm better for it i know the trail better than i did before i had to go go through that so um and then i got to share with you guys you know so i think um i don't know i just think it's really cool and good makes it very easy to have anything work. So I appreciate that. Other highlights, Rubicon season's rocking and rolling, right? July is like hot and heavy Rubicon month. We've had tremendous, tremendous performance with the volunteers out there. I mean, obviously you guys saw in the volunteer recognition item, just the volume at which people come out to support the Rubicon Trail. That's some really awesome volunteer events so far. There's even a couple more kind of out there before the end of the year. So it's huge. It's huge for us, especially with our grant funding because a lot of What we need for that is match time obligation and we get that through volunteerism and in kind donation. So like it's uh it's beautiful in all kinds of ways right it helps us from a budgetary standpoint but also it builds community and all these sorts of things so i'm super happy with how adopted trail is going jeepers jamboree is going to be next weekend so i mean it's going to be jeeps as far as the eye can see for as far as you know you going uh i am not oh i will be there i'm not attending the jamboree but we are doing some on trail education for all the teachers a good opportunity for us to get a lot of trail users and not a lot of time, right? There's going to be a line of 500 jeans coming at me and every one of them is going to get some sort of education or, you know, bandana or some sort of like gem of wisdom to leave with. Hopefully they don't tear the trail up on their way through. So yeah, we'll be working in that capacity. I probably will not be at Rubicon Springs all night or anything like that, but yeah, we'll, we'll play our role in that and try to help with some education on trail education for those events. And yeah, I don't know.

keep the thing rolling, but I just mostly wanted to express my appreciation to you guys for that.

A couple of things. Could you bring each one of the commissioners in your bandana? Yeah.

That was one of the highlights of the fair, was the bandanas. You know, giving out all the old ones and collecting them and all that kind of stuff. So I thought it would be fun if each of the commissioners got a bandana for this year.

And actually, what's even...

kind of a nice thing about this is the design came from the art and culture, right? The ones that are doing the exhibit. And the other thing is, I'm with Michigan and Zach on putting together our annual report. We had a nice meeting the other day. We went through all that. Lauren's helping as well. And so I think we'll be ready in September. What date? Do we have a date? The 15th? That was your session on it? I think that's it. What I want to know is how, when do we have to have it completed so that you can attach it to the agenda?

Let me check on that. It'll be in August. Yeah, I'm sure it'll be in August. Probably like mid-ish August, but yeah.

Yeah.

So hopefully we'll be bringing that for you guys to just review next month.

So on that, if you wanted to try to grab a photo, even though it's... Yeah.

We can do this.

Well, we don't have, we were figuring about the photo shop. Yeah. Right.

We can attempt one. Well, we can have one now and then maybe have it on the back. Or I don't know if there's another time we can arrange for you all to get together.

Today or next month.

Yeah.

you know i didn't i went to the fair but i didn't do the hard work you guys did i did bring my grandkid i just want to announce the more it's harder three-year-old granddaughter

I'm counting the royalty here. Oh, thank you. I'm very appreciative. Nothing rose. The rose is the elder.

Yeah, it's a little pageantry. That's so cool.

It was cool. It's great.

All right, if we don't have anything else, let's adjourn at 516. And if we can, commissioners, we'll step outside. You guys can take our picture and take pictures. If we can't do anything here next year, we can't.