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Open Space Advisory Subcommittee Report
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Open Space Minutes: July 11, 2017
In attendance: Eric Peterson, Liz Aicher, Kevin Holsapple, Stephanie Nakhleh
1. Eric updated the group on the Ancestral Pueblo project, which is complete. They used a mixture with a native recipe for chinking. They used edging, crusher fines, and sloping so it drains. Once every two weeks they’ll patrol it to make sure the weeds aren’t creeping up.
2. Flow trail is out for RFP. The bid is for a design with possibility for construction. The County needs to know how much it’s going to cost to determine feasibility. After that information is gathered, it will be up to Council to give the green light or no; obviously public comment will factor in heavily. The County sent it out to 15 professional companies, from Arkansas to local. There will be a mandatory site visit for anyone bidding.
3. Camp May improvements are underway. A drainage problem was fixed; also they replaced old picnic tables with new ones. Kevin asked whether there was a way to estimate utilization of that area; answer is there’s no direct way at the moment. Camp May, it was noted, is zoned PL (public land), not open space.
4. Open Space shortages: Eric said the Open Space program has gotten amazing things done with one part-time employee but one can only imagine what might be accomplished with 2 FTEs. Kevin said the County is facing pressure to keep its FTEs down, as perception is FTEs have mushroomed. I noted that FTEs might be mushrooming in some departments, but not (in my understanding) in Parks & Rec, and not in Open Space in particular: this would be useful data to examine. With the Comp Plan being so open-space heavy, and the Open Space Management Plan’s to-do list being so far behind, more budget support is needed for Council’s stated priorities to be met. Kevin noted that special funding could be allocated for the Rocky Mountain Youth Corps on some jobs. “We’d show how much work can get done, and we’d...
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