Tree Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Guys Bill? Yeah. You're welcome. I hear you. That's swag, though. We got. Joe you can see what Joe's got on. I know. That's Nice to show you. Okay. We are ready to roll the time. It is 06:31. This is the regular monthly meeting of the council open space and trails advisory board. First item on the agenda is the roll call, verification. Shout out, Tim. Tim Hain, member.

Bill? Bill Rickler. Member. Dave? Nick Tazek, member.

Bill? Bill Brink, member. Bill? Joe Swanson, member. Ken Martin, member. Okay. We have, what, one, two, six, and the fourth member Christine Fells is excused. She's traveling on business. Next item is approval of agenda. Has everyone looked at the agenda? There are no changes. I have a motion to approve. Motion to approve. Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? K. Before I forget, who would be overjoyed to take the minutes of this meeting? Wow. Louder.

Feels good. Okay.

Hope you do that. Okay. Thanks, Phil. Okay. We have two prior minutes to approve. Would would be possible for you to bring up

That was I was right there, and it was all ready to go. Okay. And now it's not okay. Passcode. So, yes, 352.

Okay. That was the main main screen

recording. I think that's that.

So we have the that's December's, and we have September's. Right? That's what I saw in the the

draft folder. So all that we have here here in the September Okay. Folder. Is everyone perused? Have any corrections or additions? If not, do I have a motion to approve? Approved. Second? Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? None. Okay. And then December. Oh, sorry. I thought we

were approving both of them.

'2. 2026. We're in Should be in '25. Draft. Okay. So

sorry. I was sharing the agendas. I apologize. No worries. This has never worked the way I want

it to. Okay. I said that. Okay. There we go. Remember, this is very easy.

Just open Zoom. That's fine. Okay. There we have our September meeting minutes, which are actually meeting minutes, and then we have our December 8 meeting minutes.

Okay. Any corrections or additions? I have a motion to approve. So moved. Second? Second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed? None. Okay. Both approved. Public comment. I can I don't think

we have anyone No? Joins in?

Okay. This is general business. First item is a report from John Martellaro, our liaison with the town council.

Okay. So, last Tuesday, we had, a study session with council, and staff where we talked about the comp plan and densities. One of the things one of the outcomes were that we, we split there's a low b v low density residential, medium density residential, and high density residential. We split the medium into a low medium and a high medium, and the staff is gonna look at properties in the medium density, that may apply for low or or high and and, look at look at those opportunities. And the page property is one of those medium density properties.

Understanding that, you know, it's clear that this or, OSTAB has asked council to keep that as open space. But in the comp plan, it's designated as medium density residential. So, so it so it would be looked at for an update in the comp plan.

K.

Anything else? All for me. Okay. Well, let me just step back. I I should have asked. We have well, obviously, we have our town council, and John Lucas. We also have three members of the staff, which we should put in the minutes. Michelle and Matt and Luke. Okay. Onward. Next item is the agenda support packet and our deputy town clerk, Michelle, will review that with us. Go ahead.

K. I'm gonna try and make it short and sweet. I'll see if I can share my screen. How

did you do it so much faster than I did?

I thought it grabbed it. Betty did it on two.

Making you look bad, Michelle. She's probably working from at nine. He's like

Alright. Let's see how this works.

Let's see if it'll

come up. There it is. Okay. So, this year, wanted to make sure that we keep everything in your, agenda, minutes, packets available to the public. So in the past, we've just published your agenda. It's got all your items on it. But if you've ever had presenters who come in, either staff outside or someone from your board wants to present and they have materials, wanna we make sure we get those in the agenda, which makes it an agenda packet because then they're attached. So both Luke and I can do that, I'm happy to help. I've been helping HCAB during 2025 to get that done. They've published, I think, three or four packets this year.

And, basically, what it is is anytime you have an attachment and some information that you want to include for all of the board to see and for the public to see, we should make sure that we have that attached. What that requires is that when we're in our agenda software, which is Granicus, which we love. What we do is we make each year a list of agendas by date and meetings. So, Victor, all the agendas for the year, and we basically put them in by date for each one of the advisory boards, town council, the URA. Any meeting that we're having, they've got, their agenda already in there ready to go.

And by that, I mean, it's basically a placeholder. And so each month, we go in and and depending on what you give me, I set up the agenda either just as an agenda or if you say, hey, Michelle. We have a presenter that's coming in. We're gonna talk about this piece of property. Here's the items. What we have to do in order to attach that to your agenda and these, I'm just gonna quick overview. This isn't gonna get too down and dirty because Luke and I would be the people doing it, but just so that we know what it looks like. Your here's your meeting for tonight. So I open that up, and this is what your agenda looks like for us, not to the public, but for us. And here is your one agenda item.

So what you have, your, your agenda is basically set with all of those bolded items one through six. And then I go ahead and put in, the the, packet piece that you need to have attached, and Luke can do that too. And the way we do it is we have to start in what we call an agenda item, which is right up here in the left hand corner. We start an agenda item. We give it a title, whatever that presentation is gonna be.

And within that, there is a memo that we have to fill out. So if for some reason Luke's not available and you need for me to add this to your packet, I'm gonna need a little help in filling out your memo. And the memo basically explains, why we're putting this in the packet and what's its purpose. So these are the pieces of the information we have to fill in. We give it a title, a department.

I just put up administration operations this time because it was me who was giving you a presentation. Who the presenter is, how much time you think it'll take, if there's any policy issues around it, what the staff recommendations are. A lot of times when, obviously, with counsel, we'll put in there staff recommends that you go ahead and pass this because their items are usually resolutions, ordinances, or proclamations. And then we try and put in some key points in here. It can be as many or as few as you like.

I just tried to put in here that we're preparing advisory board agenda packets when necessary for the advisory boards. This is not something you have to do every month. You may not even do it once in a year. I it's up to you. So it's completely however you wanna do it. The agendas, of course, I can get turned around pretty quickly with attachments to make a packet, that requires a little more time. So I always ask, can you get it to us about a week before? Our requirement is to post it twenty four hours before your meeting actually takes place. We cannot make any changes after that. Otherwise, we would have to cancel the meeting and get a new date for it.

So can I ask a question? Sure. If we have somebody coming in with presentation Yeah. On anything

Yeah.

They need to give us that presentation a week before.

So Yeah. That would be great. That would be great. We'd love to have it. Because that way, when the tap when residents go in and they're wondering if they wanna come to the meeting, they can open it up. They could see the whole presentation. Let's say they can't come or they wanna prepare some questions for you. They have all the information before they come in, and they're not sitting through the whole presentation poke you know, taking notes and thinking, oh gosh. I wish I would ask that. Or they're more prepared.

It also helps you all because you're prepared for the presentation before they come in, and you as well could have, you know, tons of questions you may have with that person. And on the fly, a lot of times, we can't think of them. And then the presentations over here, like, should've asked those questions about the budget. So it gives you a chance to peruse the information before it happens. So

So and you you're going to have to peruse.

It's like you have

to break down the company. Someone

Mhmm. Mhmm. If they

just sent you a presentation, if we send it to you, you would have to go through the whole thing and break it down and summarize it.

Yeah. Seems like a lot of work. Yeah.

So we we can share with you the agenda memo so that you have it, so you know what to put in there, and you can give us that information. And, you know, sometimes you can even ask the person who's presenting. It happens all the time with counsel. I mean, Luke, you probably speak to it more often because I fill up the memos only for minutes usually or if we're doing a proclamation. But if it's a big packet, that's something that's coming from, like, you've got Schofield on this week.

Right.

Yeah. So and and it can be a lot of work, but I think this is a great tool for transparency because then it gives, like Michelle mentioned, not only the public of what we're talking about, who's talking about it, yes, how long it's gonna take, but it gives you a quick summary of what we're gonna be talking about and then a little bit of background. Actually, that's not actually a whole lot of work. And 90% of the time, even 95% of the time, it's staff doing these agenda memos. A memo like this probably took you, what, maybe

Five minutes.

Maybe five minutes. Right? An ex example tonight, the presentation that I have for you, I would have done a memo like this saying, hey. Tonight, we're gonna go over the lapse presentation, and we're gonna talk about land acquisition and projection strategy, and I would have typed up a brief. That way you would have come in to and when you got that notification that the agenda was published, you could actually read that and be like, oh, this is what we're talking about it versus having it just on one line item on on the agenda because maybe you missed last month, you don't know what we're actually talking about. It gives you just a little bit more context. So it's actually not that much work. Now when we have maybe another presenter come in, we might have to kinda figure out how that works, and maybe it's just a one line of

Just give us a

Sustainability advisory board is gonna come talk about pollinator districts. Yeah.

Like, just a if you can give us a two line sentence summary, tell us how long you think you're gonna be speaking, and any attachments you have to it, we load the attachments. So those are even separate. So for this, I I was a little more thorough, with the background of it and just talking about that when you have a presentation outside, inside that you wanna include, this may not happen all the time or it may even just happen once a year or not at all. It's just dependent on how much your board wants to present. And so these are just I gave just an example of what, you know, you might put in there.

This is part of your packet now. So when you go online on the town website, this is in there. This stays with you and with your board in laser fish, and so this is the history of your meeting for this year. And then if you see down here

I'm sorry. Where do we find this online?

So on the town website, you can find it right under your boards. So when you go into the main website, it'll at the top tabs, it says government, and you can go right into your board, and you can pull up your agenda for that meeting. You can also do it through the agenda center on the town website, and you can see the meetings. We posted so many places. Yeah. But it's it's it's easily found. And soon as you click on the date of your meeting, it'll open up the agenda, and there's live links in it, which I'll show you in just a second. But if you notice down here, we list all the attachments, and we always ask whatever the attachment name is. It's the same name on the agenda so we can see that. And then here's the attachments tab, and that's the packet right there that I put in there as the sample.

And it's basically HPABS packet from last year just to show you what they did. So if you go into hoping I can show this to you if it'll switch screens.

You're gonna show them on the I'm gonna actually show them on the back

So I'm gonna try and switch screens and see if I can

See, I can't figure out how to do these.

I know. I wonder if I just stop sharing for the moment and start again, but I don't wanna stop. Okay. Let me see if I can get in. I don't think it's gonna do all. Stop share, and then let's see if I can redo it. Go with that. Oh, stinker. See if I can get it. No.

That's not what I want. Just a second. I got this. So much easier in in

She had to switch.

Okay. Gonna do it. Number one.

Took a second last time.

So maybe just while we're

Yeah. So I understand the importance of transparency from the town's perspective. How do you envision this is gonna make our lives easier?

When the agenda gets published, you get notified. Right, Michelle?

Yes.

K. So you get notified, and then you can you so, you know, we send out the agenda. You can see what's on the agenda, but now you can actually go into that topic and see more information about it. So you could you could have seen the presentation that I'm gonna give tonight prior to me giving the presentation. You can actually scroll through it, and council member Morgan Valero will probably know this better than anybody. It gives you all the summary information. Yep. You can you can look at the presentation, and it just gives you the ability to kinda see what's on the agenda in more detail versus in the moment.

So every month, we, you know, we meet once a month, and in between then, we'll have emails. We'll trade drafts of things. It's the idea that those final drafts then can be included in the agenda as well. Sure.

Yeah. Okay.

And we and we can we can adjust this. This is not a this is not gonna be a requirement for us. It's just an easier way for us to combine all of the information into one place and then share it with the agenda. So, yes, if there's different information bouncing around, you know, throughout the month where we're maybe we're talking about a project or something like that, we can summarize that. Hey. Staff started in doing this and then staff did this and then got direction from council and then got direction from and kinda lays out the timeline with those those are more, like, bigger projects, and that's how we present them to council. So we try to give all the, like, a

little bit of background information. Yeah. It's it's huge for council. I mean, it it helps us prepare for for the council meetings every week. And, you know, and you can always go back to it. You know, that it you know, it's like Wait a I I remember something from that presentation that I I and then you go back to it. Sure. Yeah.

I I have the the the agenda pulled up. Do you want me to

Can you do it, Luke? Yeah. For some reason, it will not let me share the website with you guys. I'm gonna get out of their country. Thank you.

My head is open.

You know, we can pick up the agenda for the

I just have it open on that. Yeah.

K.

There it is. Okay. So here on the agenda, you can see there's the on the far left, it says 26 2026Dash61. So that's actually the agenda item number in our software. And so when Luke clicks on the number, So this is actually the packet.

So this I put sample across it because it's HPAV's packet from when we did theirs. So I wanted you to see that once you attach, put in that attachment, it takes all of the documents and it puts it in as one item. So you go through the whole thing. So if somebody gives you a presentation, this is what it'll look like. Of course, you can break if they break the presentation up into a PowerPoint, and then maybe they have some photos on the side.

All of those would be separate attachments, and they'd be listed in the agenda memo as, you know, all three different attachments. And so HPABS had a number of them where they do the presentation, and it basically combines it all into one thing. I combined it all into one thing. But, originally, when they had it in their agenda, it was, like, four attachments. So you could look at each individual one before you came to the so that's that's what I put there as the sample.

And then when you are in when you go to the link that Luke was just in, the number, which is 2026Dash61, that's your agenda item number. So when you click on that link right there to the left, that actually opens up the agenda memo. So, Luke, there it is. So that's all the information that I wrote in the agenda memo that basically allows us to attach the presentation. So it gives the reader the information about what you guys are gonna be working on that night, tells them just a brief history on it, all the attachments that are included so they know what to look for, and then they can close that, and then they can look at the entire this isn't something you may have every single month.

You may have it a handful of times a year. But for really important stuff, we wanna keep it in your record so we have it. We used to just attach it to the minutes, but we'd really like to have it for the public to see.

And I think so an example would be the presentation that I'm giving tonight, giving you all some context before, you know, before we have the meeting, but then also when we get around budget discussions. I thought this is a this is a it's a small example, but it's a great example of, hey. I'm giving you maybe a a midyear budget report on the, you know, TNAF balance, what we're projecting in terms of revenue, what we're projecting as we get into budget conversations. So you are all up to speed in a day. And it's a lot easier for me to do it in one memo and upload all the reports into one thing so you have all the information in one memo that you can also go back and look at versus, you know, trying to open up the folder and going back into that specific meeting.

It's just it just compartmentalizes everything.

So that your link now will always still be the agenda. But when you see the blue on the agenda, those are live links that go right to the packet. And then when the public goes on and they look at the agenda, they can look at either just the agenda and click on the live links, or they can go to the agenda packet, which is listed right next to it. And then they can go through the whole agenda packet. So it's always part of your record, and we keep it in laser fish so we can go back and we have the whole history on your board, and we can keep track of all of that. And it just helps us to keep that in your record. So if anybody ever came back and said, hey. When did you do that presentation on? I don't remember that being posted, and now we've got it. K?

That's just for special presentations and talks and things development referrals. Right? Development referrals are not gonna go in the

same Oh, no.

Same approach or, like, is it

We we can we'll probably get to that point where we we can add the item or the materials that we'll be discussing in case we need to pull them up during the presentation. But, obviously, you need a lot more advanced notice than twenty four hours. It's preferable. Yeah.

So we can the agendas, we can turn I can turn them around really quickly, but the agenda packets take a little bit longer. And so we just ask that if you can get them to us within that week, it would be very, very helpful so that we can get it posted in plenty of time. I'll always give you a reminder seven days ahead so that if you've got everything and you're ready to go. If Luke isn't here and another staff member is not filling in, by all means, just let me know, and we'll go through. I had that situation with Harry.

He wasn't here. He's on vacation for two of the packets, and so my partner and I worked together to get it all in and get the agenda memo written and get it all attached and worked out just fine. So I'm happy to help. Okay?

Thank you. Thank you.

You're welcome. That's it.

I have a couple questions. Please. If we get the agenda and say, look what I did before Mhmm.

Can we

can I make changes during the week? Because Absolutely. Very Yes. Almost the rule. Right? Exactly.

So we do have that council. Like, for example, we published the packet for council on Friday. We usually have it done by you know, we like to have it done by noon, but sometimes it's, like, four or 05:00. Today, we actually had two contracts that got signed that we needed to upload and used to make a change to the fee schedule, just some updated information, and we got all that done. Our requirement is we have to have it done twenty four hours in advance in the meeting. So as long as we get that done by 05:00, we're good. So that's not an issue. Yes. We can update it during Okay.

Yeah. Right. Second question, if if a town department is gonna make a presentation, say, for example, the planning department has got a development applications. Are they the ones that would prepare the information that you They They should. Okay. Alright. They

should. Yes.

Okay. Because we all use the LEGISAR system. Okay. I would just say, hey. You need to go in and create an agenda item for whatever meeting you're wanting to present, fill out the memo, upload the presentation. So that way, it's already ready.

And

once they choose the date of the meeting and they put it in your control, because OSTAP has control can have control of this. So once they select OSTAP and they have control of that item, the second I go to pull all the information into the agenda for that date, it should pull that agenda item right in. Yeah.

K. Lastly, it's it's quite rare that we have a outside presenter, but it's not impossible. My experience when I was doing this a long time ago is they frequently prepare their presentation sometime between one and five.

Yeah. That's almost. Yeah. If you know that they're coming within a couple weeks, let them know that we need to have any presentation materials a week in advance. Okay. SAB sustainability, they have presenters all the time, and so they get their information in early. And and HPAB, it's mostly Mike, but they will have some presenters from the outside. But if you I think if you give people notice, they'll try to work within those that timeline.

Well and that's what that's what our job is as staff. If somebody wants to come in and talk to us, I say, okay. Well, what date do you want? Yeah. Handy all the materials by a certain date. And that's just that's just changing, you know, the behavior and how and then the cadence of of when we have meetings. So I think peep people generally understand that. I have to do that when I present certificates of appropriateness to historic preservation advisory board. I talk to Harry. Harry puts me on the agenda. I do the memo. I create the materials. I get it all uploaded when I'm supposed to. So from a staff perspective, it's pretty it's a it's a pretty

Yeah.

Well known and easy process.

Routine. And we'll hound

Routine. Thank you.

And and maybe just one other question. So on the agenda is would that would we then be able to post previous minutes there then as opposed to having to go back through shortly?

You could. You could post previous minutes, and we can do an agenda memo for that and put them on there, and we're happy to do it. So if you wanna send us the minutes for you guys to review, we absolutely can put them on.

Yeah. Feel like that's just a cleaner Yeah. Challenging. It makes sense. Yeah.

Because then we don't I don't have to pull them up and read through. You guys have already had a chance to look at them before you even got here versus me putting you on the spot.

What is that? Yeah.

And I'm pulling up the agenda instead of the app.

Theoretically, you know, they're always available at SharePoint, so I assume a concern. 99% of the time, the members have looked them all over. Who doesn't love SharePoint?

Yeah. I know. Oh, excuse me. So, yes, that would actually be really helpful because once they're approved, we just take them right off

of the and then I'll

take them right off of the agenda memo, and I won't be hounding you to say, I'm gonna sneak my bits. Okay. Because I'll take it right off the agenda. Unless you tell me there's you made some change, I'll take it right off the agenda. Okay.

You. Have any other questions?

Any other questions? Okay. Thanks, Michelle. You're welcome. Happy meeting.

Yeah. Michelle. Okay. Next item on the agenda is the revised new land acquisition criteria. It's basically a scoring system to enable us to with more to rank the various properties that we're looking at. So with that, I'll turn the meeting over to Luke.

I'm gonna share this. It's gonna work. Look at that. And you'll see the captions at the bottom here. That's just me talking. So alright. Good evening. So this is a follow-up discussion from our meeting in December about the land acquisition and protection strategy, also known as LAPS. As a former marine, I love my acronyms, and this seemed to fit pretty well. So what we're gonna talk about is kind of our now new approach to prioritizing acquisition and protection of certain parcels of land in and around Erie.

I brought mister Spinner with me tonight because he's much smarter than I am, and he can talk a little bit of how our process kind of relates to what we've done in the past in terms of our open space management plan. And, also, he's been a vital person in in in really kind of finalizing this strategy from from the staff perspective. So quickly, what we're gonna talk about tonight is the the history of acquisition prioritization. How in my eight years, I've kind of pulled together the puzzle pieces of how we got to where we are today. We're gonna talk about how we developed the lapse process.

We're gonna go through a practical application, and then we're gonna talk a little bit some next steps. So 2007. Yep. We're gonna go all the way back to 2007, which you all very well have. We completed the natural areas inventory.

If you ever looked at those maps of late, Erie was about this big in this giant map, and now we're this big on the same size map. So, really, what that what the what the purpose of that natural area inventory was is really just kind of identify some characteristics for undeveloped land for for uniqueness for for natural areas. Fast forward to 2015. Let me back up really quickly. That initial, NIA, the natural area inventory, really kinda created the baseline list of potential properties for open space acquisition.

Fast forward to 2015, the town updates the comprehensive plan and furthers define defines open space. 2016, as a result of the comprehensive plan, we updated our PROST master plan, PROST being our parks, recreation, open space, and trails master plan as the department did not exist in 2007. And our recommendation of that plan was to develop management plans for key open space areas in the Erie area. And then 2018, that's when I started here with the town. We worked with Great Ecology to adopt to draft and adopt the open space management plan.

So it doesn't necessarily replace the natural area inventories, but it it provides a road map for sustainable practices and how we manage the, open space that we do have in Erie. So it's not something that we look at and say, we wanna buy this open space, but, really, what it does is it does a really good job in breaking out the, the management districts that we have in Erie. So Coal Creek North, Central, South, Shortgrass Prairie, what's one of the Panama. So different areas of Erie that maybe have some different characteristic ecological and land characteristics. And then 2019 and 2025, we created our our open space priority acquisition map to really help in our acquisition strategy.

Right? We look at all those properties, those 30 properties. We send out letters to landowners, see if anything sticks. And we use criteria such as buffer future trail corridors, adjacency to open space, but we're not measuring that. There's no way to say why is this a high priority? Why is this a medium priority? Why is this a low priority? So so we we took that information into our 2025 playbook, which is our now stretch our our strategic plan. We said, how can we do a better job after we talked with the public? How can we do a better job of putting some measurable criteria criteria to these open space acquisition?

And out of that comes the implementation strategy o f two, which suggest creating land acquisition procedure and criteria analysis, which is what we're doing here today. So that's the result that we have. Right? This is our map that we've been using. Right? It's not all encompassing. There's no data to it. It's just some colors on a map. Very important colors on a map, but really nothing you can measure on it. So now we get into this development. Right? So then we start asking the questions. Well, why do we need it? Why do we need a map or some criteria so we can measure the importance of why we buy this open space versus that open space, or why do we make that a conservation easement versus the fee simple acquisition? What do we hear from the public?

We did a survey. We did a survey within the post master planning process, and then we had all those community meetings where we went and talked to people. So what did we hear? What was important to Erie? Right? What's important to you when we're talking about the context of open space land acquisition, land preservation? And then what successful models exist out there? Right? So talking to our some of our colleagues in, you know, in on the Front Range, on the West Slope, and and how do they go about putting this criteria together for land acquisition? And then now we're getting into we're developing the process for an acquisition or protection.

We're identifying the criteria, and then we're applying that criteria once we've once we've gone through those first steps. So now we're in developing the process. Right? The acquisition protection is is now a process. Right? We've now we've put some actual words down on a document and say, this is how we go about a land acquisition or protection. So first, we identify. Right? We look at our we look at our pros map. We look at our comprehensive plan. We look at all the town documents to say, is this something that we wanna pursue? And then we figure out how we're gonna do it. Are we going to are we gonna target this as a fee simple? Are we gonna talk are we doing a conservation easement? What funding sources are applicable to it?

Are there grant opportunities out there that we could do? Are there land trusts involved? Is there another neighboring municipality organization that has maybe some interest in it? So we're looking at all the documents, and we're making we're we're figuring out our approach. And then we get approval. Right? We come and talk to OSTAP. We come and get direction from council. Right? And those all, you know, occur in in executive session, right, as as you all well know. So that's the approval process. And then you get to the actual action. Then you're doing purchase and sale agreements. You're doing your due diligence. You're doing the title work.

You're doing all those things. You're setting up for the actual closing. You close on the property and then the announcement implementation. And when I say implementation, then I flip it to Matt and his team, and then they put it into their open space management plan, and then they apply their their standards for managing that piece of ground based on its existing qualities and its future uses. So the actual criteria.

So the criteria is that list that that we all saw back in December. It provides guidance and assistance to staff in ranking some different attributes of individual parcels based on the priorities, right, that we see in our pros plan, that we see in our comp plan, and our transportation mobility plan. That's kind of the other main plan that we look at. Right? The beauty of this is it could be applied to any property.

Right? So we're not just we're not looking at a list of properties we already have. We can use this for any property that we desire for developed parks, open space in natural areas, or trail corridors. So it's not just looking at these just big swaths of land. Maybe there's a little piece of land that we wanna evaluate because maybe you happen to be talking to your neighbor and say, man, I really wanna sell this little corner.

Well, but you know that, you know, that's a valuable trail corridor. Well, we can apply these metrics and see where it sits on the priority list. And that not only gives it a priority, but it actually provides us some justification of why we're pursuing that property, which I think is an important notion of, hey. We're not just throwing a rock and see where it lands and say we're gonna buy that property. We actually have some actual subject matter expert data reviewed that that placed it in that priority. And a couple of couple of things. This is just a desktop review. Right? So we may be driving by their property. We may be looking at it from a GIS level.

Maybe we're looking at some other documents, but it's really a desktop review. Right? So that means you're just looking at the existing documents, you know, from from a from a two d level. You're not going out there and taking soil samples and doing a full on ecological assessment. So just wanna notate that that's not that type of process here. And the other beauty is no cost of the town. Right? You're not hiring consultants to go out and look at the various properties. You can do this right from for right from right from your desktop. So a little bit about the criteria.

I took your feedback. I had Matt and Mike look at it in on several several stages, and we made some adjustments to it that really helped kind of fit a little bit your feedback, but still got us the the the way we needed to to be. So talking about the adjacency. Right? Is it next to something that's already preserved or future you know, or or is it next to a national area such as Coal Creek, Boulder Creek?

Climate influencing resiliency. Right? Do we have an opportunity for carbon sink or or or wildlife or, excuse me, wildfire prevention. You know, I think of the Wild Rose Open space that we had just acquired. That's a great example of a potential carbon sink site where it's not doing anything but taking carbon dioxide out of the air instead of releasing to the or carbon monoxide or, you know, whatever that process is now. Community identity. So thinking about historical, cultural significant sites. Developability. Developability is how does it fit, again, within the entire system. So is it is it future commercial development site?

Is it is it part of a major transportation corridor? Is it identified in our gross plan? You know? So it's taking all of those factors in to how the site could be used in the future. Is it adjacent to low income, or does it have ability to serve an underserved population?

So it kinda takes a a number of factors into developability. Ecological value. So Matt did a really good job in identifying some criteria of what does this what does this parcel currently look like, and what type of ecological value does it have? And I'll get into some of those here in a little bit, but it's more of, is it bare ground? What percentage of bare ground is? Is there a prairie dog colony? Was it used for an industrial site? Is there a home site on it? Those are maybe less desirable qualities. Higher desirable qualities would be there's an actual you know, is it watershed?

Right? Is there an actual habitat area? Are there opportunities for raptor nesting on those sites? Those are more desirable qualities. So we kinda further break that down into if you have three or more desirable qualities, you get a higher score for that.

So there's a little bit of math in here, but that's the beauty of this is you you actually have some criteria that you're actually looking at. Recreational opportunity. Right? Because I think not saying that we're gonna be using TNAF dollars for acquiring future parkland, but this also gives us a tool to say, there are parcels out there that may have recreational opportunities. So maybe they're within a highly developed area, and we see a potential for a future developed park in that area or courts or athletic fields or something like that.

We can use this same criteria, and maybe that's the highest scoring criterion in that particular parcel because it has a high recreational value. Trail site system connectivity, that's pretty easy to assume what that means. And then unique landscape features. Right? Are there, you know, eerie specific I mean, we don't have bluffs, which was the first historic home site. Yes. Historic ag. Well, that would go in community identity. But I'm sorry. You know, more like more like more, you know, creeks or, you know, fishing ponds and things like that.

Okay. And then the other thing that we kinda wrapped up was was talking about this kind of practical application and just giving you a kind of idea of what this actually looks like before we kinda really hit the gas here. So the way this is going to work is is the subject matter expert staff here, so our open our natural resources staff, is gonna score independently, which feeds into an overall composite score. So it's not just my score that determines it. It's not just Matt's score.

It's it's probably three to four staff score that's gonna feed into a composite score, and that's how it's gonna be ranked based on their composite score. And so I'm gonna open up this spreadsheet. I should have had it open already. But okay. We're gonna now we're gonna share this. We're not gonna have to stop sharing overall. Look how smooth that is. Well, it's sharing now. So this is very similar to what you all saw back in December. So what I did as kind of a test here and I'll zoom in so we can oh, I don't wanna delete that.

Is I took our existing properties that we already had. I added some other properties in just because I was doing it. You know, I was going through the whole process. But right now, I took some some properties that were on our existing list, and and then I also asked Matt, to do it. So that's what Matt did four, and I did three because he wanted to one one up me.

But this is what a couple of different properties look like. So so we're gonna take say we're gonna we're gonna look at this Anadarko. And and what this does, I don't know if it's gonna pop up here, But what that hyperlink does is it takes the staff member reviewing the property to our eReviewer map, and that can actually go right to that parcel. So that's what I just did on on my map here. So the the Anadarko property, that's the property that's just North of County Road 10 And A Half just North of Colliers Hill.

So Matt went ahead and and put in some criteria here. It scored a 49, which is a score out of a 100. Let's see. Let's see. I think I did one that's a pretty oh, let's let's talk a little bit about the Menard property. So the Menard properties, right, are is this math right? No. I don't know if this math is right. And what looks right? Yes.

Yes. Because it would have to be all fives. So the Lamar Property is just addition to Schofield, so it's just Northwest of Schofield. As you can see, we applied some scoring criteria to those properties, and it's a 63. You can see because trail connectivity maybe scored a little bit lower because they don't have they don't have anything to connect to.

Right? Where else did it score somewhat low? Recreational recreational opportunity, also low because don't want those properties to be developed for, you know, athletic fields, more recreational purposes. We wanna keep them as open space. Ecological value, pretty low because they're existing ag land, but they have maybe developability.

They match with all of our existing plans and preserving them as open space, and then, obviously, ranking really high in adjacency and continuity because because they're adjacent to existing open spaces. And then this is the property that's down by the Parkdale Open Space. So that that one undeveloped property, again, kind of scoring really high in adjacency, maybe not as high in in some of the other factors, but really high in recreational opportunity because it's adjacent to that Parkdale wetland experience, you know, potential project that we have

out there.

It's the one in the Southwest Southeast corner

Yes. Of the Yes. The Barkshire. And and, you know, obviously, kinda hard to see as as with this map, but our our our end goal here, which I'll get into the next steps, is to connect this to an actual live map that you that I'll be able to show you all that ranks that that that has all this data within the actual map itself. It's not a static map like we used to have, and you can see the same type of shading. But you click on that parcel, and it'll see why we rated it as a high priority. So that's kind of a next step, which I'm jumping ahead a little bit. But I wanted to give a little bit of that context of how does this translate to the

actual map. And on that map, we'll hopefully be able to toggle on and off future proposed trails, and you'd be able to see where it fits in. You know? Because we have our regular trails map, but we know where the general direction of future trails we want to put in or you know? So you'll be able to see, you know, if it does create a good corridor or where is Boulder County protected land and where is Erie protected land and where are gaps in there and stuff like that.

So, hopefully, the the live map will be able to show you real time stuff versus a static map we have to update every eighteen months and reprint it and look at it and, you know, see So where will that real time map be? It should be a map app that we can pull up on, like, any GIS map. Yeah. Like, Erieviewer, we could just have a an app. I guess I'm wondering, like, was that spreadsheet that you just showed us, is there a link on that on the OpenSpace page

on So this is all internal. This is all staff internal. This is not something that we share publicly

Okay. Thank you.

In terms of letting us manipulate it. So, yeah, we could pull it up technically at a at a at a meeting and say, hey. You know, we have this opportunity. Can you pull up the map and see where it kinda fits with all this? Okay. Why did it rank really high? Oh, because of these five criteria. Okay. I think this is a good opportunity for Erie.

So where do we come in? Because it it looks like only staff is

I will get to that. So so our next step here is to apply the criteria to all the existing parcels that we've already identified. So taking that that map that we've been looking at, we'll we'll kinda we'll we'll actually go through the entire exercise. We'll conduct our desktop review, and that'll probably take a month or two just to make sure that we all are are you know, we'll we'll sit down. We'll all score independently.

We'll have a meeting, say, yep. We all agree on these criteria. One thing that we need to do, because this has come up in the past, is we need to confirm the property status, excuse me, as is or or or currently. We had a couple aquis we had a couple parcels on our old map that were already protected via conservation easement, but we had them listed for, you know, acquisition or protection. Well, that property is already protected.

So assuming that we don't wanna go buy a property with an act you know, with a with a with a conservation easement on it, you know, we we can certainly, you know, look at that if that opportunity does come up, but we need to make sure that we're not prioritizing, you know, putting a conservation easement when well, Bullock County has had the conservation easement since the eighties. And then we're creating that GIS map for potential acquisitions. And then our goal is that is to share that with you all and really gotta really kinda go through having the spreadsheet and the map kind of side by side so you all can see and say, hey. Why did you why is this one a high priority? What were you guys thinking on this one, or why was this one a low priority?

We don't really agree with that. We think I think that has a lot more trail connectivity value based on based on your existing maps. And then we can kinda fine tune that. Right? Because it's not it's not codified. Right? It's it's something that we can manipulate based on your all's expertise. Maybe you know something that we don't, you know, about, oh, man. There's a ton of noxious weeds in that area. That's gonna require a lot of restoration. Well, that drops that ecological value down a little bit. So and then and then you kinda proceed with the landowner communications based on our based on our based on our priorities. So I'm wondering

did you have more to say?

That's it. Okay. That's it. That's the process.

I'm wondering if it would be more efficient to both of us to independently fill out all of the the properties using your matrix and then harmonizing that with staff and then having a discussion or or looking at it. Because I feel like if we go through them one by one, we're not gonna give each property enough time and a fair shake to really to really analyze them unless we have our own kinda time to sit, you know, at home and go through each property, look at it on a map, think about it, that's, to me, a a a you know, that's gonna allow us to kinda give, I guess, a a more thorough analysis and view of each of the properties. And then

So you do all want to score these independently?

I know. I do. I don't know what I how does the rest of the board feel?

I know it'd be very useful, but remember, it takes a lot of time. And when we did this Yeah. Four or five years ago, where we didn't assign numerical scores, we had basically identified a half dozen or so attributes and then used our judgment. But we we scheduled, I would say, three or four extra meetings, well, the 100% of the time is devoted to this. But I also agree with you.

If we wait until they're all scored, we may say, Oh, what about this activity or what about that? You know, we're we're looking at a property and we say, that. So, I mean, there's pros and cons. Right? It's it's worth a discussion. So what do people think?

My thought would be that, you know, Matt and his crew are you know, have boots on the ground of all these places and better positioned to valuate at least some part unless we're planning on individually or or as a group going out to some of these areas. Mean, some of the things that, you know, could be obvious just from looking at the map, but if you're talking ecological value, restoration

potential, I think you have Yeah. You're right. We're not gonna have the knowledge, you know, on the assembly boats, which, you know, potentially could, but

it would take some boots on the ground, I think, to go out there and kick around.

And I I and I think, yeah, it's a lot of heavy work up front, but I the beauty of this, right, you you kind of do it once, and then you have the majority of the data in. And then if something changes, right, if there's an adjacent development, right, that could change some of the scores on the attribute. So then when you do that and this is on an annual cycle where we look at this. So then you're not doing that. There you know, maybe as in-depth, you're like, okay.

Well, nothing's changed up there, it still probably remains the same. But oh, yes. Now we have this, you know, proposed development over here. That changes maybe the our our outlook. So it would not be hard for us to set up one spreadsheet for just Ostab and have the same type of of kind of an external review into one composite score for everybody.

And then if we wanted to have a have a staff version, and then you you combine those two composite score into an ultimate composite score. That's kinda what we used to do with our GoCo grant applications is we had peer reviewers, and then we had staff. And then we took the composite scores, and then we made one composite score. So it's not out of the realm of Sorry. What is the old code? We're at North Colorado. It's just an organization I used to work for when we used to score grant applications. So it would be it would be easy for for you to do that.

What are your thoughts here?

Well, I yeah.

You know, I don't know if if not everybody wants to participate if we had two or three select people from the OASTAB committee or four Yeah. Rather than all seven Yeah. That wanted to kinda go through it and work through that. And then I suppose the other question would be is so let's just say it was four right here. You gave a score. You gave a score. Matt gave a score. I gave a score, and then we average those scores as kind of our or if we or if we would have a sub meeting group that would get together and talk about it.

It's certainly been sort of census route

with just the average. Right. Yeah.

Was very, know, very scripted too.

Sure. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. I I guess I'm just thinking back to, like, Ken said, some of those meetings we had, but they were long, long,

long meetings. And and

I'm just trying to be, you know Sure. Conscious of people's time

and that maybe we don't have to, you know Yeah. One of the axioms is a 100% accurate is the more people in a meeting, the longer it takes. That's a damn cheap.

Hopefully, with the criteria, though, it's it's Yeah. More detailed and gives more guidance. So, hopefully, there's not a two and a five, you know, being scored by two different oh, yeah.

We're a lot less than that. You know?

That's why that's why, yeah, that's why we got that discussion. Right. What what are you saying that Right.

There's a

big discrepancy. Yeah.

But and

so, I mean, to Joe's point, and I I don't object to what you're saying in discussing them. I'm not sure everybody wants to, so I I'd be curious to hear from Bill and Tim what your thoughts are. I would be I would be willing to to discuss each one and go through them, but that is a pretty time consuming. A faster way would be to average, you know, who If we do it,

it's not a. Get more. That's

that's true. I I'm interested in trying that process. I am so slammed with work right now. I just don't have huge amount of extra time. So getting some understanding of what the time commitments are, I think, would be helpful. But in principle, yeah, I think it's great. Right. Yeah. Echo that nearly. Like to participate. It feels like the trial run or whatever whatever you call it, Luke, would be certainly be worthwhile. And I do agree there'd be efficiencies as we get used to what we expect from these criteria. It probably gets faster and faster, but I think it

will be a slog with a bigger group. So be interested to see what we wanna sign up for.

The other perspective is that, you know, we're here to help the the staff make more work for y'all. So I and I can see it from another standpoint of you guys come up with your your first shot at it and and we, you know, provide responsive advice so

I can see if we could you know? Mhmm.

So I don't wanna I don't want us to create end up creating more work for you all. You've already got enough enough one to play too. So there's, you know, there's a balance.

I mean, and there's nothing to say that you you can if if you're out and about and there's a there's a property, there's nothing that says, hey. I'm gonna go into my my sheet my tab and score this property just to see because I wanna have a future I wanna have a discussion on, hey. I've you know, I saw this property. So, you know, I I don't think there's any problem in, you know, having us, you know, a smaller committee kinda do some of the scoring and then comparing it to the staff. And then if there are some really big discrepancies, then we can maybe have some more conversations.

I just I just I want you all to be able to feel like you're you're you're you're seeing what we're seeing. Right? And and I you're we're we're creating that buy in together. So however that looks, I think, is fine. But, actually, the hard work's already done. So it's when you don't save a spreadsheet, and then you close it out, and then you have to go back and redo all the work you just did. If you're walking by the office about two weeks ago I know how to go. Right? In an afternoon, you heard very choice words. But yeah.

The the so this is kind of the the framework, and I'm not gonna go through this. And I and I'll share this with you, and and you all can kinda take a look at it. But this is kind of that criteria that I was was talking about. So it really, I I think Matt provided some excellent input on what is it what does it mean. Right? What is low, very low, high mean? Right? Why how is it weighted? Right? Because you saw those different weights on it.

And then the actual attributes actually asks you some pretty specific questions. So let's take community identity, for example, because it's one of the shorter ones. Are they regionally significant or locally significant cultural and historic features or structure present on the property, mines, archaeological site, homesteads, cultural, natural areas, landmark, branch properties unique to the community? Right? This is would be so Schofield.

You're looking at Schofield. Right? That would rank very high as community identity. And then going through some of the so we we tried to be as thorough as we could without without being really really really too detailed and and really kinda try to take that bias out of it. And then as you can as I kinda pointed out, the ecological value, right, that's a pretty big one.

So we kinda further broke that down into, well, what is a what is a very low to very high score mean? So those were those qualities that I was kind of talking about. So you're highly desirable. Right? Functional year around wetlands, wildlife corridor, less of the 20 price less than 20% of the site needs restoration, etcetera.

And then undesirable, right, prairie dogs, homesites, industrial site, a 40% of the of the site is just bare ground, just dirt, nothing growing, nothing low, plant diversity, things like that. And then that kind of factors into your overall score. So, yeah, it is it is it is kind of quite a bit of of work, especially if you're if you're looking from a desktop review. But it's it's not it's not an issue for us to put this on a on kind of a master spreadsheet, and then everybody has their own own own tab. And then if we do have an opportunity, then all of us maybe it's just one parcel that we have an opportunity to purchase.

We can all conduct that assessment and then talk about that specific parcel. You have cost or land price as a as a quality? We don't because it's it's it's so variable. You know, I think if you compare the Reynolds acquisition, which was the prop which were the properties adjacent to Coal Creek to the Wild Rose parcel that we just purchased, those cost per acre were wildly different just because of various reason. It all comes down to the appraisal price and that what what is the best what is the invest value of that property? It totally look different from over here to over there.

So I I like the price

that we paid for WildBose.

0, $4.04 7 $4.93 is was it was around that $4.75 to 500. I know we didn't go over half 1,000,000.

Mhmm.

But then you look over here for roughly the over the the rentals property, you know, that was close to I think that was close to 2,000,000 for roughly the same amount of acres because of its adjacency to Coal Creek. And a

lot of times, we don't know what the price is because

the land selling

it just yet. But I'd like to,

you know, address what Bill said, because I'm pretty bad. Just hypothesize. We have two parcels, and they're both beneficial because they have bought existing open space and the potential for a trail card. One is zoned residential, and any streets that abuts are residential streets. The other one is zoned commercial, and part of it abuts County Line Road or something like that.

I mean, it's Cummins, yeah, or just almost a guarantee that the the county line parcel on a per acre basis is gonna be substantially higher. So you might say, well, in that situation, if they score similarly, you're better off going after the the the the residential one rather than the commercial one. This is just a thought. It's it's not easily Yeah. Quantified either.

Yeah. This is not this is not a proven scientific Yeah. Method. Right? This is just a a way for us to look at our entire potential list of acquisitions and then say, why is that property different from that property Okay. Because of these attributes that we all generally agreed on.

So it was $4.76 476,000, half the appraised value. You guys did a great job.

Oh, it was $4.76. Okay.

One more question. Okay. Thank you. Sorry, John. Alright.

No. I just I I think that we're kinda on the wrong right track here. I think we're it might work. You know, you you mentioned that we could just create tabs for everybody. Yeah. And, you know, for the people that are just massively busy right now, I mean, I'm not as busy as I am sometimes. So I'm certainly willing to put the time in, but I I definitely understand some people aren't because it's it's gonna take some time. And so having the tab features that that aspect where everybody can if they have time, they can go in and make review. If they knew a property, then they can review that property. If there's 10 others that they don't know, then they leave it blank.

And then we just kinda maybe set a deadline Mhmm. For when we're gonna kinda get this this first round done and understand the staff will go through all. So I'll I'll just throw that out for discussion. Speaking of what kind

of timeline are you guys thinking on having this value?

I think probably, you know, probably in the next month to two months is probably realistic. You know, trying to time this so we don't get into our busy season, which in Erie, we are starting not to have really have busy seasons. It's just all busy, but before Matt and his crew, you know, start, you know, getting all the the start. So at least at least on that path. Again, we've we've we've got a pretty good repository of of and and knowledge of the existing parcels to where some of this desktop review of the existing parcels is fairly easy because we've been looking at them for the past few years.

So Yeah. Or it took me maybe an hour. Yeah. Just knowing, like, the criteria a little bit more closely. You know? And we do I mean, if there's a work stream, I don't know if maybe we can do a Zoom or Echo somewhere. But, yeah, I would kind of love to see the process.

Well, it wouldn't be very acceptable for two people to get together and Echo wherever they wanna do it and work and all that together if they prefer. You just can't do that with three or more because now we're too

publicly notice it. Right? But we could notice it.

Well, you could notice it, guys. But you you you probably wanna start this Right. But you wouldn't wanna notice

Here's how I

I guess we're gonna find out how many people are interested. I've already had 10 beers. What do you wanna know? It all looks great.

It all looks like

Okay. So what I'm kinda hearing is that maybe there's a desire for us to, you know, kind of create an Ostab member specific scoresheet. Everybody kinda gets their own tab. We'll figure out how to map it because I think maybe we can link it to the public eerie viewer. Mhmm.

And then that way, you all can click that link. It'll take you to the property so you can kinda see it, zoom in, zoom out, and then you can all score it, and then maybe we'll come back. Maybe we'll come back since January. Maybe we'll come back in March, and then staff will have completed their assessment. And then we can we'll we'll do a check-in in February and maybe show you some progress. And then in March, we can kinda present our our final results.

Yeah. I'm I'm for that. I think it's much more efficient than the whole board getting together and actioning out. What about what about what about what about Okay.

I'm excited by this. It's a nice advancement.

Now this I I think when I took this was something that I really wanted on to complete, so I'm glad it kinda came out through the strategic plan that we needed to do it because I was having a hard time putting it all together in my head and just and then we can start expanding and looking at other properties. Or if there's something that comes up and we have that tool and we all understand what that tool looks like and we can apply it. Because the question that I get asked a lot is, oh, is this on your priority map? Well, no. But that doesn't mean it has to be, but it but it can't be. Right? We just need to apply some criteria into it and said, compared to everything else, it could be. And then then you kind of take it from there.

Speaking of that, how how do you decide or how have you decided up until this point what else on

the list? Because there would

be little pieces of pockets here and there. You probably are not on there that I suppose could be.

Yeah. And I think that's what we're gonna have to really I think that's the next step of this is, okay. Now you've got it on the list and or you got it on a map again. Right? We're all feeling really good about it. And then, you know, do you send the letters out to all the landowners, or do you send it out to the top five? Or do you really target the one and the ones, the twos, and the threes? Because, obviously, there there's funding availability. So I think that's probably the next that's that Yeah. That's that like, the the that's step one or two in there of deciding how we go about it, and are we gonna make a really push for this?

Because, know, we may not even have a willing seller for one, two, three to 10, but 11 is. So I don't know if I answered your question very well. Short answer is I'm not sure how we do that yet. I think we have to put a little more thought process on do we wanna continue to send out letters to all the all the potential acquisitions or or or really try to start developing relationships, sending out the letters to the top two or three knocking on doors, phone calls, and and and things like that until we get a willing seller.

I mean, I think we could probably do both on the web. We could do the letters. But, certainly, you wanna limit, you know, staff time

Right. To who you're, you

know, calling and contacting personally. Yeah. So but but in terms of this casting and broadening out, we could do that with letters for achievement.

Yeah. Yep. Okay.

Yeah. So far, we haven't had the problem of too many people saying, I'd like to sell my property to them. That's true. That's true.

Yeah. No. I think it's gonna be a great tool.

Thank

you. Really appreciate you guys Yeah.

Putting in the work.

Absolutely. Matt Matt did most of the work. I just said, Matt, I need you to I need you to gut check me on this. So

so alright, are we good on that one? We good? Yeah. Great.

Mister, you are you are. Here we go. Thanks,

Matt. Yeah.

Thank you, Matt.

It'd be great then if you come back

sometime and, you know, maybe presentation and just how you guys are managing open space these days because you're just there's you guys have your fingers in so many pots and pies here trying to manage all of this stuff. It'd be nice for us to just have a better understanding of how to manage it.

Hopefully. Yeah.

Things have changed a bit since the 2019 land management plan that I think we presented six or seven years ago, but it's getting more tailored. And as we take on new acreage every year, we can bump it into our management system a lot faster, and it doesn't just kinda sit. You know, we take action. Right. I believe so.

That'd be interesting just to know what your greatest challenge is.

We can definitely put that on

One quick question. When we do buy land, do we put, like, any kind

of extra money aside for manage I mean, for early season early early cleanup? Or No. No. I'm saying I'm looking at it from a county side of things because of the land that we buy. Mhmm.

We don't we we did it at one time. We don't do

it now. But it seems like there's usually something that needs to be cleaned up Right. Across those sites. Just initially, whether it's old barbed wire fences or things like that. Is that just relied upon the town staff to do that? Or Generally funds set aside to go do that?

I think, generally, if there's, like, an initial cleanup, we'll we'll do that initial cleanup. And then once Matt and his crew gets in there and assesses the property and gets that land management strategy in place, then we start looking at the out years and saying, okay. We're gonna be doing this type of restoration this year. I think a great example is the Coal Creek area restoration that we're doing with all the property that we've gotten in that corridor from either development or acquisition is Matt's put together, I think, what is it? A three to four year remediation plan that has

Right. But year one is usually, like Oh, wait. The brakes.

It's just

Like, spare bones, figure out what it is, and then put in budget requests. Okay. Sounds good. Yeah. Got you. Okay. Is it peri dollar remediation? Is it what up? You know? Is it contracted restoration, or is it a scale we can do in house? You know? Yeah. No. Perfect. Yeah. That's actually how you handle that.

So yes or no? Yeah. Not immediately, like, okay. It's gonna cost a million dollars. Now if it's I'll I'll I'll go back to, like, the and the Schofield. Right? We knew that was gonna be those were long term projects. So we knew we were gonna have to budget money for house demo, and then, of course, Schofield's a whole another thing.

But Right. Sure. Yeah. I'm just curious. I'll let you in. Alright.

Have a great Thanks, man. Appreciate you.

Okay. Onward. Next item is Village of Coal Creek update. And, again Yeah. So this will be about a

two minute. I don't have a whole lot of information, but just in this in the sake of transparency for this group, we did receive a pre application, which is basically proposal a to develop a property. It's a very high level conceptual potential development for the the for the Page property, Village At Coal Creek. That meeting is on Thursday, and then that's kind of the initial gut check for staff of, is this possible? So that's pretty much the information that I have.

If it does move to a land use application stage, then that'll be the opportunity for Ostap to review plans, ask questions, give recommendations on that. So this is uncharted territory of having a an open space parcel or part of an open space parcel have a development or a pre application on it. So I just wanted to be fully transparent with you all that that is and it's public knowledge at this point because pre apps are typically public.

So Can you please give us just the highlights of the pre app in terms of the use the square footage?

It a pre app for St. Scholastica, and that's pretty much and it's for development of church site.

And that's not all seven masses a week or something?

Those are all details we don't know yet. Events.

This is

like this we're up here

right now. Yeah. Do we know acreage at all? Do we know the signs? Is

there Nothing.

Mountain parking space? Any of those details. Any squat. No. Can you walk our input?

Not at this stage. No. Because it's not an official application. All it is is like, hey. Can we do this? And then staff and planning development with my input, with transportation, public works, engineering Yeah. We all kinda say, yes, no, maybe, that kind of thing.

You

know? But we can talk about it amongst ourselves. Right. It's great. Right.

Yeah. I mean,

you So we wanna to Chris, and we have

a critical business. Right. I'm sorry. I I don't

think anything has changed from our standpoint as, you know, whether it's a, you know, affordable housing or a church.

Yeah. Yeah. That's the Like I said, I want It this is it's it's it's a unique situation for us because I've never had a pre app for a town owned parcel before. And since it used the Teenact dollars, I just wanted you all to be aware of it. So if it moves forward, you all will be involved in the in in the process just like you would any sort of development application. So that's it for that one.

Okay. Well, one thing that may be helpful, I they own a a parcel now up on North Side Of 52 that abuts with a reclamation by this, and that's the the parcel's a little bit under 10 acres. And they bought it specifically to put a new church there. So it's possible, but no guarantees, that they'd be looking at something similar, which we might look at quite differently than if it takes needs 25 acres. So I'm, yeah, I'm a little bit concerned about having to wait.

I mean, we need to know more, but I'm a little bit concerned about waiting until they actually submit an application or put our 2¢

in. There's just nothing to comment on this. Yeah. No.

I mean, we can't do it now. Yeah. But, you know, after the the meeting and more is known, I think, you know, we should have some idea of what they're talking about rather than be in the blind until, oh, here's an application. Now there's a formal process. And, you know, well, if they meet criteria a b and c, they're you you have to approve it because that's how the how the the application process goes.

It it's it's it's sometimes difficult when your sense is on some some of your applications say, wish this could be turned down, but it's hard to do it based on the the criteria that they have to follow based on counts. Right? So if I mean, obviously, we have to wait until we know more

Perfect. About it. So the meeting is Thursday. Is that open to the public?

Nope. That's just a staff. It's a staff meeting.

John, are you in a position to talk about I I guess I'm just I'm still kind of suffering from the whiplash of, you know, if we're not gonna have housing, it's because it's a busting set of land that could be a crown jewel. How did we go from that conversation to shoe burning a high intensity, high traffic church? I mean, I just I'm struggling to kind of understand

that.

I think at some point, the church was talking about affordable housing. Right? I don't know if that's part of this application or not, but that was part of the conversation of them getting the opportunity to to look at at this. So I don't that that was my understanding was that there was not just a church, but potential affordable housing.

Yeah. And, like, you know, like I said, I don't know any of the details of what the actual application is right now. But but, yeah, I we we'll know more if it goes into a full land use application.

Yeah. So and I know there was a desire to to keep the church in town if it could be done and potentially do a land swap with the property that that they own up because it's near the water treatment plant, our water treatment area. So I think lots of different things are in motion, but right now, it's just an investigation feasibility.

Yeah. And fair enough. But I guess I'm trying to I'm still trying to wrap my head around if we all determined that nothing there was the far better use. How did we go from that conversation all of a sudden to saying, oh, let's swap it instead of high utilization? I don't think we've gone

let's swap it. Okay. It's an investigation, you know, feasibility. There's still strong support for at least the 35 acres on the lower level to be open space, if not all of it. Okay. So

Okay. Any other questions or thoughts?

Well, to your point, I'm just thinking just I'll just throw this out for thoughts. When is it appropriate for us to convey the resolution? For example, we're, you know, we're here tonight. We could you could take

a vote right now.

We could pass a sentiment of this board. I mean, there's nothing that precludes us, I don't think, from doing that. It doesn't have any teeth to it, I understand, but I don't think there's anything that prevents us from doing so. I would.

Well, to me, you know, knowing nothing makes it hard, and particularly in terms of scope, as I said, if it's something comparable in size or no no bigger than what they already have, maybe it's not awful. On the other hand, if they need a a 500 car parking lot, and it's gonna take up the entire southern part that abuts Coal Creek. You know, I I I'm sure I know what our reaction is gonna be. So that's why I'm I think it's premature to take a vote since we know nothing. But on the other hand, once we know more, then I think it is appropriate to at least provide some general thoughts.

Is the information you will learn in this meeting, Thursday, will that be confidential to to moving forward, or is that something that would

be I think once a I think a pre app is public knowledge. It it eventually becomes public knowledge as it goes through our eTracket system. Right? So and I think to Ken's point, there's really nothing there's really nothing to know. So if you all wanted to write a letter just saying, hey. We still support the property being doing x, y, and z. Sure. I think you could do that in the everybody signed it. You could do that at any time, you know, whether that was a week ago or a week from now or a month from now. So I don't think there's anything that's wrong with that because we there's there's also been no update on it.

Right? This was just this application came in, and I wanted you all just to know it so you didn't hear it through the grapevine and say, Luke, what the heck is going on? And so

Are you able to share a copy of

the pre application with us?

I will check if if and when we can share a copy of the pre application. So that's I don't know that yet. I I should have looked at that information because I assume that you

guys would probably ask. So So so what's a so it's pre application meeting on Thursday. What's the next step if it go?

It has to go back to the applicant for review, and then I think based on that recommendation, then they could theoretically submit a a full land use application. I'd have but that all goes through planning and development. So as as as the a recommendation a a recommending department, much like transportation engineering public works. We just give our recommendations of of the site. Yeah. Thanks. So

I know this is this comment is some just something I've never really thought much about is that there's nothing that prevents anyone, I suppose, from starting initiating the development process even though they don't own the land.

Correct. Yeah. That's a great point. Yes. Anybody could anybody can engage in a pre application meeting. It's just this is a really unique situation to where it's property that we bought.

Mhmm.

Right. Just in the work that I do, a typical pre application would cost an applicant anywhere from 75 to $300,000. So this is not something that was unplanned and spontaneous.

Would be the way that I Oh, wow. Okay.

Yep. What so where where's all that money?

The cost for us? For them, like, do a free application,

a consultant?

It depends on the level of detail they provide. Sometimes it's cartoon drawings. Sometimes it's a full on plan. So I just need level of detail.

Pre application. They

would have already done all that.

They would

have already

spent significant resources putting together the interest for pre op because it would include, like, photography. It would include general site layout, rough sketches, what the development will look like.

Don't really get the sense. Like I say, I

mean, that's my client's. This may be a different scenario.

And it's a fairly small site. So and a lot of the information's, you know, public, you know, when you think things up topography and things like that. You know? And I was just telling council member Mortalero, you know, it just depends on the level of detail that the applicant wants. I've seen everything from here's here's the parcel line, and here's what I here's the line I wanna draw through, and here's where we wanna put House Number 2 to full on, you know, probably big, you know, circulation plans, you know, a a a a more of a site plan level. So I've seen it I've seen it a couple different ways.

Jeff, if you can share that

with us, that'd be great. I will I will check on that, and Adal, don't check the process too. But I did check with a couple of key staff members to make sure that it was okay sharing that information. So And none of this is

quasi judicial. Right? As long

as you point because it's not an it's not a land use application. Correct. This is this is a weird one for I think this is a weird one for me, so wanted you all to be in the loop.

Thank you.

Appreciate that. Yeah. And I'll and I'll share as much as information as appropriate and as directed by counsel.

John, maybe just a follow-up. What is helpful for counsel to hear, or how can best communicate with counsel on this? Any preferences or recommendations?

Yeah. I mean, obviously, you've already provided a letter that we're all, you know, very versed in. But I think we talked about it before. You come to counsel, and, you know, you get three minutes on any non topic Public comment. Public comment.

That's always very powerful as well as, you know, another updated letter from from the from the team. Probably once you have more information would would be more appropriate. Okay. So but but, yeah, I, you know, I understand this is something that's being looked at. And but, you know, certainly, I I hear you guys, and and there's still support for open space, but this is something else that's in the mix that that's being looked at. Right? So yeah. Thanks.

Any other questions or thoughts? Okay. Into that item. Next item, it was simply a reminder. Cradle is missing trail legs. I have sole intention of spending any time on my unless you've already done something.

So that was part that was part of our overall strategic plan process is when we were out talking to community and, you know, I was, you know, when we had our big tabletop maps, we asked people to draw on them and make notes and things like that. So we took all that information, and we put it into this very, very easy to read map. And since that time, we've been talking to Frederick, Boulder County, Syden County, Broomfield, Lafayette, DeKono, Frederick. I think I caught everybody. I think I did the full circle there.

So we've we've we've got all of appropriate GIS data, in here, and then we kinda overlayed excuse me. Or we started to overlay our proposed trail trail layer based on what we heard, based on what we know, either where there's through entitled development or just overall, connectivity, and and we started, this map. And I think this was a Christine item. So, again, I'm not exactly sure what her intent was, but this is kind of the map that we operate off of when we look at so that whole lapse process that we just talked about and then through development as well. So this is kind of the key areas of where, and it's that red dotted line is our our future trail system that that we that we know we wanna look at, whether that's, you know, a multiuse path that's, say, adjacent on Weld County Road 5 on the landfill side or maybe runs along the Union Pacific Railroad or the RTD right of way.

So that's kind of I was just kind of being a little preemptive on. Again, this is kind of a draft right now. The final version will have our Erie branded loop in there that is you know, hopefully, will be one continuous trail kind of all around Erie. And then, you know, as we, you know, discover, you know, potential other future developments or we continue to talk with our partners in neighboring municipalities, we'll look at, you know, kind of updating this. But this is kind of an effort to get us away from those static maps that are outdated within this within six months and get us more to something that we can publish a little bit quicker. So

So the the future, trails, is that all future trails or not just ones that are funded or or Correct.

That these these could be as part of the development, or these could be this would be really cool to have a trail through this area because it connects to something else. Thanks. So a lot of work from staff on this one. I don't think you could ever get a map the way exactly you want it, especially the fact that we just don't have that many staff. But Kathy Cron, Matt Spinner, Mike McGill, Shane Greenberg, all of our staff did spend a lot of time kinda coming through this and, you know, making sure that where we had trail shown actually made sense.

Because if you would ask me probably a year ago, I would have said, yeah. That probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And we kinda overlaid it with our transportation mobility plan too, so there wasn't that crossover. So these are more true of your multi multiuse paths, not necessarily sidewalks that come with a road.

Okay. Thank you. So,

is when you guys put this together, when the staff put this this together, was it sort of like okay. So we don't necessarily on any of these parcels or some of these parcels, have any idea whether we could acquire Correct. The yeah. It it could be just this is where we'd like to see trails. Correct. No no knowledge in some of them whether

I mean, there's a you know, it's certainly follow waterways, you know, maybe follow roadways, things like that. So there's a there's a little bit of thought into that. But, yes, these are these are kinda more of less. How does it make sense to connect with the system that exists currently?

Is this public?

Yes. Yes. It's in our strategic plan.

I mean, we we did something four or five years ago. Mhmm. We put it together, and we follow sort of follow the same idea. Well, we put trails along the the the waterways, the dishways, and so forth. A little summer fields, how we right right field is not attached to anything. How how do we get connectivity from Summerfield to that? You know, we we had different Right. But there's you know, I think if we sat down with a blank slate and did it all by ourselves, we'd come up with something pretty similar.

Well, it's very exciting, and that's, you know, part

of the reason I

I think I kinda knew the answer, but I was I

was hoping to say, no.

We've already got I wish. I wish. And and, you know, a lot of it is, you know, could have been fortunately, unfortunately, depending on how you look at it is is through some development, but that doesn't mean that there are opportunities, you know, outside of those developments to make some really cool connections And not only within Erie and and really kinda targeting, which is why it says draft doesn't have our Erie branded loop on it, but I would say it'd be really cool to have a loop that goes kind of all around Erie that's continuously, you know, multiuse path off street trails.

Yeah. Have you guys heard anything from the BERT team lately?

I have

They selected a consultant. We should probably probably start putting the I've asked Matt to provide me Matt's on the kind of the project team along with Miguel Aguirre, our transportation mobility manager. So I know they selected a consultant, so they're kinda ramping up that process. So I've asked Matt to provide me updates, and then that's something that I would like to include in future agenda packets so you all can get those updates when I get those updates. So no news as of as as of today other than I know they selected a consultant, and they're now starting to work on the actual next phase of that project, which is starting to create actual plans.

Right. So we've been having a lot of discussions with them around the Canyon Creek and Lafferty, just developments because of how it intersects with the BRRRR project in that area.

And I guess we've mentioned before, Prairie Run, the Southwest portion, I mean, they're literally laying out Mhmm. The trails and the the trailhead where the parking's gonna be. So I haven't heard anything, but it would certainly appear based on how much they've done already. It's January. The vector can see if we open this calendar year.

We start to make the connection through the Kenosha.

Yeah. I mean, you can actually see where that's gonna go to. Yeah. Survey markers around. Really? Nice. Yeah. That's exciting.

Yeah. So we can change those little red dots into an orange line Yep. Someday. Yeah. And there's some more there's some cleanup work we have to do on that one. That's why I put that big old draft in there. So but a version of this is is public. So but, again, you know, when we approve that first plan back in September, it already looks a little bit different. So that's why I hate static pass.

Okay. The next item is funding, distributing the sweatshirt that we'll do that after we adjourn. I think most of

us already got. Pardon me?

Most of us already got. Oh, only three. Oh, the first three. What happened? I had them in three separate huge bags last time.

Joe and I were some of the

lucky benefits you. Yeah.

Yeah. You and I think Joe got his. So Tim and I I bought I mean, obviously, I have mine at my house, but I'm hoping somebody who well, we'll find out. Tim's the only one who ordered a large. So the whole purpose of this is to try it on and say, I gotta I need the next larger size. I think everyone will be safe to say no one will be say, it's too big. Okay. So we'll we'll do that after germs. So so the last item is, are there any comments, questions about items that we haven't discussed? Happy New Year, everyone.

Okay. Happy New Year. Okay. If not, the time is 08:12.

Do I

have a motion to adjourn? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No? Okay. Thank you.