Tree Advisory Board - Regular Meeting

Really? Okay, we are unmuted.

Okay, here we go. The time is 6.32. This is a regular monthly meeting of the Town of Space and Trails Advisory Board. First item on the agenda, well, first item is to call a meeting to order. Second is roll call. So just roll around the room, Ed. Here. Okay.

Bill Brink, remember?

Oh, Terry. I tried to call them.

Remember.

Remember.

Christine?

Christine Fells, member.

Ken Morton, member. We have five, seven. The other two people have excused absences. So we have a quorum. Do you want to change the sequence of any of this?

Yes. If it's okay with the group, I'd like to first discuss item 2026-429, discussion of open space designations, then move into 2026-419, page property update in that order. Kelly Driscoll from planning is here with us, and I'd like to discuss those two items first, and then we can release her.

Thank you. I guess I should move back. Any questions? If not, do I have a motion to approve the agenda as modified? A motion. Second. All in favor say aye. Aye. I oppose. I should step back and identify the non-members here. Kelly.

Thanks. Kelly Driscoll, Deputy Director of Planning and Development.

Dan.

Dan Hoback, Town Council.

Luke. Luke Bullinger, Director of Parks and Recreation. Okay, next item is approval of the minutes from the previous meeting. Has everyone had a chance to look at them? And if so, are there any corrections? If not, do I have a motion?

My name's Mr. Stoltz. I don't really care about that. Okay.

We've got to correct that. No, you didn't miss on it, Tim.

Any other corrections?

If not, do I have a motion to approve? Okay. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? No.

All right. Who's doing minutes, Ken? Pardon? Because David is not here. Who's doing minutes?

Oh, that's true.

That's right. Okay.

I'm on it. Who's going to do it?

Bill? Okay. Thank you.

Lasered in.

All right. David's been giving us a nice break, so.

Okay.

True.

Next item is public comment. Do we see anyone from the public? We do not. Okay. Next item is town council is on report. John is not here, but Dan, you have anything you want to point out?

No, we had two weeks off. So there hasn't been a lot going on. I guess the last thing was the sale of the mineral rights, which I posed based on a number of things, but it passed and here we go.

There were no injuries resolved. Okay. Anything else there? Okay. All right. Onward. Onward. We'll do it in change of sequence. First item is 2026-429, Discussion of Open Space Designations.

So this kind of came up a little bit last month. As you can see here, the town charter established a new zoning jurisdiction reserved to open space designations. For the purpose of zoning certain properties, which resulting them cannot be sold, rezone, redesignated, or placed into any other such land category without prior voter approval. You all wanted to discuss the different open space districts. So Kelly is here to kind of help me fill in the gaps a little bit on what those are. And I know we've been talking a lot. Currently, we do not have any open space that's designated as reserved open space. We just haven't had the opportunity to really dive into our open space inventory and look at what the board and council and staff would like to see reserved open space versus ag open space, which is obviously the other zoning category, which a lot of our open space is. Some open space that we have as open space, using air quotes here, are part of PDs through development. So there's a lot of work to be done on establishing certain properties as reserved open space. The other kind of key point that kind of came up, which I think was a surprise to most people, was that if a property was purchased with Trails Natural Areas Fund, that it could not be sold, rezoned, redesignated. Probably our interest is mostly sold without voter approval. That is voter approval. That is not the case. Any town council can bring forth an ordinance to put that property up for sale. So that's nothing that we did or did not do. That's just the way the fund is set up, the way the town charter is written. If it's reserved open space, obviously that kind of overrides that requirement.

For my benefit, the rest of you probably already know this, but Can you give me a precise definition of what reserved open space is and ag open space and what can be done? I get the voter part, but what otherwise defines those two?

Really, it comes down to uses. And Kelly, feel free to step in here. Ag open space, as from the memo that I attached to the agenda, and then also since you all on June 9th, really lays out what the difference is between the two zoning districts. Ag open space here. I'm just going to have to look at it because I don't want to say any. The purposes of Ag open space district is to provide areas to be used for agricultural and open space purposes and to recognize and preserve land suitable for long term production of agricultural commodities, lands suitable for grazing, animal husbandry, view protection, passive and active recreation and conservation uses. Uses permitted by right in the ag open space district include open space park, certain utility facilities, ag cultivation, grazing and breeding, animal hospitals, as well as various special review uses. By contrast, the stated purposes of the reserved open space district are more narrowly tailored as it is designed to provide areas that are dedicated to open space and trails specified in Article 11 of the Home Rule Charter. Uses in the RO district are more limited and directly tied to open space and trail purposes, with parks permitted by right and parking lots allowed through a special review use. As a result, reserved open space zoning provides stronger long-term protection for open space properties, but also reduce the future flexibility compared to ag open space. So basically, you have one that's really restrictive. in terms of what you can and cannot do on that property in reserve open space, tagged on with the voter approval, and then the ag open space gives a little bit more flexibility in what you can and can't do on that property.

Okay. If I understand correctly from what you just said, though, both of them could have trails on them. Both of them could have picnic table or pavilion and a restroom or something like that. Is that true or not?

That would, unless it falls under that parks designation.

Yeah, I think it probably could fall under that. Let me just verify before I speak.

Yeah, it probably could. Curious, I looked up the definition under the UDC as well as the Home Rule Charter, and I'm curious, where did you find, because I did not see in the designated open space 1102, no land designated by the town's open space may be sold, rezoned, designated, or placed in any other land use category. without prior voter approval. I think that's where we wanted to get the page property, since that's the point of discussion. But I did not see under the reserved open space under the UDC where it said parks are permitted by right or parking lots through special review. What is that?

There's a use table in the UDC, and it denotes every use, and then it's divided by zoning district.

Okay.

So it'll have a P if it's permitted by right and an S if it's a special review.

Let me interject something. There's not universal agreement on this board or the planning commission that we like the current setup and categories and obviously which specific properties are in which category. There's a long and involved process going to be required to review those and to do any rezoning, assuming that it's desirable. And the planning commission has to hold a hearing public hearing as well as the town council. The Planning Commission has already been in touch with me about working together on this. So the expectation is this is a fairly big project that will occur in the next calendar year, not in the next few months. Both the chair and I currently think we should hold a joint meeting in probably November, just to not to make any decisions, but just to set the table on what we want to examine during the next year. So my expectation is by December of 2047, things may look quite different than they are now. But we're not going to solve anything tonight.

We do have to be really careful because planning commission will see any rezoning as a quasi judicial application. So you can't get down into like specific properties to that level of detail with them because it might have the appearance of prejudgment.

Oh, OK. So we'll have to do that.

Yeah.

OK, well, make sure they understand that.

I think they do. But yeah, I just just wanted to put that out there.

And I guess my only thing in bringing up what I did, and I get what you and what you just said there, Ken, but to me, this ag versus reserve. It sounds like it's fairly new because the resort came up with the home furniture.

Correct.

Correct. That's why there's no properties yet.

Correct.

To me, this is something that potentially is going to come up a lot as we relook at properties around the town. so just from what i heard there i think it might behoove us to get more specific on the definitions of those two and what they can and cannot have on them kind of thing i think that's what your point is yeah well the other thing basic questions certainly in my mind uh is there any reason why i

some ag land can't be reserved. And like on the current corollary, is there any reason why non-ag land must be preserved? It seems like you've got a usage differentiation and importance or protectability, whatever you want to call it. So maybe those should be separated, or maybe we need I've reserved, I've not reserved open space. As you can see, it gets complicated.

So when I look at the designated open space under the charter, which it references... You're talking about reserved open space? Just so I... Well, when I'm looking at section 1102... Okay, so the new zone. I mean, you could probably say this better than me, Lou, but so that we have the charter... And then we have the UDC was updated. And so the UDC looks back at the charter, but it is the more recent document which people refer to. So we have to look at both of these. And so if we look at the charter, it says no land under designated open space, no land designated by the town's open space may be sold, resold, redesignated, or placed into any other land use category without prior voter approval. Now, if we look at reserved open space, it then refers back to that section. It says the purpose of reserved open space district is to provide for areas that are dedicated to open space and trails as specified in Article 11 of the Home Rule Charter. So when I read that, I don't see any preclusion of putting ag land in reserved open space.

That was legal counsel's advice when the ordinance was drafted. Yeah, I mean, we did bring that up. Yeah, we were, you know, there's a fair amount of open space in town that is agriculturally used.

Well, we may have to petition the Supreme Court.

Yeah.

And I think the other... I think, and correct me if I'm wrong again, but reserved open space does not allow for agricultural cultivation, animal husbandry, basically all the things that you want to see on an ag land. I feel like I see you searching.

Without use, right. Yeah. But that's going back to the table you mentioned.

And so by making this reserved open space via the charter, we kind of, I don't know if backwards is the right term, but it's funky. I'll say that. It's funky the way this reserved open space was created and When you already had an open space district. An open space district.

But that was, yeah. Legal counsel said that that did not meet the intent.

Yes, of the charter.

So that's why we had to create the reserve.

I mean, look at the charter and I can't see what the intent was. Some, who knows how much, what percent of the land should be protected. Protected, to me, meaning explicitly says only the voters can make a change. But I don't see anything in the town charter that says ag land can't be protected. Yeah. Even though we know ag land needs a lot more flexibility in terms of what changes can be made. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, that language is, we already got that language in the code. We've got grazing land, we've got cultivated land, we've got agritourism, agribusiness. So that's kind of covered. And all we have to do, to me, is add the specific language that we think is appropriate under the reserved category for what ag land can be reserved that is not changed.

which also has to be done through the Planning Commission of the Town Council if we change the definitions.

I mean, the worry has always been that this, that, you know, a future Town Council would blow up the, you know, this or other open space, whether it's Paul Page property or the Wise Farm or our farm. or any of the others. What about the Coal Creek Corridor?

Yeah. That's a great place to put a performance center with a thousand parking lots.

I'm being facetious, but that's permitted right now. No, that's been suggested. I had somebody come up to me this week and said, you're on the Open Space and Trails Board, aren't you? And he said, you know, it'd be great on that page property would be a water park. So people have different ideas.

To be continued. I think that's the important point. There goes beyond simply looking at two or three properties and saying, let's change it from A to B. Yes.

But if I understand correctly, to change either the definitions of these or add to them, or to change add to reserve, both take PMZ and council approved. Correct. Yes. Okay.

Which is why it's a, and obviously a lot of involvement in staff. So budget accordingly. Yeah.

Yeah. So what are the next steps here? Is staff going to take this and provide recommendations or what's the next step?

Yes. As we get into 2027 and the staff work plan, then we'll put together kind of an A to Z process on what this looks like. And that's bringing... These properties would be considered for reserved open space based on the current and future and potential future uses. Yes, do we want to do this? And how do we break that up? And how do we start redrawing rezoning maps and doing all those things? I think there are some obvious ones out there. We just don't know exactly what that looks like yet. So for example, Coal Creek corridor, right? That's probably a relatively easy-ish section of property, section of properties that would be... good candidates for reserved open space.

And it would probably need to be subdivided in order to zone. Yeah. So it's, I mean, it's complicated. I know on the face of things, it seems really simple, but there's a lot of steps.

And then go ahead. So then in that situation, it would be looking at which properties we think should be reserved open space, but then. Leaving some as the agricultural open space designation and all of us being okay with the fact that that might mean it could just be sold with a town council vote as opposed to changing both to say none of it can be sold with just town council.

And then limiting the use of that.

You just say none of it and then limit use of it.

Yeah, exactly. But remember, you know, it's certainly possible, I'll even say highly probable, some ag properties should also be protected. I mean, a good example to me is the Weiss Homestead Farm, which now has Burt going for it and will likely have a trailhead both for Burt and for Prairie Run.

And I think the question that we still need to answer is that because there is an existing ag use on the property, can we zone it legally as reserved open space? Because it's not allowed as a permitted use. We cannot.

There you go. We cannot create nonconformities.

Yeah. Okay. So there's your answer. So for that to happen, you'd have to take the ag off of it at whatever time, at least.

Yeah. Yeah. I think it might be worth exploring with. in in-house legal counsel now just getting a real clear, I don't know if they issue like a opinion paper or something that like just lays out, you know, why the uses are they the way they are, or, you know, if there's any, any room for flexibility there. So, yeah. And that could help inform. you all moving forward with what your priorities are.

Right.

OK. Anything else on that one? What did I put on there?

Oh. Did you have any other comments on that?

I don't think so. Probably talked too long on it, and I shouldn't.

Yeah, I mean, you obviously have considered this about the town council.

Yeah, I just, you know, I guess to Luke's point, I think backwards is a very apt way to grab it. I don't, I have a hard time getting my head around charter being our driving defining document and then it's saying you can't sell open space and then they well we're going to keep all this open space as something that's not open space i think it should be the default default is is protected um and then if it wanted to be agricultural and not protected then we draw those out into a separate so to that extent i feel is backwards but

I think the intent was there. The intent was definitely there. It's just the way it kind of all shook out. It didn't happen the way we wanted it to.

I suspect there's a legal dispensive posture there that we might have... leases or something in different transactions for the ag open space. And if we dump that into a reserves default until we moved it out, we're at risk of either violating the intent, the description of you can't do ag on this or violating those leases and contract, whatever. So I think there was probably some of that involved, but...

You're right.

Yes.

Do our ag leases have consistent timeframes on leases?

And how long are those? They vary, but we usually do five years and then with a couple options to renew. We can't go over a certain amount of years on a lease. I think it's 20, but we do have pretty, and we have had pretty consistent ag leases on our ag properties, which are Allen, Schofield, lies. Those are the big three, I would say, that we have good ag leases on.

It's fairly common, you know, when we first purchase ag land, whoever holds the lease is going to have to put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into making it more productive, like the Allen Farm, which is essentially 100% uh alfalfa now didn't have any alfalfa was being used for row crops so i have no idea who paid to buy the seed but the point is the leaseholder probably used hundreds of gallons of fuel and a lot of time just to make the soil amenable and to plant so that's why you have an extended period so they can There's incentive to improve the property and essentially get your time and effort and money back.

We're ready to move on to 2026 419, which is a page property update. It's our gift that keeps on giving. So I won't go back into the now going on three and a half year history of the property. That's all laid out in the memo. But on May 12th, council directed staff to bring an ordinance to zone the entire Page property as a mixture of ag open space and reserved open space. As Ken alluded to, rezoning requires a public hearing before the planning commission and town council. All rezoning applications require published, posted, and mailed notice at least 15 days prior of the hearing. This memo had it tentatively scheduled to go before Planning Commission on August 19th, but I think we pushed that back a little bit just because of timing on getting things on the agenda and then pushing back on the council. So those dates are a little bit old now. When did we have it, Kelly?

December 16th.

for planning commission. So just because as you can kind of read in that next section, uh, we had to do a rezoning map, uh, by a registered land surveyor. Um, so in your packet, and then I printed these maps off for you all tonight, um, as a draft exhibit, uh, with the split zoning between ag open space and reserved open space so we conferred with legal staff from parks and rec planning public works all met to discuss how to split this property to ensure to ensure that future uses are compatible with each zoning district as we just kind of talked about the proposed split and i'll pull this up here hopefully this This comes up. No, it's not going to. Very cool.

That's all right.

I've got a backup.

So the proposed split, I'll just let it, before I get into my spiel here.

Do this.

There we go. So while you're doing that, just again from my education. So council voted for all of Page to be 100% open space. But at the same time, there was a directive from council to split it between ag and reserve. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Basically, right now, it's not even zoned as open space. It's called ag holdings, I think. So they specifically said.

That was a decision the council made during that May 12th.

Yeah, so in the May meeting.

At that time, you guys said, that was when I guess I wasn't aware of, that you said that we need to split this up into the reserve and the ag.

I honestly don't remember the split part, but we definitely don't need it. I'm not making it up. I'm agreeing. I'm not disputing it. I'm just not remembering it. So we can't.

have this 100 percent reserve right now based off of council's directive. Is that what you're saying?

That goes back to what we were just talking about. If you look in this property here, you have the single family home, you have the shop, you have the ditch, you have the pond. in this ag open space. I know, Phil, you have brought up several times the desire to bring back some sort of grazing. You rezone this to reserved open space, that's not allowed on that. In the zoning district. Out of the current.

Yeah.

The council direction was to rezone it this year. Yeah. So we have to do this now.

It could be rezoned this year. By that month.

Yeah. For what it's worth, we only gave direction. We didn't vote on any sort of. Correct. There's no plot to say this is this. So.

I think the expectation was that the. Area. east of the ditch where the home is and the barn and so on needed a lot of flexibility, because there's also a study going to be done to see if what possible use there is of a home. So right now, you would have to zone that as ag in order to permit something to change without going to the town. The question is, what portion of the area west should be reserved. And the problem is it's so black and white now that you can do anything, you can do nothing.

So if I may finish my spiel here, So the ag open space, which is the blue zoning that that stays or excuse me, that rezones to ag open space gives you the flexibility for ag cultivation, animal husbandry, grazing, all those things that are allowed within an ag open space zoning. The reserved open space zoning, which is the green here, as you can see, really abuts the Coal Creek, the Coal Creek and Coal Creek Trail. So that essentially divides up the property roughly so that this area can never be sold, redeveloped, rezoned without voter approval. Protects the Coal Creek Corridor, which I know was a... a big point for you all. And then we did keep this other small parcel that's separated by, uh, the ditch area that's not owned by the property, um, as ag open space, just to keep us from, you know, without flexibility. I know there was a lot of talk about, um, parking, community gardens, some sort of activation of the space. Not saying we're going to do that. Those are future discussions, but that's the intent of leaving this little tiny parcel right here as ag open space.

Can you share the logic of not including the pond area?

Again, just to make sure we have flexibility if we wanted to activate that pond for recreational uses, making sure we're covered.

Get session pond or something. Correct. Correct. So, I mean, it goes back to this whole discussion. If we're going to go through this whole planning process and we want to preserve, we want to make sure that in the interim that the property doesn't get changed, because it sounds like that could take quite a while, would we be better off, to Ken's point and to yours, taking everything from the ditch west and putting it under reserved open space? understanding that we're going to go back through these definitions and try to add some clarity and some flexibility where appropriate.

I don't know if that would happen. That'd be my answer.

What are your thoughts?

I mean, you lock yourself out of any other use, any parking lot or anything without going to the voters that way, but

The other thing, too, to change the town charter is a process in its own. And you would have to change the town charter to get ourselves out of the way of this whole reserved open space. And that also requires a vote.

Maybe we need a little more explanation, Kelly, on that. What exactly the planning commission plans to take up or what discussion has been had relative to? I mean, has there been specific, let's say, additional categories or nuances to the existing categories?

I think we would also need an explanation.

Yeah, I am not. No, Dave's not.

Because it seems to me if the reserve category is going to be changed, then this would be an opportunity to preserve it for the time being and then add the additional, you know, what we're talking about here is having a reserved ag open space, right? To be able to preserve this for agricultural uses.

I think maybe step number one is getting opinion from legal and getting some clarity on why or why not agricultural uses could be allowed. Yeah. And then that can kind of. pave the way forward as far as, you know, this property in particular, and then obviously other, other properties in the portfolio too.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it just seems like if ag, I don't know where that interpretation comes from. I'm sure it comes from some, some, you know, there's, there's some reason or logic behind it, but if it can be allowed, then it seems like that's a no brainer to put that in reserve in terms of everything West in the ditch.

Yeah. Well, I'm looking at it another way. We've had two distinct potential uses of property. The first one was to basically have the property split between affordable housing and open space. And the board turned that down six to one. And then we had the, I guess, Wasai official proposal for the church. And I don't think that ever came up to a formal vote, but that was on a thumbs up, thumbs down, turn down, seven zip. And then at the meeting in May, the proposal was that the entire property would be open space. That was approved seven nothing. To me, since we have no choice right now but to put it into one of the two existing categories, I think it's almost mandatory for me to put a position where future structures can't be put on this property because that's essentially what the town council has already effectively said. So I'm... very uncomfortable with such a small portion at this point being in the reserved category. Again, ideally, the property would be 100% preserved.

I don't have that option. I guess, what is the concern? You all have a concern with a future council bringing back the option to have housing on this property? Is that the concern?

Well, reminder, this is an old shit.

This pretty much kills any development possibility if you split it up this way.

Or some other use, you know, even if it's not housing on there. I mean, to me, when it was voted to be 100% open space, I think that's something to be preserved as open space.

but there was also, there's a potential that I can, we'll also say that there was also directive for staff to look at the future feasibility of turning the house into some sort of ag historical interpretation. So, yeah, which would not be allowed into reserved open space. So I think if we were, if, and I understand the point that that's, you know, kind of East of the ditch, I think if you needed any land to, use that doesn't conform with the reserved open space on the west side, I think we're putting ourselves in a bad position. If the only risk, if the only concern is that a future council could come in and rezone, sell, whatever this property, I think the risk reward is worth it. This leaves us a lot of options to do what the community would like to see with the property still keep it largely open space and then meet council's directive of splitting it up between ag open space and reserved open space. Because you all saw the influence that you had with killing the development. I don't see why a future council would not and the community, if they wanted to sell this property,

anything less than open space i don't ever see that happening that's just my opinion well one reminder there's an election in november it's a possibility that three of the current members will be gone and who knows if there's three new members what they might want to do so i don't want to give the opportunity to do something other than open space, which would be this, the board could decide at literally their first meeting to do something other than what the previous board decided to do. So I can definitely see the absolute need for the area by the house and the barn, except to be agged to give it the flex, because as I said, the study needs to do. But to me, more... of the area west. I mean, maybe you'd say everything 20 feet west of the center line of the ditch or something like that would be reserved.

Yeah, I think in that, in the pond. I mean, I think to... And the pond too, yeah. And leave it in the ag open space and then everything, whether it's 20 feet, something along those lines, west of the pond dam, center line of the pond dam and then west of the ditch gets that covered We add that to the reserve, and then everything east of it stays under the ag open space.

Quick, somewhat related question. The southernmost portion of what's now in the green area is going to require extensive rehabilitation. I mean, it's basically a graded rock pond. Can that be done in the designated? If it's done like this, can you do the rehab work? Yes.

It doesn't prevent any future expansion of the floodplain, like rework or anything like that.

Well, and that area is already being redone anyway, so.

Correct. Yeah. I'm curious. Well, when you were saying before that you'd like to have grazing in some of that park, I don't understand yet, but what is the benefit to the town of having actual grazing?

Obviously, you get a lease. It's a fantastic weed control. I mean, it's best practices when you're talking about native habitat management which is why we have the goats come out right because they'll eat all the invasive species so it's uh it's it's the least uh way to control weeds without chemicals uh pollution you know using equipment fuel all that all those kind of things it's the natural it's the natural way to control invasive species particularly goats are much better than cows

I did like the goats. To Luke's point, just to add to that, is also we think about fire mitigation. They take off a lot of foraging for goat meat. It reduces the fire risk.

If you've got cattle on there, then it's not really usable too much to the public, right?

No. That is a question of, okay, so how much of that is preserved for seasonal grazing? So this is not a permanent or a year-round thing. It's one of those things where you come in for a relatively short period of time with a a decent number of animals and you rotationally graze through, you'll remove a certain 30-40% of the forage and then they're gone for a year and they come back and do it again. They provide those benefits that Luke mentioned, but the rest of the time it's just open space and it's just regrowing. Can the public get out there and walk through that when the calves aren't there or the goats aren't there? I don't see why not, but

Okay. I'm assuming, though, that lease income is not a huge number for a budget. There's no active lease on this property. Any tax benefits of having ag property or anything is not huge.

There's no active lease.

So it's really the management in the open space, that stuff. Okay. That helps. Thank you.

No, you've been pretty quiet. You want to throw two cents in?

I'm stuck in the middle. I think I appreciate the strategy of maximizing flexibility while carving off the piece that will basically preclude any meaningful. If someone were to go rogue and assign the zoning of the blue remaining blue portion, given the setbacks and all the things like, could they practically do anything? I don't know. But why not lean into protecting as much as makes sense now? I mean, if we were to do some sort of setback from the ditch around the pond, is that really going to reduce any flexibility other than potential grazing rights? Is that going to reduce any flexibility from the amenities perspective within the buildings or the pond? I don't know. I don't have a strong opinion. I feel like this achieves kind of the basic maximize flexibility, protect the core piece, prevent any major refactoring of the overall use. Would another go at it that ties it closer to the ditch be a better initial outcome? Maybe, but I don't know what we gain other than maybe the optics of protecting slash restricting as much of it as possible.

I think for me, though, it's tough because we just committed to buying out the remaining portion of it. And now we're on a payment plan to do that because we didn't want to wipe out our entire fund. And so the fact that we just committed all of this money and then we're going to leave it open to potential investors.

I had that thought for a minute, but then I realized this is what everything else is currently zoned as, right? The blue. Every other parcel is going to be, that we own today, lands there.

Right now, it's not open spaces.

I almost talked myself out of that. It's like, yes, but.

But is now the time to start turning that tag. To me, it is. Protecting as much as possible makes sense to me, but

Yeah, and I guess, you know, the only caveat I would add, it's a great point, Tim, was that we've not had any other open space parcel that has had the kind of development pressure that we've seen. I mean, this has been a battle, let's face it.

What if the eastern border, the green border, just extended due north from where it is now. So you'd have basically another triangle.

Kind of to Northridge Drive.

It would just... The blue line currently defines the eastern portion of Green, and then it zigzags westward. Yeah. Supposedly, the blue line just went straight north. So in essence, you'd put another triangle... a possibly developable thing into reserve. So I would still give the flexibility to do. Well, I also think the pond needs to be.

Yeah.

I mean, for me, I don't see why not.

To me, that would not be a ditch.

But yeah, when I was at the hearing, when they made the first decision, that pond was prominently mentioned by several of the town councilor as the reason why the property had to stay as open space, not split into open space and housing, because it was obvious that although the housing wouldn't be next to the pond, it would annihilate the view shed that you see from the pond. So that was an important part of their decision. So to me, that should be preserved.

Well, I would just be, I mean, going back to your point, whether it's 20 feet or 50 feet, I would probably stick back to that original idea of just paralleling the ditch on the west side rather than drawing an arbitrary line north. I don't see any downside to that.

But which side of the line is the pond? It's west. So the pond will be restrictive.

Yeah, yeah. Kelly, how does the pond, if the pond were in a reserved open space? I think we asked that question when we met as staff on whether recreational fishing were to be allowed. And we weren't sure, so that's why we landed on the ag open space.

Yeah, it's not explicit, but...

While she's looking, can I just ask Luke, are we going to, the pond is really drunk. Are we ever going to put water back in the ditch? I mean, are we out of prowering right now? Or is it just because staff doesn't have time to irrigate that? All of the above, all of the above.

but we don't have the, we didn't budget any money for, uh, management of the pond we did for next year, but we'll start looking at that because we were waiting on a decision on what we were going to do with the property. Are we going to keep the pond? Are we not going to keep the pond? Is it going to be developed? Is it not going to be developed? So we just been in a holding pattern. So it's going to take some time for us to kind of, okay, now let's move forward with the plan.

So, well, I mean, we're in terms of the priority of that, um, Of that parcel. Do you know where we are on it?

Sir, remember in our budget discussions, we allocated some dollars to do the ecological study of the property. So that'll be the first domino to fall. And then we'll start determining, you know, the future uses.

Oh, no, that's not it. I'm sorry. I'm using priority and it's a different... In terms of the water right priority of the ditch water.

I couldn't give you a solid answer on that just because I'd have to. The water rights are so confused because there's seepage rights and there's only a couple of shares of the ditch that are associated with that property. But I know they're pretty low on the priority if I remember right. They're not that senior of a ditch right.

But the other question I've got is that piece of ag that's kind of out on its own there. What was the thinking on this one? Yeah. Right here.

Yeah. Uh, so we had a lot of conversations about, uh, you know, is there, do we want to activate that space? Uh, do we want to, you know, there's a lot of conversations around additional parking for downtown events, uh, activation in terms of community garden, uh, Those are the kind of the, some sort of community activation.

And those aren't allowed in RA.

So it seems to keep coming back to our definitions of what can and can't be done on air, which is what I saw. That's why it's going to be discussed next year.

That one I'll say I think is best in a flexible category because I think that there is a lot of need for parking and there may be some opportunities for a pollinator strip or some other things.

So it is OSTAP's recommendation to zone everything east, excuse me, west of this ditch as reserved open space.

I think we need a formal vote. I'm stumped on the pond. Are we restricting the opportunity there? It feels like there's a priority to protect it and the views from it, essentially from that plateau. But what about these other options? We've only thrown out a couple. We don't need to list them, but fishing or any kind of minor improvements in the spirit of a park and utility options. Would we be tying our hands?

What if we set what we established position is everything west of the ditch and including the pond, unless Luke find out from council that fishing is precluded under the reserved option. And then if so, then carve out the pond and leave it in the open space category.

Fishing would be allowed. I think it's just the parking and any kind of, yeah, that sort of use is not allowed by right. So, yeah.

If the pond is used for irrigation, though, is there... We should probably keep it in the ag.

You know, it was historically used for irrigation. I'm not sure... You have an opinion on that?

It would require significant investment to use that water. We'd have to go to water court, basically, and go through this whole product. Because I discussed this with Pete Johnson, who's our water attorney, and it'd be a pretty significant undertaking. to make that pond, the pond itself usable and the water itself usable for irrigation. I can say with the utmost certainty that the way the water was used for irrigation was not exactly legal.

I'm not surprised. That's a shocker. No. There is a head gate right here, Christine, that goes underneath the road, and so they can hook onto it. You can put in gated pipe and irrigate these sections here. So you wouldn't necessarily have to irrigate out of the pond.

Yeah, there's some laterals, as I recall, in existence right now.

I guess back to my other questions. That little piece again, though, is that a big enough space where in the future, somebody could build on that? I mean, I'm still a little concerned that that's a buildable area if we leave it and protect it. It'd be pretty small.

It would still need to be resolved.

Yeah. West of the ditch or east of the ditch? The little piece of ag out by the river. Oh, that. Okay. For parking or something for downtown, I get, or if we decided to expand Old Town and continue that, I mean, can somebody build on there? That's what I'm trying to get a feel for.

Well, I mean, I guess my question would be, wouldn't the town want to?

need to reimburse kinaf if that was going to be used for parking yeah yeah i hope that doesn't happen i'm just going to be honest with you i don't want to unreimbursed ourselves but yes yeah yes you would absolutely

I feel quite confident that OSAP collectively would bring up that situation.

I think that's a really good point. And you all kind of alluded to it was we have a lot of open space in town that would be prime for development. But because it's open space, because we're actively using it as open space, and a developer is looking at the map and saying, oh, that's ag open space. I'm not even going to attempt to do that. I mean, you would have to grease the wheels pretty heavily to take a piece of ground that's ag open space that the town purchased with open space dollars to get it rezoned.

Two public hearings.

Medium residential.

That piece right there, too, is significantly encumbered by floodplains.

Right. So to answer your question, no. Could it? Yeah. Is it worth it to a developer? Probably not. I don't know any developer that would want to come in and try to convince a council and a planning commission and an OSTAP to develop any sort of parcel that's zoned ag open space. I'm sorry. I just don't see it happening.

Well, strictly for a dollar cents, it's so small. that the cost of getting approval would be quite high relative to the number of, I mean, how many homes can I put on this thing? And how much money can I sell them for? And the answer is, there's not many.

Not enough.

I think the other thing too, and Kelly, if we go this route, right, leave us the flexibility if we do want to If the ecological, you know, the recommendations from the plan that we put together next year are, hey, this is actually prime for grazing and we come up with a solid plan. If it's zoned ag open space, we can go ahead and just start that process. If we zone it reserved open space now, then we have to reverse that process. And on the flip side, if we do go ag open space now, have the flexibility and we determine that, okay, we want to actually go through reserved open space. I don't know what would actually trigger that, but hey, we actually want to zone at reserved open space. We can do another rezoning. So we're not locked into this now. It's just, it's easier to do it from ag open space to reserved open space versus the other way around, because if it's zoned reserved open space, and there is a desire by a future OSTAP to put animals on that property, then we have to go to the vote.

Yeah, the difference is, we just don't know enough right now about what we want to do with the property. Reserved can be done through the planning commission and the town. If you're trying to go the other direction, go from reserved to ad, it has to go before the voters.

Which, in my mind, is not a bad thing for open space, you know? I mean, so, to me, the fact that we have no reserved in town, this is our first opportunity to start putting some reserved in. And even if it's a little more difficult to do some things on it, which we maybe got it worked out, to me, it's a lot cleaner to take the ditch west, including that low parcel. That's kind of my take, but...

I would agree, except for the little parcel. I would leave it out. I would leave it as the ag open space for the flexibility.

What exactly is the pale white that goes down along the east side of the property?

The east side, that is the RTD easement.

And it is not annexed into the town.

It's not even easement. They own that fee symbol. Sorry, I said easement. But that's the RTD right-of-way. No.

Okay, so that has to be really never touched. I was just thinking of ways of seeing the eastern side as one big piece of property because that's open space over the east of that, right? Yes.

Dan, if you figure out a way to get that from RTD, you'll be a hero. I will lift you up on my shoulders. That's a good search.

That's why we had to build a big bridge, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, plus I got the guy with that bike.

I see him all the time. Nine o'clock at night.

They're out there with their lights on.

Are we at a point where we want to say yes or no to something? Or are we still got more discussions? Someone make a motion?

Well, it's not. I don't think there's really an action item. Okay. Because it's just a recommendation.

Okay. Well, then, but my thought was, do we need to say we recommend 5-zip or 4-1 or 3-2 to do X? It doesn't hurt. I think that's beneficial.

So everything east, everything west works.

You could say everything east goes open space. That's what I was going to say.

It's only a couple of different.

Everything west of the ditch reserved open space, including the pond.

Including the pond.

Including the pond. And then this remains ag open space. This is more universal.

How about it? All in favor of recommending that for a great thumbs up. All not in favor of thumbs down. Okay. There's five thumbs raised to the sky.

OK, so next steps is I will have John redraw the rezoning map. And then once we get we have to get approval from council for staff to submit a zoning application. And that's happening on the 28th. If council passes that resolution and then I will will hopefully it will have the redrawn zoning map. and then we will submit for a formal land application. It will go through the process. It will go to a planning commission, and then it will go to town council.

Right. How long does a planning commission, they just need, how much lead time do they typically need in terms of getting out their agenda?

Oh, we just need to meet notice requirements, so 15 days prior. And I will make the ask of legal accounts.

Yes.

Be great. Okay.

Do you need me for anything else?

I don't think so. Okay.

Unless you want to talk about it.

Yes. Thanks, Kelly.

Get those purple shirts. We're not eligible.

Get the green ones.

Yeah.

All right, Ken, are we ready to move to 2026-416, property acquisition strategy update? Yes. So if you all remember, in late 2025, we developed the aptly named LAPS, or Land Acquisition and Protection Strategy. Basically gave us a more structured and objective approach to land acquisition and conservation projects. Historically, we've just had this map and this list of potential acquisition opportunities and periodically sent letters to property owners expressing interest in feasible acquisition. While this approach has been successful in the past, it really treats all properties really the same without any sort of... you know, criteria on benefits of pursuing that particular land acquisition. So we recognize the need for a more deliberate process that helps us define and prioritize properties that provide the greatest benefit to Erie's long term parks, open space and trail objectives. So as the attachment shows, and you all got to review that a little bit, focuses on trail connectivity, ecological value, climate resilience, community identity, recreational opportunity, adjacency to existing open space, and community priorities with different weights as one scores a property. So this creates a defensible basis for why this property is maybe ranked ahead of this property, and it can help us evaluate new opportunities that emerge over time. So I've been talking to some colleagues and looking for a recommendation to kind of take the next step here. We all can't talk about parcels of land in an open meeting, right? Because that would probably significantly damage our funding or our negotiation positions. So we have to go in an executive session, which, A, I don't think is the best use of this group's time. And B, I think we all know what happens when there are too many executive sessions here in the town of Erie. So I've got a few examples from some colleagues around the state and they have developed committees. To not necessarily get around that, but to provide a well-rounded group of individuals from both on the staff side and then on the we'll call them elected and appointed officials side to to rank criteria. Right now, it's myself, Matt Spinner and Mike McGill who have ranked the properties that we have had traditionally on our list.

Those two guys, I'm just curious. We've got Parks Division Manager and Natural Resources.

So let me get into those individual positions. So what I'm proposing is that we form a committee of sorts that would discuss individual properties, score individual properties on an annual basis, and then that report would come back to OSTAB probably maybe as a confidential memo. And then as we look at that, then we can go to an executive session and talk about individual properties. So the members would be the OSTAP chair and vice chair or designated, at least two designated OSTAP representatives, the talent council liaison to OSTAP, a planning representative, the parks division manager, which is currently held by Mike McGill, the natural area superintendent, which is currently occupied by Matt Spinner and, the park planning. I think it's park planning, not parks, planning parks, planning and development division manager, which is Kathy Crone. And then myself as the director. So, uh, as I said, uh, um, The committee would meet annually to review all of our known acquisition opportunities and score each property using the adopted criteria, which is an attachment to the memo. The result would be a prioritized list of acquisition and conservation opportunities that would guide staff for the upcoming year. And then really what that does is we present those results to OSTAB. have to figure out how we exactly do that and identify the highest priority opportunities and recommended acquisition strategies, right? Because I think traditionally we've always just focused on fee simple acquisitions, but our conservation easements, something that we can start to lean on a little bit more and look at those to help, to really help protect those properties. So our talk kind of about the rationale of why we can't meet, we can't affect negotiations, influence market expectations, all those different things. And then rather conducting multiple executive sessions throughout the year to evaluate individual properties, the committee would perform a comprehensive annual review using established criteria and provide a clear documented prioritization framework. So we maintain transparency on how we make acquisition decisions while limiting unnecessary discussion of specific properties that could compromise those future negotiations. So seeking feedback regarding the proposed annual property evaluation and ranking process and the composition of the proposed lapse committee.

I'm just curious, past properties that the tenant has bought, is it generally conservation or is it more for buying farmland to use for- Are you asking fee simple or conservation easements?

Is that your question? Technically, we're buying all the land. That's the first one. So fee simple is we own the land, we maintain the land, we maybe do an act lease on it. A conservation easement basically is a negotiated deal that protects the property and has certain restrictions on it and allowable uses on it. The landowner retains the title to the land, but can't put up more structures or can't. And that conservation easement stays with the property forever. for the term of the conservation easement, which is usually in perpetuity. It's the difference between us owning it and somebody else owning it, but still being protected. We've done a mixture of both. We haven't done a conservation easement since I've been here.

It's usually buying land that the town can own for open space.

Everything we've bought so far. Every dollar we spend out of TNAF is to purchase land not to go through the easement process. There are two easements that are jointly with Boulder County. But their area is basically north of Cold Creek. If you know where the water reclamation plant is, it's two private partials basically north of there on the north side of Boulder Creek. But everything else is farmland. Most of the natural areas have come through the development process. For example, I moved here 16 years ago, and the entire Coal Creek corridor, with the exception of the one parcel on the west side of Channel 9, was already town, open space. I was 15, so that occurred even earlier.

Okay, and when we buy property, is it generally within the town limits already, or is it adjacent to and we annex it?

Generally. Okay. Generally, we purchase town within our area of influence.

Thank you. Anyone got any thoughts? So basically, the whole idea is to enable the detail work to be done Without having to go into executive session, which is impractical and possibly even raises red flags in the community. Oh, you did it all in secret.

And I think the makeup of the group provides that, again, a little bit more well-rounded perspective. you know, where you have some subject matter experts in the field, you still have OSTAP representation. You even have council representation on it. Now there's a couple of other steps that I've got to follow. I've got to follow the town management to see if I can have, you know, a council member be on a committee like this. So, Know that this is, I just want the general push in the right direction before I can actually finalize this. And especially planning, right? They're well in tune with the development community. And then our parks planning and development division manager, she does all of our major capital and she works closely with planning and development. So she'd be a key part of this, the group. But then obviously you have parks and natural areas superintendent who are our subject matters expert in the field. I'm just there as a filler in really.

Okay. So the makeup of your committee is such that it's not a public hearing or it's not a public meeting. Correct. And therefore no executives.

Correct. We're not violating any open meeting laws or anything like that. It's just a committee that meets, you know, maybe a couple hours one evening goes through all of the properties and says, well, what about this one? And that's where having that kind of historical knowledge comes from all these different areas is going to be really helpful on helping us prioritize acquisitions. And I'm not saying that once we prioritize the acquisitions, then the ones down here are off the table. It's just helping staff and OSTAB say, okay, these scored in the green, these scored in the yellow, these scored in the red. what should we really target? What are our goals right now? Because I think that's what the town has been lacking is what is our true open space goal? Is it to get a certain amount of acreage for open space? Is it to get a certain type of open space? Is it to get more ag land? So I think this will naturally kind of come up and that's why trail connectivity. If that's the idea and we say, well, we saw this one, it has great habitat value, it has great trail connectivity, it's adjacent to open space. hey, we want to start active conversations with them. And then you start really being a little bit more targeted, a little bit more deliberate. In your negotiations with landowners, you're starting to develop a relationship. Hey, do you want to sell it? No. Okay, what about conservation easement? So being a little bit, because to try to do whether we have 40 some odd properties on that list, for me to try to negotiate with 40 some odd property owners is, especially with limited funding, is just unrealistic. So can we be a little bit more deliberate and actually get the open space that we really truly want and we can back it up with this type of damage?

How do you see that playing out in terms of the meetings, the frequency of meetings?

The committee would meet on an annual basis to do the actual scoring. And then that's about as far as I've gotten.

It seems like you need to meet for a while. Yeah. Yeah.

Could we split it up in two meetings? Could we have one good chunky dinner meeting? That's kind of how some of my colleagues in the team, it seems like, you know, Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

And, you know, Luke, with what you just said, that was really kind of what I was trying to get at with my previous question about what have we bought in the past. But what is the overall plan? Are we trying to get contiguous properties that we can do for trails that connect with surrounding towns? Are we looking for more park playground areas? Are we looking for more just open space so there's not so much rooftops? That's where I'm not so clear. And it sounds like maybe that still needs to be defined a little bit more.

Yeah, I think so.

I think so. There has been a certain amount of targeting. We did rank at one point, you know, what's our highest quality. And we have, at times, say over the past several years, we've made attempts with different landowners to acquire their property. And so far, that really hasn't worked out. But, you know, we remain optimistic that it might. And there are reasons for why it hasn't. But it probably hasn't been quite as systematic as this. So we have sent out letters. We're kind of negligent sending one out. I promised to get one ready and haven't done that. But we've generally tried to send out a letter every year and just said, hey, if you're interested in any of the above, Please contact us, and that has generated some calls. But, like, the Wise Farm was not actually one that, it didn't come through that way.

No, that was very unusual in that it had already gone through the development process. Well, two iterations. The first one, the bottom line is they had an approved plan ready to go to convert the whole thing into residential housing. But my understanding is there were several oil and gas properties on it, and there wound up being two oil companies filing lawsuits against each other. And the result of it, it was impractical for the developer to do anything until they resolved. And Sarah Weiss, who was the owner of the property, got fed up and called up the town and said, I don't want to develop this anymore. I want you guys to preserve it out of the blue. We still cater development prices, unfortunately. To give you more background, quite a few years ago, I don't know, probably eight or ten, we identified a bunch of properties, these 40 or so, and we listed attributes of them. Is it adjacent to one of the creeks? Is it a trail corridor, etc. ? But we didn't do a scoring. We didn't attempt to do it. And then we just used our judgment based on this grid to say, which ones do we think are the most important? It was strictly judgment. But we had in front of us, here's the attributes. But it was not nearly as rigorous as this will be.

Okay. So the 40 plus that you mentioned, right? Are those just ones that we've looked at and said these are of interest, not that those landowners are open to it? Yes. Okay.

Through this committee, when necessarily necessary, it could potentially talk about trail connections but that could be a separate conversation where we all say like hey we want to rank like missing trail links yes and talk about that here yeah and and if it becomes an acquisition question yeah exactly yes absolutely we could do that yes okay because i know that's something that you've wanted to talk about yeah and we've identified that i think in our somewhere in our post plan is closing trail trail connectivity okay

So it sounds like we're overall supportive of me taking this next step and figuring out how to formalize this if I can, and then kind of go over there.

And did you say planning representative working from your department of planning or not from the planning commission?

No, from staff. It would be a staff. That's a good kind of clarification. Yes. It would be a staff member.

One quick related question. And staff use the scoring system as a trial run on some properties that say, oh, we forgot about this.

Yeah, so myself, Mike McGill, and Matt Spinner have already gone through the full. But again, it's like, how do you share that information? Yeah. Got to kind of figure out how to do that. I think we can probably do that. And like, again, because the goal of this is not to just to hide anything. It's just so we don't compromise our negotiating position. So how do we, how do I transfer that information? How do we get the information to know that we have a solid prioritization method and then get the information to host tab? So that's a piece I got to figure out yet.

Yeah. And through the years, different county attorneys. Prior to this, we had an outside attorney. Different attorneys had different interpretations of what you could and couldn't do in executive session relative to . One said you can't have an executive session where you're just discussing importance and priorities. You can only do it where you're actually negotiating. a position with a property owner. So they basically said the planning has to be done in an open meeting. Then others said, no, that's fine.

Okay. That's what I'm used to with executive sessions. It's either HR personnel issues or legal issues.

These are all lawyers have opinions, not edicts.

Makes sense. Anything else on that one? Yeah, I think we're good. All right. Where are we now here since I totally missed up this agenda? I think discussion or feedback.

Feedback.

Yeah.

Oops, now let me get my notes, which are a little rusty at this point.

This was something that I believe, Mr. Tim, you had brought up maybe is, again, we traditionally have booths at Arbor Day and Town Fair. You all share information with the public and receive feedback on open space and trails and really just want to summarize all that feedback. We had several members there and how we can do better and what support that staff can provide with particularly those two events.

Were there any comments in the box?

There was one and it was provide a trail connection. I'd have to go back and look. It was provide a trail connection between, I think it was Old Town and Northridge.

Okay.

And Northridge. Okay. Yeah. So basically the page property trail. Okay.

Yeah, because I had one verbal old town connection. I couldn't remember. Okay. One that resonated with me for obvious reasons. Someone said, why don't we have more benches along the trails? And I'm in agreement with that. I walk the trails in Longmont and Lafayette and so on, and they all have a lot more benches on their big trails than we do. It's not that they have an obvious policy every X feet, but it seems like you could develop a policy more or less on distance, what's appropriate.

What does it cost to put one of those benches in, Lou?

Hmm. I mean, obviously it depends if you're doing it on a concrete pad or not. You're probably talking anywhere from, just throwing out a number here, $1,400 to $1,800 maybe.

Is that something more to save a little money for the town we want to look at? Yeah.

allowing people to sponsor benches we do not have a bench program yeah or a tree program so we used to what we were finding was we were getting random benches in random places and it makes for uh maintenance a maintenance headache um and if a bench gets damaged who replaces it right the There's a lot of emotions tied with that. I think the last bench that we did was when, unfortunately, our contractor was killed building the linear trail. That was the last memorial bench we did. Same thing with trees. Tree dies, gets damaged. It's tied emotionally. So that's why we have the brick programs that we do because those are easier to maintain, easier to replace benches, obviously, at $800, $900 bucks a pop.

it's a little sensitive so plus you wind up maybe flowers and things like that would You have to have some restrictions there.

Right.

I've noticed, for example, the stones, the painted stones all over the place.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If you guys have seen these painted stones, you can see a few and you think, that's kind of cute. After a while, you start seeing painted stones all over the place. Yeah, maybe that's enough.

Oh, we're done. It's like, well, who's going to go pick those up?

Yeah, so what's your kind of...

I think that stuff is fine, honestly. Those things aren't a big deal. You just kind of have to set some parameters. It's like when they did the chalk art at Ecole Creek Park. That stuff is fine. That's what builds community. It's not that big of a deal. Now, if it starts getting out of control and we're putting huge folders in the open space, then we're going to be like, that's okay. But I know exactly what you're talking about. I think it was in Collier's Hill they were putting up some painted stones along the trail and they were like, hey, is this allowed? And we were like, well, there's nothing that says you can't. And I think they eventually went away or our crews picked them up.

I've heard a lot of compliments on the bench along the path, the new path from the cemetery to the new bridge.

Yeah, and actually, somebody mentioned there is a development standard that we have. A bench is required every certain linear feet for new trails. I don't think we were following that back in the day. Yeah, I don't think we were really enforcing it, to be honest with you. Yeah.

I get out on that trail pretty often. There's a lot of people using that bridge and that new trail stuff. So that's, that's.

Yeah. I spent like three o'clock in the afternoon on a school day and there's still a decent number of people on it. It's very well used. Yeah. And you do have a nice view from the bench that Dan mentioned.

So benches, what else feedback did you all hear from your engagement?

I had two, but I looked at them. I don't see the need for it. One was a connector from Vista Point over to the single track. And I looked at the existing trails and said, well, you know, you can get there pretty easily. I mean, you could, if you did a straight line, it cut off a third of a mile, but is that really necessary? And the last one was a underpass at County line under County line of Maxwell. Cause you know, that on the other side, it's going to be developed, but yeah.

That's what that was. That's in the town center plan is to do an underpass.

Okay.

Just South of the ball fields.

All right.

It's supposed to be an underpass right there.

Okay, so south of the ball.

Yeah, and that's a developer-funded.

Yeah, not at the intersection.

Correct. Yeah, a little further from Max. Further toward Erie Parkway.

Yes. Okay, that's all I have.

Anything else? Mine wasn't feedback from one of those two most recent events, but I think it's in the theme. We had talked about doing some sort of trails awareness event. And there's National Trails Day that is in June, and it always passes by. It doesn't need to align with that. I don't know if we need to go like the... There's two options, right? Or maybe there's more than two. One is an improvement cleanup type thing. And the other one is just awareness. And Boulder in years past, some of what they still do and has done kind of the second option in this B360, B180. I don't know if you guys ever heard of it. They just have a day where they basically designate a route and they set up some really simple... like rest or support stations or along the route just to say, hey, come out. Here's a cool way to learn how to navigate like a loop essentially is what they do. It doesn't have to be a loop. But kind of in the spirit of this mega eerie loop that we want to establish someday, there are some cool corridors that you have to kind of have explored quite a lot to know how to do it. And I don't think too many people do it. It might be a good... um just community engagement and encouragement to actually get out and explore what's there um for folks that are less inclined to do it uh wouldn't be much overhead i don't even know if we need to do the aid stations we could just do a welcome tent like here's the map i don't know the liability thing like is there any kind of liability to say here's a way you could navigate the trail some of them will have street crossings but that's like the only potential downside i could think of. But I mean, I'd love to help Honjo or something like that if you guys think there's value in it from an awareness perspective. And then maybe we end up getting more feedback down the road about, oh, why don't we have a connection here? There's a couple of broken connections we've already talked about multiple times. But yeah, just in the spirit of let's use this pretty cool amenity that we have. I don't know if there's any interest in sponsoring, i.e. volunteering some time. I'd be happy to honcho it, but how much do we want to lean into it, if at all, i.e. aid stations or any kind of maps that we'd want to build or anything? So I'm curious of people's thoughts.

I'm a big fan of trails, and I haven't been here that long. I'm not real sure if there's clear ways. I go out on the trails on my bike a lot and I just go explore kind of thing. But I'm not sure if there's something that is clear to say, boy, if I want to get from point A to point B, how do I get there via trails? You know, is there an online interactive tool or anything that lets you do that? If not, then I like this kind of idea to get more awareness out there.

Google Maps will take you along the Coal Creek corridor, like if you want to show us something.

Well, you can also get to the town trail system on their website.

sure but qr code and so on but that's a straight you can't do it and say okay now i'm in google maps yeah how do i get i mean you can get tell me how to get from it you can get this address to that express how to do it from i pretty much anywhere yeah with maybe a street crossing or two um so i don't know uh that's yeah i like that idea and i think like

now being at the age where my kids are you know in the local schools I feel like I am constantly hearing feedback from people from who try to bike to the schools and they're like I don't know exactly how to get here I have to do this really busy street crossing I tried looking at the map I tried figuring out how I could piece it together and even meet riding I've been riding the trails for a long time and even I was like wait how should I do this so like if we can't help Provide that if I think that kind of goes along with like, let's identify the missing links to try to improve that. But let's also try to help people understand how to get to like schools and stuff.

Yeah, it could be some very specific waypoints or I'm sorry, endpoints that we highlight. If you wanted to go here, here's a recommended route. In addition to just that, here's a really cool way to circumnavigate all the trails.

Along that line, I've seen some towns that have safe routes to school paths on how to get there without having to have too many street crossings. I like the idea in general. I think educating the town on how to better use the trail system is a good thing.

Does anybody use the MTB app? Yes. Florida Coal Creek Trail is on and the Single track. Single track is on it. And some of the gravel sections and even a little bit of the vape sections, which is helpful. And I don't know if we can kind of lobby them to add more of it, but I mean, it's...

So we do, they pull our GIS data.

Yeah, it's really handy. It's called MTV. It's just an app you can download. It's free. It's mountain bike trails. And I use it when I go mountain biking up in the mountains. And it's great. It's got encoded for... or difficulty and so on. So it might be something where we could allow them to see if they would add additional sections of our trail to their map. Google's not terrible either. They have a pretty good subset. Is it up to date with the trails that we've got? Yeah, like there is a single track in that section that they paved. So that's up there on the hill. And then this is the one closer to down there, if you've done those two. OK.

So Tim, maybe what I would recommend is that if you want to work with Ken and Christine on a future agenda item, just put together some information and send that in and we'll put something on the future agenda and then we can Really kind of maybe dig in, throw out some dates and what this looks like and what the goals and objectives are of it. I think that would be the probably the best. Thank you.

Kind of with that, Tim, is, you know, whenever we have new turtle sections or new connections or something, you can have a little event around that to kind of make people.

Yeah, we communicate that.

And, and let's, let's, let's chat on, on how we can, we can, how staff can support that with our existing trail maps, our interactive maps, how we can, you know, come up with some communication strategies and things like that. And materials develop all that stuff. We can, we can chat about that too. I love that idea. Then maybe I think also might be something as I give myself more work. Well, technically it's not me. is maybe having staff come in and talk about our trailway finding plan that we're slowly implementing. Because right now we just really have the Coal Creek Corridor, if you've seen some of those wayfinding signs. I think that kind of goes with the theme of what you're talking about is how do we get people from point A to point B? So maybe that's worth a future topic as well.

I like that a lot. And in fact, I think you mentioned maybe in the last meeting something about having some of your department managers just kind of come update us on a regular basis that to me is very informative kind of stuff.

Yeah. I'm starting to get into the cadence a little bit now of like, okay, here's some of the things that we need to update the group on. And, you know, I started sending out those emails, my on the same page emails that that was traditionally originally going to staff. But then we've kind of expanded it to these different groups just because of how there's so much cross connections and everything that we do.

Yeah, it's interesting. It's amazing how much you guys do. Just to that point, is it I mean, these are inconvenient. You've got a family. You have to stick around, you know, all this time. for staff to come in. We talked about the idea of us going to staff and having lunch like pizza down at the Leon World or wherever. Would that be more convenient for them to meet, you know, for us to just come in, whoever can come and meet with staff from time to time, just talk about how open space and trails, natural areas and so on. Or does this work for them?

I think every once in a while, I think that's kind of, especially when you get into the superintendent manager roles, I think there's an expectation to, you know, come to present me. It's good practice for them, if I'm just being honest. It's good practice for them to put together, you know, a presentation and everything. and come present formally, but no, that doesn't, that doesn't stop us from doing something like that. I kind of, I like that idea. The reason, obviously these are set up is because you all have work lives too. So I think it's easier to, and, and for the public too, because these get recorded and, and things like that. I think if we're doing like kind of a formal presentation, I'd like the public to have the availability, but if we want to put something together and I don't know, we talked about, we talked about tours, um, which if you look at our work plan, we're supposed to do those in August. Obviously, that's not going to happen. But, you know, that may be the opportunity where, you know, where we kind of meet somewhere, maybe have a quick breakfast and have some chats and then go out and tour some of our open spaces and things like that. Okay. Well, no, that's on the list eventually is to go maybe later in the fall, we can look at doing a tour. I know that's part of our work plan. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, and just to note that Ken is going to be presenting to council on the 28th and he'll kind of talk about some of the things that we talked about in our last meeting and in terms of what we've done and then what we'll be doing for next year. So anything else on feedback from Arbor day town fair community engagement, anything like that?

I think that was a great discussion on what we could be doing.

Anything else? If not, the time is 8.07. Motion to adjourn. So moved. Second? Second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? No. Okay. Thank you, everybody.