Tree Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Let me see.

He said he'd send me an update, but one of us better.

No, he hasn't sent anything. Come on. Okay, well, we'll have to receive that one.

We're zooming, but we're not camera zooming. Our street's in good hands. Is there more in the nest too? No. Yeah.

There it goes. Okay.

All right. Good evening. Time is 6.31. This is a regular monthly meeting of the Town's Open Space and Trails Advisory Board. First item on the agenda is roll call and invocation of quorum. We'll just start with the members. Ed, go ahead. Just here. Yes. Bill?

Member?

The campaign member. Ken Martin. So we have five members. The two missing members both have excused acts. Perhaps it's Christine Fels is traveling on work and Bill Wigler had an assignment in South Boulder. Excuse me, South Denver. I wasn't sure of that. And we have two other members, two members of the town council. John.

John Mortellaro, council member and open space liaison.

Dan? Dan Hoback, council member and alternate liaison. Luke Bollinger, town staff.

Okay. Next item is approval of the agenda. I have one extremely minor item. Under general business, the first item should be the town council liaison report. We missed that. We forgot that last one, too. So do I have a motion to approve the agenda as amended? Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Nay. All right. Next item. Let me make a time here. Is approval of previous minutes. They were available on link. Does anyone need them pulled up? I actually have a printing copy for you all. Okay. All right. Does anyone need time to review?

I'll wait a couple minutes.

we need more time not do i have a motion to approve the minutes i moved second in favor aye opposed nay one word uh public comment i don't see anyone members of the public or president here okay onward to general business first item is town council is on report

All right. Got some good news. If you haven't heard, the council unanimously approved the page property to be designated as open space by unanimous vote.

Yeah, you should emphasize unanimous.

Unanimous. and gave direction to staff as part of the motion does staff is direction on how to classify the space. It was discussed, there's two open space zoning categories and is it gonna be all ag open space, all reserve open space or split in some fashion? which actually brought up another topic, something that was discovered during the council meeting. The question was asked, how much of the open space is categorized as reserved open space? And the reason for reserved open space is that it requires a vote of the residents to rezone or sell the property. And it came out that 0% of our open space is designated as reserved open space. 100% is established as ag open space. So it's not covered under the home rule charter that protects it. so that that's an important designation and and thus a request or ask uh that we would have for or i would have for ostab is to review um the open space properties and how they're zoned um and then you know come back to council as to what they what you feel they should be zoned uh Also, there's certainly good reason to have two categories or multiple categories for open space to allow different operations on those properties. But should they all be... all be protected? You can have reserved open space, which is more restricted, and ag open space, which is more flexible about the land usage, but only one is protected. Should they both be protected? And so that's another question I would have for OSTAD is, should they all be protected or protected? go through and determine which one should be and also should all open space that was purchased with you know TNAF or TNAC or TNAF funds you know taxpayer money should they all be designated as protected open space, right? So there's a few different nuances in there. And so I guess I would ask OSTAB to look at that and take on this project to come back to council with a recommendation, you know, my opinion as a resident a taxpayer and Someone on the council. I was always under the assumption. They were all protected And to learn that they weren't was a surprise So I certainly would support that that they all be protected. But um, you know, I Would ask you guys to come back with a recommendation as to what and why? So That's kind of the gist of it. It also, when you say protected, what does that mean? Protected by a vote of the residents.

Council Member Mortillero, can I jump in a little bit? Yeah, so what we discovered was, yeah, I think Council Member Mortillero kind of brought up a good point, was I think we always assumed that every property that was purchased with TNAF dollars was automatically protected. You couldn't Get rid of that, for lack of a better phrase, except for a vote of the people. That is not the case. There's no restriction in that ballot language or the zoning that prevents that from happening, right? Now, there would be a severe uphill battle if somebody wanted to say, by Coal Creek Open Space, right? So as we kind of looked at the charter and we conferred with our town attorney's office and the reserved open space zoning was created as a result of the town charter. So any property that is zoned reserve open space does require a vote of area residents further to be sold or rezoned. That is not the case with ag open space. And I think as we get into some of our properties and a determination of what properties we want to be as zoned as reserve open space or ag open space, we have to consider either the current or the possible future uses of those properties. So yes, ag open space is protected in a sense that you can't develop it. But there is a chance that a council could, though highly unlikely, get an offer from a developer to say, I want to buy that property. Well, it's zoned ag open space. That does not prevent, there's no vote that's required with that. Now, if it was zoned reserved open space, that would require a vote of error resonance.

Is reserved open space negate the possibility of ag occurring on that open space?

Not necessarily. No, I think it's a special review use. So the reserved open space is, I will say, more restrictive. So think of a site like Schofield, purchased with TNAF dollars, but we have the makerspace on it, we have events, we have ag on it. Those uses wouldn't necessarily be permitted under the reserved open space.

That's all the fun, isn't it?

Right. Yes.

What's an example of an open space in town that is reserved right now?

Well, zero. Zero. Nothing.

It's a relatively new open space zoning. It was created with the town charter, but the next step wasn't taken where anything was categorized as that.

That is on my work plan for 2027, is to look at all of our open space properties and then come back with a recommendation for OSTAB to look at the zoning of all of our open spaces. Sorry, Kim, one more thing. I think we also have to look at those restrictions of the reserved open space. Also, things include things like utilities. which are not allowed in the reserved open space. So that's why it's actually a fairly big lift, which I'll just be honest, I can't get to in 2026 to start looking at all the zoning of all our open space properties. So that's going to be on my 2027 work plan.

So can you elaborate on that when you say utilities aren't even very utility? Correct. What if there's an existing easement?

Something that we're going to have to figure out when we start looking at properties and what we're comfortable with as a town.

Because it does... I think legally.

Well... According to the zoning, if there's a sewer line running in the middle of a property, I don't think we could zone that property as reserved open space because there's an existing utility on it, and that's not allowed.

Unless there's a corridor or something.

Correct.

The page property is a great example. Go ahead. I've got a wild card to throw in here. The current resolution for the TNAF process is the third iteration. I think, but I have no way of being sure, but we need to look at the previous iteration, which was number two, had a specific clause in it that said any property purchased with TINA funds can only... have a change of use by vote of the citizens. But we would have to confirm that. If that's true, that means regardless of the current zoning, anything that was purchased prior to the current resolution, which was probably three or four years ago at this point, would be protected. But again, we'd have to obviously track down the exact language of that resolution.

Yeah. And, and Luke and the emails Luke and I traded, uh, this past week, he, he brought up a good point. It would be a pretty good outrage if we were to try and if somebody were to try and sell a piece of our open space property without, um, uh, you know, going through a vote, but, um, But we just, like I say, we want to, you know, cross the T's, dot the I's and make sure and get this back in the process. I guess the other thing is, you know, we recently purchased an open space property, right? And it was approved by OSTAB and it was approved by council, but it's probably still zoned as Ag Hold, right? So is there a standard operating procedure after we purchase a piece of property to rezone it to some category of open space? We should look at that as well.

My own goal is that the two zoning categories should not be the differentiation between who can and cannot change the usage. I think there's ample rational reason to have, for all practical purposes, natural areas, which have very limited activity and ag for them. But to me, all open space should be in a position such that only a vote of the citizens can change it. Because you say, well, the town council will never do that, but... You know, the current one, I agree, would never do it, but who knows, you know, four or five years from now.

Yeah, in other counties where he seemed to have it.

I mean, theoretically, suppose someone said, well, I'd like to build a... a concert venue uh in in the coal creek open space uh just south of of the the bridge over county line road and there'll be it'll seat 700 people and they'll be parking for 1500 cars and we'll we'll move the coal creek itself to the board of the properties And my offer is worth $15 million. What do you say, town council? I mean, it's very hypothetical. I don't want to be in a situation where the council has to look at an enticement. Exactly.

So, yeah, we want to tie this out and get everybody on the same page and make sure that what we – What we need protected is protected by a vote.

Just so I'm clear, to convert current ag open space to protected is just a council vote or does it require a...

It goes through the rezoning process. So we would have to put in an application.

Oh, okay. Yeah, a public hearing and then the council to move it from... It's not a ballot issue or something like that.

No, it's not a ballot issue. The citizens can speak at the meetings, but they have they cannot say all in favor. Yeah.

Yeah. So and then so. So, yeah, I think there's a fair amount of work to do there. The other thing is, I hope everybody's aware that we got an offer from SM Energies to purchase our mineral rights. We're currently looking at that proposal, investigating it. The current plan right now is currently on the agenda for next Tuesday, the 16th. It came up and there was a study session last Tuesday where it was asked if any of the mineral rights were under designated open space property and The answer was no. There is a question around the PD for, I think, around Thomas Reservoir.

Thomas Reservoir and some other properties. Yeah, there is another line of legal thought that says the charter controls. And treasurer does not refer to zoning. So that remains to be decided.

I read the article. It's a lot of legal question marks about the whole law.

And I did ask the question, do surface rights and mineral rights, are they connected? And the answer that I got back was it is not. But my understanding is that surface rights and water and mineral rights are separate. But that's my answer from I was in our email that we got from staff just before the study session where there are a list of like 18 questions. I had asked several questions. Yeah, that was one of the questions that I asked. And that was a response that not this staff. Yeah.

I disputed that, by the way. I was curious, Dan.

You disputed that because?

Because historically, legally, financially, mineral rights have always been considered real property.

But I mean, just in terms of the separation of surface water rights.

They can be contractually severed. They are not de facto severed automatically. In terms of the mineral rights? Mineral rights, water rights. I mean, yeah. Water rights are different, especially surface water rights, because you... can file a claim for water rights, but that's mostly because they flow, I guess. I'm not going to get into water law, but yeah, legally, historically, yeah, mineral rights absolutely have been considered real property and unseverable, well, unsevered from the surface rights unless contractually done so, yeah.

Okay, thank you. So did you have more to say on that John? I just wanted to go back to the issue of the rezoning on the open space designations. So it seems like we've got enough here. There have been a lot of points brought up and there'll probably be more as we think about this. I'm just wondering, Dave, is this something, I guess you've been taking notes, is this something we could type up as a fact sheet, we could all kind of review? Is this something you could do or Luke could do? You mean the difference between those? Yeah, just all the questions that we ask. I had the request of the council member that, you know, in terms of the items that we look at and come back to. Yeah, I was going to ask the question, this is an action item.

Who is pursuing the action? Because that's part of your work plan for 27, you said, right?

Yeah, I can forward you all a memo that was requested by council on the two different zoning. And I think that would help answer a lot of questions. But yes, it's already on my 2027 work plan to look at this.

So I don't know if that answers the question.

I can tell you right now, gentlemen, I don't have the capacity. No, no, I understand. To do this work on 26. I'm just being completely honest.

No, I understand. What I think John is saying, if I understand correctly, is that OSTAP needs to investigate this a little bit more and make a recommendation. So somebody in OSTAP needs to take the lead and pull together whatever information we can.

Yeah. So we as a group can really understand the issues and the questions and what council would like us to provide back in terms of recommendations. And lands.

I think we need to talk about that because that is going to take a little bit of a staff workload. Depending on what you all want to see, I just don't know what that would take. It's a gray area since we don't know what... I know what properties we own and what their zoning is.

I mean, John had listed a number of items that he had requested that we look at. And number one, that we go through all the properties, that we look at all the designations. I know that's something you felt like you need to have input on, which I agree, because you know what the capabilities are. It would take us a little more time to go through and discover where all those are. There's also the question is if host and purchase or if team have purchased the property, should it be designated as restricted? And there were more questions and more kind of nuances that we need to look at. I'm just thinking this is something that I think we all need to take some time to ruminate on or really understand thoroughly. And I know we're going to need your help or staff's help, but I think there are some things that we can do to start and to kind of understand where we're at. One question I had is I had heard that there's a discrepancy between what our charter says and what our zoning says.

Yeah, the charter just says open space. It doesn't break it into different categories. But the UDC was written after the charter because it refers to the charter. So...

Yeah. So does that mean the interpretation is the charter is the final word or is it, is it, that's a gray area also?

Well, that's a, to me it's a gray area because the charter clearly says open space requires a vote, um, to resell, rezone, et cetera. But the fact that the UDC was written afterward, um, and only calls out one type of open space and refers back to Article 11 in the charter. It concerns me that you could say that the charter was interpreted into the UDC, the UDC was written afterward and the UDC clearly shows there's two different categories and only one goes to a vote. That would be my concern, that's the gray area.

I think if I were to suggest something, what I can do is put this on a future agenda, maybe next month, month after, provide you all with a memo. maybe have maybe one of the either the town attorney or the the deputy town attorney being here because i don't because a lot of that interpretation came from that office so it might be helpful to have maybe them in the room and then provide some additional clarification on this so and and so you can all illuminate on it a little bit more some of those yeah i also think it'd be very very beneficial to have the exact wording of the referendum

both the current version and maybe the previous two, because they would... The wording of those would control what you can and can't do with any properties purchased. And that's what I know.

And I've looked at both the 2004 and the 2012 version, and it doesn't necessarily explicitly state that. It's restricted. All it does is create the revenue source and what that revenue can be used for. But that's where I would like to have maybe a legal interpretation of are those still in effect or does it kind of revert to the most current because that's what the voters pass. Those are all questions we can we can maybe discuss at a maybe next month or the month after. And then we can kind of as we develop the work plan and then we can kind of figure out kind of big next steps.

I think another thing to look at is the exact wording of UDC, because there's a component in there that defines what type of properties are permissible for the developer to set aside as designated open space. And I'm almost certain that agricultural... is in there. So here we go. Here's another use where agricultural and natural areas effectively are all lumped together as, quote, acceptable donations to the town. So a lot of loose strings here that got to be considered.

I apologize. I don't typically take up this much time in your reading.

I did ask Councilman Mortalero to kind of go through that because I know you had some discussion. Thank you for doing that, John. I appreciate that. Anything else, Sean? No, that's enough.

Okay, I think we've had enough time discussing this, but to be continued in capital letters. Dan, did you have anything? No. Okay. So onward, the next item is the election of chair, vice chair, and secretary. Before we open for nomination, just two pieces of information. One, this election will only be for one year. Normally it's two. But the realignment of when all the boards terms end from ,, it means that next year, three members here will be up for designation. And we will vote again for the three officers And since Christine had advised me she couldn't come to this meeting and she's the current vice chair, I thought we all should know her answer to two questions. Would you be willing to be chair and would you be, and or would you be willing to be vice chair? And her answer was not chair, too much family responsibility, but yes, for the vice chair thing. Okay. With that, I'm wondering, Luke, if it would be appropriate for you to go through the process?

It's pretty simple. Members can either self-dominate or another member for open position will vote for the chair, vice chair, and secretary. Just quickly going through the duties, as you all know, Chair Martin or Ken has been our chair the past few years, basically leads board meetings, helps guide discussions, works with myself as a staff liaison to develop meeting agendas and priorities. and also serves as a primary spokesman for the board when needed. Vice chair supports the chair and assumes chair responsibilities when the chair is absent or unable to serve. Vice chair may also assist with meeting facilitation and board coordination efforts. And then of course, secretary, which David has very kindly over the past few months has been helping with us assist with maintaining organization and continuity of board business, including helping ensure motions and key discussions are clearly captured in the meeting minutes. and ensures timely delivery of final meeting minutes to the town clerk's office. And then the secretary may also support coordination of board communications and follow-up items with staff liaison. So going back to the beginning, so we'll take nominations, whether self or another member for the chair position, and then we all vote on it. It's pretty straightforward. Pretty easy process.

Thanks, Luke. So let me just ask, Ken, are you interested in serving in the data?

Yes, for one year. Yeah, this is final. I will not be an officer forever. after the next election. So everyone else, yes, I'm willing to be the chair for another year. But everyone else has got to say, one of us is going to be the chair a year from now.

I got a question real quick before that. So you said Christine, that's what she was interested in. Did Bill give any indication? No, he did not. Okay, sorry.

I haven't gotten an impression from these people. A 50-50 chance he would be here, or if not, he would say, you know, I'll probably arrive by X time. But obviously that's not going to happen since he hasn't responded to anything. Okay, we have one nomination. Luke, why don't you go ahead and Run the process.

Okay, thank you. Yeah, so I only heard one nomination for chair, Ken Martin. All those in favor of appointing chair to Ken Martin, raise your hands. Anybody opposed? Okay, vice chair.

Nominate Christine.

Okay, any others? Anybody opposed to appointing Christine as the vice chair? Okay, great. And Secretary?

I'd like to nominate Dave if he's interested.

Anybody opposed to appointing Dave as Secretary? None. Okay. Chair Martin, Vice Chair Phillips, and Secretary Tess. Thanks, you two, for doing it. And Chrissy? What do we got next, Ken?

We have the next year, 2027 Trails and Natural Areas Fund Budget Recommendation. And Luke has already put together a memorandum with plenty of details, so I'll turn it on.

Hey, and what to you? Well, so this probably looks a little bit different than what you've probably seen in the past, but wanted to make sure that we were being absolutely 100% clear with the TNAF, which is our Trails and Natural Area Fund. So as you saw in the memo, We're recommending an appropriation of $5,526,885 to support ongoing capital projects, planning efforts, and reimbursement to the general fund for the page property purchase. I'll get into the detailed breakdown in the memo here in just a second. But according to the finance predictions, the 2026 ending fund balance for 2020 and the 2027 beginning fund balance is estimated at $3.8 million. So how that number is derived is our 2026 beginning balance, what we appropriated last year in expenditures, what we anticipated in this year's revenues, and that's our ending funding balance. So if we spend every single dollar that we had appropriated for 2026, which was about 5.7 million, that's where that 3.8 million ending fund balance comes from. I did note, and I did chat with finance about this, 2026 revenues are expected to be closer to 3.7 million versus the 3.1 million that we see in our budget. That's more consistent with what we saw in 2024 and 2025. So based on projected 2027 expenditures of 5.5 million and revenues of 3.7 million, the fund balance is projected to end 2027 at approximately $2 million. That's in the memo. No, I'm sorry. That's not in the attachment. That's in my, the board, the board report that I sent out. So your summary and key points.

Can you just refer strongly on the 27 payment to That would be, or the estimated payment that would be made.

Yeah, we'll just jump right down. We'll just do that. So, um, as you all recommended to town council and town council also agreed with was the, uh, trails national area fund would reimburse the approximately $3.35 million, uh, for what was purchased with ARPA funds, uh, back to the general fund so that, uh, future council can have those dollars available for purchase of affordable housing. That looks over five years as to not drain the fund balance and to keep us able to continue operations and purchase open space. When it came up, we agreed that $670,000 over five years would be that the fund balance would be able to handle that. And we'd be able to spread that out a little bit. So it's 670 for 2027, 28, 29, 30, and then just over 670,000 in 2031. So that's what that would look like. And again, we can adjust that from year to year. So if we have, because we make annual appropriations, it doesn't have to be $670,000. We were just trying to get to what's a reasonable timeframe. What's a reasonable ask of TNAF to repay those dollars and finance is okay with it. Town management is okay with it. Our attorneys are okay with it. And then ultimately it's a decision for council on whether to appropriate those funds. Okay.

And I did ask during the meeting if a land swap could be done, if there was appropriate land to do that so that we don't drain the TNEC funds or the open space funds. So that was discussed as a possibility.

Yeah, that would be a council decision.

Yeah, I've got a question on the whole page situation. I looked to see if the minutes of that meeting were available on the town website. At least a couple of days ago, they weren't there. So this is strictly from memory. But to me, there were three components. One we've already talked about, rezoning into one of the categories. The second one was to look at the house to see if it had any potential use, and that could be open space or it could be something else. But I'd gotten the impression that the total amount that TNAF would reimburse the property would be somewhat dependent on whether or not that area where the house is is ultimately going to be open space related or something else. So that amount could vary. And the third was... When the amount is reimbursed, I thought it was the town council was going to readdress the situation. Would that be reserved for affordable housing explicitly, or would the town council make a decision on what to do with it? So that's strictly my memory.

So a couple different pieces is that, yes, council did ask us to look at the feasibility of using the house for some sort of historical or interpretation center, look at trails, and then look at possible overflow parking for downtown. Staff recommendation, just because of fund balance, staff workload, we're gonna ask that we push that into 2028, because as you can also see in the memo, we do have a page property study. We need to figure out a little bit deeper what's going on with the property, Add it to our open space management summary. Get an idea of what we actually would need to do. And then once we have that information in 28, then start looking at holistically, where is most trails going to be appropriate? Where could overflow parking go? What could we do with the house? So that's going to be our recommendation at that point. That's a 28, not a 27. Yeah, well, that's going to be our recommendation. Now, town council may direct otherwise, but the other part of it, and I think you kind of mentioned, the idea was the entire property is purchased from TNAF. So once that happens, the entire site will be under the purview of what we can do within the rules of open space, whether it be ag open space or reserved open space. So an interpretive or historical historic or interpretive center could be appropriate for an open space zoning. Yes. So whatever we zone it, especially the house property, it would be allowed under the open space destination. So I don't think there's any concerns with carving this piece out and not paying for that because it's not open space. Again, kind of using the Schofield model.

I was thinking of a hypothetical. Suppose it became a historical center site. Was that still appropriate for open space or if it's not open space?

Schofield is a great example of that where it can have that type of use on it and it's still appropriate under that zoning. And then I'll just kind of quickly go through the lease or the memo here for Kevin.

Maybe it's an extension of one of Ken's questions. Has the analysis ever been done to assess whether there would be a lot of money to be recouped if we were just to resell the house?

No, that was never something that I don't think we were looking for.

It's just, it's very much, well, it's nice tree part of the property. It is very much carved up in the corner there. And it's clear it's the potential uses may be many, but the near term, like practical use of it is very murky. So I don't know. It feels like it's a valuable property. I don't know. I've never been on that part of it to know if this is a terrible idea. I really don't want to retain that. But it's very segregable from the lay person's eye. I don't know if there's other thoughts on that. Just as a primary resident, it's like it was. Is that worth investigating?

My own feeling personally is probably yes, because my memory is when the... uh, property was appraised. I'm pretty sure the house was North of by itself was North of a million that I did not include the land. Or the barn, which is common sense is if you sold the house, you probably could no longer use the barn for town storage. But if we're talking about a million, that's real money.

It seems to me that should be on the table. Because the barn would be a regret. Hypothetically, there was practical use for that out of the gate. But the rest, the trail and everything can be west of there. though everything else we talked about as near-term use. I don't know.

Just note, if we designated all open space and we say all open space has to go to a boat, it's just to be wasted.

I mean, it's worth real money. Yeah.

So we were talking about the parks facility up there. We had always kind of imagined a community gathering space as part of that. Right. It wasn't just going to be, you know, a parks facility, but there was also going to be a community gathering aspect to it. So, you know, adding gazebo somewhere, maybe in the middle of the trees, having a community room inside the parks and open space facility. So those things are still there. you know somewhat um i i think the um to tim to answer your question no we haven't looked at it because that's the direction that you know we didn't get that direction um but you know you could you open it up as another community use space or something like that sure i again i don't know what that looks like i mean it's taken the town almost a decade to get Schofield where it is. Of course, that's a truly historic property. This property is not a historic property. So, I mean, if that's a recommendation of OSTAB to take the council to consider, that's a possibility. But yeah, we have not looked at that.

And just to be clear, the parks and rec use of the building is not, that has been taken off the table. Correct.

The parks and open space maintenance facility is off the table, yes.

Would you envision that to include

consider some considerable land to the north or just an easement so that they can get to the property i forget how much is east how much of the there's still i mean from an ag standpoint we certainly grace that hillside we have the water rise to irrigate it it's so desiring

I was thinking in terms of access from north. Ten and a half.

That's a fair distance. You look at most all the land east of the dish. Well, the dish itself. The dish, which is going to have the trail, would obviously be part of the open space. But I mean, you could certainly... put some sort of, you know, 100-foot buffer or whatever. I mean, there's a lot of possibility. I mean, Tim is breaking it up. It's going to be a shame if we take a wrecking ball to something that's worth a million and a half dollars or something like that without at least looking into it.

To be candid, not to... rain on Tim's idea. I think it's a good idea, but at this point, considering how hard we fought on that property, I don't see that as a use that folks would support to be perfectly candid. I think that the idea of historical, maybe some kind of a community room, a gazebo idea, some kind of a picnic area in the streets. People really commented a lot on that aspect. They really liked those mature trees back in

Why don't we put this on the agenda? We should not decide this tonight. Why don't we put it on the agenda for the next meeting, whether we even want to float that as an idea outside of this room or not? I think we can decide right now.

With all due respect to Tim, I agree with Phil that, I mean, there's good habitat there. There's opportunities for maybe a little nature center, maybe Parks and Rec could make use of it. To John's point, given that all we, you know, Iowa put a motion forward, I mean, we need a motion, I think somebody would need to put a motion forward to say we should consider that. I don't think we should consider that. Okay.

I think the motion could go either way if you want. Go ahead. Make a motion. We typically wait for a full board to have a discussion. In the past, I mean, ideally, since it's a big issue, it'd be beneficial to have Senate voices, particularly since it just popped up. So my preference is to wait till the next meeting, that people give it some thought and give the other two an opportunity to go. So my preference is to... The thought does not go beyond this meeting in terms of asking the council or asking Luke or anything like that.

Well, what I could do is I could get a little bit more information of what that process would look like. And, you know, because we'd have to subdivide it. And I've never sold town property before, so... I could maybe do like a pros and cons and figure out maybe what that would look like. Yeah, that's all right.

I mean, that's kind of what my job is. Don't we all chip in and get a bigger plate for you for the next month? I wish. I wish it was that easy, Ken.

This is kind of related. You mentioned that there's a study planned for page property. Correct. To look at that. Can you just elaborate on what you envision that to include?

Yeah. So kind of like what I'm going to talk about with our open space management, we'll have an update. So Arkansas will come in and do, you know, kind of another environmental study. What areas need more reclamation? what areas are suitable for, you know, certain types of uses like trails and parking lots and things like that. And just give us kind of a high priority things we need to do, medium priority things we need to do, and then low priority things we need to look at. So most likely a recommendation that will come out of that plan is evaluate, you know, the area around the house and the house itself for a future use, which we kind of already know, but again, It goes beyond now that we know we're going to look at the entire 40 some odd acres. We need to do a full comprehensive study as if we were going to take this on as open space because it's never been studied in that manner. So.

I guess there's two things there. One is that we've talked about we have an envisioning process for this property because we've never done that. So we would like to, that's something that we wanted to kind of initiate soon. And then the other piece would be, I would just say from a standpoint of study, we mentioned the consultant's going to look at the different uses and prioritize them. I would just like to say, I don't think we need a motion for this, but encourage the consultant or staff to convey to the consultant that irrigated agriculture grazing is a part of this property that we'd like to preserve. It's an historic use of this property and it's something we'd like to keep and for them to consider.

Yep, exactly. Because we've never been in that mindset, right? Because we were always there, a good portion was going to be developed. So we're now shifting our mindset into like, okay, this is going to be viewed as an open space property. Well, what does that actually look like? So yes, and it is, I was talking to Matt Spinner as we were developing the budget here. That's something that we're going to have the consultant come and bring back probably different couple times, you know, kind of a draft, maybe a kickoff meeting, draft report, and then a final report. for that kind of visioning exercise. So I can add that in.

Ken, just for my clarification, did I understand you correctly earlier when you said that you think there's maybe something written in the charter or something that if we use TNAP funds, it might automatically be reserved?

Well, Luke said he's looked at, I would say not the charter, but the first two ballot resolutions. Well, like the current one, the ballot, His language has got maybe 100 words, but it refers to a town ordinance, which, by the way, I could find the ordinance. I couldn't find any information in the audience about that. But anyway, I had a draft of it. And it was three pages, single page long with lots of T's crossed and I's crossed. So I know that the draft of the current one did not have any verbiage in it about it. uh with who could change the use but i i thought that the previous resolution which i think was done in i think luke said 2012 as i learned it did contain that but luke said he's he's been able to see it and it does not yeah not explicitly yeah i mean explicitly say you know Any change in use can only be done by a vote of the town citizens. There was nothing that explicit in it. That's what Luke said. And I haven't tried to find. I tried to find a couple of years ago. I literally could not find it. Okay.

And I was just trying to understand, is there something in there that... prevents us even looking at what Tim's talking about.

If not, then... Our understanding now is that there's no explicit language that says it's a moot point, here's the rule. But to me, it's a very important open question that, to me, I fully agree with two different types of open space. I fully disagree with the thought that One requires a vote by the town and the other, it requires a vote only by the town council. I would like to see all types of open space, whether it's two, four, six, or eight, all say the change of use. Because the ag zoning permits a lot of flexibility in what can be done, but that flexibility should not include, let's sell it for a completely different purpose.

So just so you know, council asked staff to come back with a recommendation of how they should be zoned, right? So there's a sense of urgency around your conversation around the house up top. So just know that they're working on that. So if you want to look into that, this, pursue this, there's a bit of urgency. I'm going to do that.

Just back on, you mentioned that the process the consultants can look at in terms of evaluating is partial. You envision a kickoff meeting. Just to clarify, would that kickoff meeting I'm envisioning, interpret that to be that the consultant comes here and requests input from this board? Is that possible? what you're referring to probably i mean we haven't we haven't we haven't talked about scope or anything what that looks like so it could i'm well i'm just wondering there's we want as i say we wanted to do a visioning process for a while you're aware of that and so i'm not sure if that needs to occur you know within that scope or if we need to do it on our own

No, we can certainly have staff bring in the consultant and have that visioning exercise as part of a meeting in 2027.

I'm just curious, what does everybody else think of that approach? Okay.

Any other discussion on the page property before I move to the $4 million and asks here.

Just one question to go back. You said something about you send a report to us.

I will send the memo that I sent to council on the budget details.

You're rattling off. We're going to have this much. We spent that much. I don't have any of that information.

So the agenda. There's the agenda. And then if you click on that link, it has my, the board report. Yeah. Right. And then attached to that was this memo that,

Sorry. That's okay.

There's two links on it. So there's the link to the actual board report. And then within that has an attachment, which is the memo. And the board report has all the dollars in there that I kind of rambled off there.

That's okay.

That's all right.

This is kind of a new process. Question. To me, when I clicked on this link, Which is... That's this. I brought up this, and only this, correct?

Yes. This link here, the 2026-35. Oh, okay.

I got it. I got it. Okay.

That's what I did.

This is all funny because all this is going to change here in a couple months because we're transitioning away from Granicus. So I'm going to teach all these new rules, and then we're going to completely shift it on you.

Let's go through the other items because some of them are not trivial.

Uh, okay. So $15,000 for ag lease, uh, program improvements. We kind of talked a little bit about this year. We had a lot of ag leases on our properties and in order to get the most out of those ag properties, we make them, we make improvements. This one is Allen farms, um, some ag ditch and, uh, Just needed some repairs. So you can read the report and then if you've got questions, we can come back to it. $189,000 for Coal Creek North open space restoration. So around Mount Pleasant and west of Collier's neighborhood. This is just kind of an ongoing project, which we've been doing for the past four years and just rehabilitating all that native in that area. $2.2 million in Colquist.

Yep. So that's heavily used right now by our friends, Kits with Bikes, the Not that that's a bad thing necessarily, but I'm just curious, will those social trails and things be accommodated? Will they be blocked? What is your vision there?

Our goal is to keep everybody on the actual trails and keep everybody off the open space, save for the Colcord Disc Golf Course. So that's that part of that restoration process. Also, it's getting rid of all the Canadian thistle and managing the prairie dog population and all of the other noxious weeds that are on the site.

If you haven't been on the new trail, I recommend you do. I mean, start in Old Town, go over the bridge and go up toward the cemetery and go south and north from there. It's really nice. I've been on it three or four times. No matter what time I'm on it, there are a lot of people on that. Now I realize it's June, not January. Still, I'm pleasantly surprised how heavily it's used two or three weeks after it was officially opened.

I was downtown Thursday night and I was impressed with the number of people using the bridge on that trail. All the kids playing in the Coal Creek Park.

It was cool. Just so I understand on that one, this is just natural area because I rode that trail just the other day. I mean, instead of just letting it grow wild, you're saying we got to do something other than that?

Well, there's a lot of invasive species in that, and I can't get into the specifics. I probably could get into the specifics, but... basically a better functioning landscape than it is because over the years it's just been impacted by all the you know development activity and you know just not being cared for properly so we're trying to eliminate all the invasive species prairie dog management and things like that that degrade the open space and there's a lot of social trails okay good question $2.2 million. This is a big one. This is our Coal Creek Reach to Trail Connection. So this is the trail connection from Alliance Park going west to County Line Road. That project is essentially being held up because of our ongoing negotiations with the current landowner and then also the Coal Creek Reach to Flood Mitigation Project that has FEMA funding tied to it. We completed construction documents. This year, they are ready to go. As soon as negotiations with the property owner are complete and the FEMA money comes through, hopefully at some point, then the trail will follow the creek restoration project. So we don't know if it's going to happen in 2027, but we wanted to appropriate the funds to make sure that if we were able to move on it, we get the economies of scale, hopefully from the same contractor and be able to move on the trail really quickly.

Question. This reads it includes an option to connect to Erie Wetlands. Is that priced into this?

Yes. Yes. Yes. That's a great. Thanks for pointing that out, Tim. Yes, it does include the optional connection from Erie Wetlands over to the trail. The mitigation project itself.

Does that include or dependent upon the widening of County Line Road and the relocation?

No, but it's all depending on negotiations with the property owner right now and the FEMA funding.

Okay, well, the point is if the property owner agrees to have the creek moved north... which is, I think, what the goal is at this point, would it still go under county line where it is now? Okay, so we're not, the whole idea of relocating the underpass of county line is a whole separate issue that would not be addressed at this time. Correct. Yeah.

Luke, was it 11 acres that the landowner is required to dedicate to the town? Was it

Unfortunately, I can't get into too many details on that. There was an annexation agreement that was with the property or that came with the property. But I know that those are in legal discussions right now. So, A, I haven't been part of those and B, they're kind of ongoing negotiations. So I can't get into too many details on that. All right, getting into some of our signage program. So with the new Coal Creek Collier's Hill, or excuse me, the new Collier's Hill Trail, we're going to rework some of our disc golf course hole signage for both the reorientation and then just the safety of both Coal Creek disc golf users and trail users. Multi-purpose trails at Coal Creek Open Space, user safety and wayfinding improvements. So that's the multi-use trails west of the single tracks or the single track. If you haven't been on that new trail, that one's pretty cool. You don't have to go running down that awful dirt road anymore. But as part of the sunset area plan, we're going to be reworking the sunset multi-use trails. And so enhancing that user experience with some additional signage. Schofield interpretive signs. I think I mentioned we had a history intern go through all the Schofield history and develop a sign package for us for the content of those interpretive signs. And as part of the work that we're going to be doing in 2027, we'll be installing all those interpretive signs. 863,000 Sunset Area Plan Phase 2A. So this is the connection from our new trail on the east side through multi-use on the west side down to connecting Colquitt Regional Trail with the 10-foot wide concrete trail. We did get a CPW grant for the planning and design. That's at about probably 30% design. And then we hope to go back to CPW for grant for construction. But we did put money in that for construction in in 2027. $15,000 trail connectors. So this is I can't remember this one.

Driven by the prior one, right?

Right. For those concrete trail looking, I may have made a mistake here. Hold on one second. I'm reading that and that doesn't quite seem right. Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, this is for reworking some of those multi-use trails on the west side. Obviously, with a new 10-foot wide concrete path going through there, we're going to have to reorient some of those existing multi-use paths.

Okay.

And then 1.4 million for the Schofield farm redevelopment. This is going to complete the restoration of the original shed, breeder house loafing shed, and then remaining site improvements.

Good question. Maybe it's too... You came to it off the top of your head. How much is the total expenditures on the Schofield property beyond the actual purchase, and how much of that came out of TNAF?

It's about $15 million and about...

wealth over time has been tnaf funds okay and then parks improvement impact fund okay well that just seems you know one of our concerns when the uh the current resolution went through it expanded the use of TNAF funds from, I think, before we're strictly buying and maintaining open space and designing trails home and to expand it into parks and stuff like that. And one of our concerns was, you know, two greater percent would be used for non-open space purchases. And this is a good example to me that we've, a lot of TNAF money has been used on activities that to me are a little bit gray as to whether it's

open space or not i'm sorry i have that flipped it's 9.3 million in pif um 1.1 in lwcf which is a grant actually about 10 million dollars in pif and then 2.3 million so far in tnaf so i'm sorry i did have those flipped okay well that's quite a bit lower yeah well that's why i pulled that up because i was like i think i have those flipped around okay Mark's Improvement Impact Fund. Yes. And then just some, we already talked about the $670,000 page property reimbursement, $115,000 in consultation services. So those three bullets update the 2019 open space management plan. We've got a lot of new properties that are not part of our current management plan. And then just updating that included with that is the page property study. That's a separate project, but it's along those same lines. And then we always budget some money for surveys and appraisals if we're approached from a landowner.

And is that RFP for multiple or you can use one?

Yeah, we'll do two RFPs for that. One to update the current management plan and then one for the page property itself. Usually get a lot of responses from me. There's a lot of firms out there that do that.

Will there be an explicit plan for the Weiss Homestead property? Because from a management standpoint, that's a possible trailhead.

We've been talking with Boulder County, and they're not even close to anything on that end of the Prairie Run open space. So we have that in the long-term plan, but not for 2027.

It's property reimbursement. Just remind me what's being reimbursed from where to where.

That's going from TNAF back to the general fund in a restricted fund for purchase of affordable housing land.

We didn't buy it originally. It's the half that we... For the five-year period of spreading that out. Does that make sense then?

I'll get it.

Well, if you've got a question, we can come back to it. And then just... We paid Boulder County and Weld County to collect our property taxes. Those are those kind of treasure fees and then $1,500 in bank charges. So budget is due June 12th. And then pretty much over the next five months, we'll be working with our executive budget team, town management, of course, town council on the final appropriation. But that is my recommendation. Okay.

Which will result in a 90% change to this.

Well, I hope not this one. General fund is fine. I'm hoping not much for this one.

No, not the amount. But going back to that whole free throw of H2, H2.2, and that's if we mention the two conditions that we kind of met before we can spend that and go forward with that. Right. But that would basically, that would be in place, H2.2 million. Right, yeah. So I'm just looking, and then the Schofield is a one-time, and it's complete. So the trajectory that you pointed out at the onset here was, you know, we're going the wrong direction. We end up at the end of next year, 2.0 estimated ending balance. But when we take those, those are not going to be expenses that we're going to see in the future. So you envision that that trajectory is going to change and start going back up.

Yeah, start going back up. And there's also a chance that, you know, we can make a decision to delay some of these projects if we have an opportunity. So this is just an appropriation. That doesn't mean we can't change it a little bit in the future. This sets us up to make sure we complete projects that are already happening. Gotcha.

And basically, what do TNAC funds bring in in a year? What's the projection that it'll bring in?

So we've been sitting around 3.7 million for 2024, 2025. Our 2026 budget, if you look in the budget book, it shows it at 3.1. I did talk with finance and we're good with estimating right around 3.7. You know, that's a property tax. So it's based on assessed values. So it doesn't have anything to do with development activity other than adding more rooftops. But, you know, as we can continue to grow, albeit slowly, That fund balance will go up. That also includes open space Fianlu from developments, which we have a couple that are due this year for Fianlu. North of a million dollars or so worth of Fianlu. Thanks.

I don't see anything here for the Compass Trail Connection. Is that just not 2027?

That's a good question too. It does not include for construction quite yet. We don't know the cost of that. So our strategy with that is to, we have a kickoff meeting on, I think it's tomorrow actually, or maybe Wednesday to start design. We won't be complete with design until... September of this year. So our strategy is to get a rough order of magnitude, which is basically what it's going to cost to build, and then come back for supplemental if we have the funds to do that. There's also some leftover funds after design that maybe we could do a phased approach with that one. So I didn't want to throw just some random number in there because I don't know what's going to happen in the next six months. It's a good question too. All right. Any other questions on that? Great. Get into work plan.

Well, there was at one point, not too long ago, there was discussion of another property. And I wouldn't say the name right now, but there had been interest expressed.

And next month, we're going to talk a little bit about the land acquisition and protection strategy. Run some ideas by the group and see how that lands. Hey, great. Tomorrow... All right. So if you read the board, the board item is all the advisory boards are moving towards presenting more of a work plan for two reasons that make sure that all the advisory boards have a You know, kind of identified, agreed upon work schedule and then also create some predictability in what we're doing as a board. For example, Tim, I know you have expressed some interest in doing some more volunteer based activities. getting more community involved. So I kind of took a stab, and this is the big 11 by 17. I took a stab at organizing what could be a 2027 work plan. And as part of the work plan, or as part of the process, you'll be presenting this work plan to council. So when Council Member Moralero has some ideas we can incorporate after the presentation or if council has a, hey, we want you to look at the page property, we can incorporate that into the work plan and then adopt it as a council. So really, really what I wanted to get into tonight is just kind of a general feeling of obviously it's not specific by any means. It's very much high level. And then as we get into our advanced agenda with Chair Martin, then we can talk about specific topics that we want to talk about at every meeting. So this was just purely a stab that I took about what I've been hearing over the past. How long have I been like full-time liaison? Maybe a year, year and a half or so. Some of the things that I've heard and I've taken and put on this kind of draft work plan. And I'll throw it up here on the screen. Okay. which is going to take me, of course, 15 minutes to figure out. But I'm already halfway there.

Does this get presented in the fall with our annual presentation, or is this a separate product?

And by fall, you mean next month? Yes. That's the next topic. Yeah.

Will there continue to be two presentations? Just one. Good. Okay. That's a good idea. I think every six months is pretty quick.

Well, good. Because if you were going to say it was a bad idea, I'd say it wasn't my idea. But since you said it was a good idea, then it was mine. I'm just kidding. Okay. So... Come on. Okay, so this is what's in front of you here. So just really kind of quickly, again, high level stab. So looking at January, doing kind of a project review, right? We've passed the budget. What are we going to talk about? What's going to be, you know, what's approved? What's our schedule? Kind of a brief project overview. And then to start maybe bringing in our, currently our DNS team, maybe some planning on development updates. In February, doing what lapses land acquisition and protection strategy, map review, acquisition scoring, conservation strategy discussion, looking at that current year's budget. What do we want to do? Maybe looking at the management plan. Arbor Day, Earth Day planning in March. Maybe we bring some ideas to the table, start planning out when we want to have some other volunteer opportunities.

And town fair planning. It's all part of the same activity.

All right. April, I know Matt and Joel are going to be coming back at some point to present our open space management report. I think that's something Phil or maybe Dave, one of you two wanted to see. So making that maybe an annual thing, talking about where we are, doing some project updates, and again, bringing back that quarterly development update. May, not a week before it's due, start talking about some preliminary budget discussions. What do we want to see? What's in our long-term plan? uh june so maybe at this meeting our council presentation prep and then going over budget recommendations july we present to our town council that's a separate meeting maybe we bring back a quarterly development update maybe there's some other special topics that get in there um i was thinking uh somewhere in here doing an open space property tour maybe we pick some properties and go tour them um We've been meeting in this room now for a while, and I think it'd be nice for us to get out and use one of our meetings to just go look at some open spaces and see what the staff is doing. I know you are all out there a lot, but it'd be great to bring Matt and Joel and maybe some of the staff along and get you guys to know the staff.

Part of that, consider also the... two conservationies. So we hold that's north of the town reclamation because they're pretty spectacular. And we wound up with a bald eagle flying over our head with a crackly touch. This was a long time ago. I'm probably the only person that's even been on those projects. Well,

David, did you run in Washington? Which one? The ones north 52. Okay.

It was quite a while ago. Yeah.

September, maybe doing a project state. That's kind of when we usually start wrapping up some of our bigger projects. October, maybe we have a joint meeting with Frederick or Lafayette. Meaning like we kind of what we did last year. Again, another quarterly development update. November, we start maybe working on this in November. Maybe look at kind of what we reviewed. And then December finalized next year work plan and then kind of a year and wrap up. November, December kind of tough just because, you know, we could shift anything around here. But that was kind of my initial stab. And what we can do is... You know, we can add, delete, move things. We can say, hey, this looks pretty good. We can all agree on it. And then as we present to council next year, we kind of already been talking about with budget, right? That kind of develops our next year's work plan almost automatically. So this is why this is pretty high level. So thoughts?

As long as we have room to, you know, adjust as needed.

Absolutely.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I got one question. I think you mentioned earlier, Luke, that you've got some high, medium, and low priority projects. Is that reviewed as part of this at all or not? Or is that outside the scope of what this is?

High, medium, or low project. Well, I think the highest priority projects are what I presented in the budget, right, along with other.

I think when he was talking about the consultants going to be looking at the paid property. Oh. Yeah, the different. Got it. Potential uses for the problem. And they're going to be looking at, okay, so I got you. Medium or low. Okay.

I might have misunderstood.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. We have the whole reanalyzing all the potential uses. open space, future acquisitions to use the new priority setting. That's next month's discussion. Okay. That's next month, not way off into next year.

Yeah, this is kind of what a typical year would look like. And then based on the budget recommendations, then that kind of drives that work plan.

One thing we had a while back was McKenzie gave us a review of the work she's doing on the pollinator, pollinator gardens or pollinating, designating area pollinator district. Would that be part of the annual open space management report?

It could be or a joint meeting.

Oh, okay.

I don't know where they stand with that.

I don't know where... She's still pursuing a lot. I talked to... Well, you saw me talking to Erica after the thing on Monday. And she said there's a number of things that are going on around town with pollinator... gardens and people getting certified as pollinator friendly. I don't know. I just, just curious if there's enough there to warrant some discussion somewhere along the way. Maybe, maybe it's just having Mackenzie come and, you know, fill us in on what she's up to. Yeah. Let's see if we, you know, if there's anything we could do to support her.

Okay. Yeah, absolutely.

I certainly, and I, Would like to, would love to hear Matt and Joel come in and just kind of update us. There's something we've talked about for a long time. I know we've been just so busy these last several months with just kind of business at hand, but that's something I feel like we don't get to do enough of. Yeah. We've got to move something around management, different parcels and how that's going and progress that they're seeing and challenges that they're encountering.

Yep. So right now, I think I have that scheduled for October. I think I tried to push it in one of these, but I can talk to Matt and Joel again. I think there was some time off in there, but I can see if I can push that up. But yes, absolutely. We definitely want to do more of that. Because frankly, I'm tired of talking at these meetings.

I don't blame you.

So I also wanted to show you this. This is something that we've been working on. This is what we do with our council meetings is doing more of an advanced agenda. It helps me plan meetings. It helps talk through different topics. So obviously, I've only gotten through July at this point. But this is that property acquisition strategy update that I want to give you all. We'll also talk a little bit more about maybe some page property update. Maybe I just kind of make that a standing topic here for the next probably month or so, a couple months. But really just trying to get us to be a little bit more aware of of topics and and make sure we're balancing our time really well and so you all know what to expect and this is in the shared folder so any of you um that want to come in or or you know drop a topic in um just let me know or just shoot me an email and i'll add it hey can we talk about open space management plan or can we talk about wise homestead or can we talk about the ag lease program or something like that just pop it you know pop me an email and i'll add it to the advanced agenda and then we'll talk with the chair about when wouldn't this that fits so

I would think automatically just put the page property on until the question of the final question of how is it going to be zoned and which of the zonings require who to approve it. That's going to be a hot topic every month until all the T's are crossed. So I would say just put 15 minutes in. Or whatever.

15 minutes, Kim.

Come on.

All right. I like your optimism. So, John, when you passed that resolution, or John and Dan, when you guys passed the resolution, you did not specify in that resolution, correct me if I'm wrong, that that was to be restricted to open space.

never to be developed. The motion was amended to where we asked staff to make a recommendation on how to categorize either the whole property or separate the two, the east portion and the west portion, and would they be different So, so that we left it at that because we started to get into a deliberation on the dais and Meredith said, um, maybe, you know, instead of trying to solve it here, we come back with a recommendation. And so that we amended the motion.

Yeah. So what staff will do if we didn't pass a resolution. Okay.

So what we'll do is we'll, I think on Monday, the 15 staff will do like a charrette, figuring out, okay, this is going to be reserved open space. This could be ag open space, et cetera. We'll kind of come up with a rough drawing, probably bring that back to you all later. give you an update on that and then kind of move it along a little further in the process because we're going to have to get it surveyed because that's how you do a rezoning and then ultimately run that by you probably again and then ultimately the town council. So it's going to be quite the process, especially when you're talking about two zoning districts on one property. So we good on the work plan?

Yeah.

So good about overall? Okay.

Great.

Ah, shucks. Almost said something else. Okay. All right. So next we're going to be talking about the annual... As Chair Martin pointed out, we're only doing one council presentation. What you have printed in front of you is last year's presentation. I wanted to give you some context on what we talked about last year. We've now adopted a template for how we're going to be doing this. boards and commissions presentation, uh, to just make sure that council kind of knows what to expect. Everybody kind of stays organized. We're all kind of presenting the same information because there was a lot of different templates out there. And, um, as you can imagine that can, uh, Drafting people crazy. So this is our draft 2026 presentation, which that meeting is on July 28th. So I wanted to kind of go over it with you all to make sure that we weren't missing any information. Kind of go over the template with you, obviously with Chair Martin being the primary spokesperson. It would be ideally you giving the presentation. Of course, you can delegate that to whoever you'd like, but you've done it before, so you kind of know what's going on. So obviously, I'll fill in Ken's information here, and then I'll just kind of quickly run through the presentation. Here's what we're going to be talking about, acknowledgement, what OSTAP does, who are the board members, highlights, and then kind of going forward. So, oops, went way too fast there. So just doing some quick acknowledgements, talking about some of the OSTAP functions. This language comes directly from code. It's a little bit truncated. So obviously we don't want a whole lot of text on here, but I think, you know, Ken, you do a really good job in kind of explaining what OSTAP does. And then talking a little bit as a community liaison, kind of what you do in that capacity as a board, kind of going over who the board members are. I'll fill in the titles here. for board members and then kind of going over some highlights here. And then I have a question off to the right here. Is there anything that I'm missing? So we closed on the 32 acre Wildrose parcel, recommended funding to purchase the coal miner park, worked with staff on revising land acquisition and protection strategy, provided key input recommendations on the page property, key input for the Prairie Run open space, conducting community engagement every day in town fair, revamped the agenda process and work plan, and we elected a new board member. Okay.

I got a suggestion under the wild rose where you say serving a multi-use path connection to Ocean Farm and Prairie Run. Realistically, until BERT is available... This is going to be the only way for people to get the prairie run other than using town roads. They'll just have that prairie run. Anything else that we're missing? Well, I had one possible thought. In the past, when we've listed the board members, we've given some of their background. If you look at the one last year, it's kind of repetitive because six of the seven members are the same and the town council hasn't changed. But we do have one new member, so I would think it'd be beneficial to...

So what we want to avoid is a lot of text on the slides. So you can certainly talk about that. And, you know, if Ed wants to send you or if you all want to come up with a two to three sentence thing, we're just trying to avoid a lot of that, a lot of the text on the slides.

If you look at Ed's application, it could be multiple pages. Right, exactly.

So, no, you can talk about that. Totally talk about that. We're just trying to reduce the amount of text. Because you can see some of this gets a little long. That's a lot of text for a slide. But sometimes when we only have so many... Oh, shoot.

Where's my...

Okay. And then going forward, right? This is why we talk about the work plan and kind of talk about the budget, right? Continuing work with Erie and Boulder County staff. So think really high level, page property, long range planning. So our plan of land acquisition and protection strategy, trail connectivity, habitat quality and connectivity, right? Talking about some of those projects that we just recommended in the budget. Continue to outreach property owners for fee-simple acquisition and conservation easements. Continue community outreach beyond Town Fair and Arbor Day, going back to what Tim has mentioned, and then support Parks and Recreation and Planning and Development departments as needed. Anything else that I missed? Any ideas? And we actually have another meeting, I think, before this one. So if you all think of anything, I'll throw this in the folder and I'll send it out to you so you can review it. And if you see anything that pops up and say, Luke, well, what about when we did this? Or can we talk a little bit more about this? We can add some notes in there.

I'm just going to throw this out maybe for wintertime. I might be better coming for it, but we're late fall and we're somewhere in that neighborhood. But in the past, we have sent out letters. We want to continue to do so by needing to send a letter here that we're going to send one here as soon as we're allowed.

but that's next month's discussion.

Yeah. So, okay. So part of that, but let me just throw this out for you to kind of think about is, wouldn't it be appropriate for us to, you know, just kind of switch it up a little bit and actually invite all the landowners to Just have a kind of an open invitation to landowners that we have potential interest in purchasing the property and just invite them to a, not to this meeting, but to a separate kind of a get together to discuss this. how the town manages open space land, what a conservation easement looks like, why we're interested in preserving open space of different types. That's just something to think about for everybody, for this board and for you. Just, again, to sort of a new way to kind of garner interest and connect potential interested landowners with the town.

Yeah. And I think that's a great kind of sub point for next month's discussion. As you see, I had an hour scheduled for that. Those are those kind of conversations that because because right. We did revise that whole process. Right. And so I have some ideas. So I think. that sub point again i think that would be great for that conversation is how do we kind of look at this um you know because i've been talking to some other communities and everybody does a little bit different so yes to answer your question in a in a short way yes absolutely what that exactly looked like i think we can create it however we want to but i think that's a good idea yeah i remember we had that joint meeting with lafayette's board that was

They all perked up. They said, wow, what a great idea. The fact that we were even sending letters out. Right. And, you know, the letters have traditionally had my cell phone number in it. And I've been amazed that several times I've gotten calls from a letter that was sent out a couple of years ago. And, you know, I get in the background and I always get in touch with Patrick at the time or Luke. But the initial rentals in Prairie. Yep. came to me and look what we accomplished. Yeah. Absolutely. So to point us out, that letter really accomplished a lot. If it generates one phone call, every time we send it out, it's well worth the postage.

Which we budget for.

That's all I had. Anyone got anything else? Bill looks like he's rummaging through something. Let's give him a chance.

I'd be curious when town or police or whoever has an update on trail, e-motorcycle enforcement. It's all over social media. I've seen other towns trying to maybe take a stand and releasing infographics that clearly show the difference and things. We've got some... comments at both Arbor Day and the town fair in the public. People are very interested.

Chief gave an update at the last council meeting. Okay. Two council meetings ago. I think two council meetings ago. We've got some signs coming, some permanent signs. I've got a meeting this week to start to order some signs. I mean, from a parks and recreation perspective, all we can do is educate and help PD educate and put signs out on trails. But just PD just doesn't have the capacity to really do enforcement. So this was a big topic when I was on the Frederick Post Commission. And we made some recommendations on actually doing kind of what we did as Town of Erie, basically outlawing class threes on trails and sidewalks. And actually they punted it because of the feedback they were getting. uh, the pushback they were getting from some community members. Um, so they were, they were, they're in the same boat. I mean, every community is in the same boat and yeah.

TD is also been taking more of an educational approach. Um, showing up at contract, showing up at certain places where they're meeting, talking to the kids. And they have started to ramp it up. They have issued some citations. They have called some parents. They come get your kid's bike. It's illegal. He's not riding at home, you know, that kind of thing. So it's ramping up, but it's, yeah, it's,

Sorry. Is the issue that they're not road certified and they're on the roads, or is the issue they're not being safe on the trails?

Both. And more. Yeah. As I was backing out of my driveway today, a kid went by on an e-bike that had no pedals, so it's not an e-bike, it was a motorcycle. Electronic motorcycle. And You know, sometimes the kids aren't even aware, right? That's an educational piece. And sometimes their parents don't realize that they're buying their kids something that's illegal for them to operate.

And the thing with the class threes is, A, they're so hard to tell. I mean, the bottom line is it doesn't matter if it's a class one, class two, or class three. Now, class threes aren't allowed on trails or sidewalks, but it's 15 miles an hour is the speed limit. That's the bottom line. So you can still have a class two and still be breaking the law. That's the challenge that PD has. As Chief so eloquently put it a couple weeks ago, speeding is speeding, no matter if you're in a car or on an e-bike. Sometimes you get caught, sometimes you don't. They're not going to go tearing through open space to chase some kids on e-bikes because that just creates a dozen other safety issues. It's a tough thing. Education in 2015 was... That's in the rules. That is in the ordinance. Yeah. So those are the signs that will be kind of way more than that.

Very common.

Regular bikes. Yeah, exactly. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, class two with the governor on goes up to 20 miles an hour. Take the governor off. It goes much faster. And a class three will go up to 28, right? Yeah.

And some of these bikes can go up to 40.

Oh, yeah.

I've got one quickie. Just pull up the future agenda for July. Put in entries or feedback from Arbor Day and the town fair. I jotted down a half couple of things that people asked or did, why not, and so on.

That'll be good to work into future meetings as well, kind of doing a recap. We'll add that into our work plan too. And like I said, if there are topics that you all think about later on, don't hesitate to shoot me an email and we'll pop it into an agenda. And then I tried to do a monthly call with Ken to talk about the upcoming agenda, kind of what's out there. So we're trying to stay a little bit more organized in interplanning our agendas. So we're getting there.

Anything else? Going once, going twice, not sold. Now I'll entertain a motion to adjourn and the time is 8.07 p.m. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Thank you, everyone.

No question, Luke. It came from somebody that visited.