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HomeMy WebLinkAbout2017.12.21 OSTB work session minutes_S MINUTES OPEN SPACE AND TRAILS BOARD SPECIAL WORK SESSION December 21 2017 Pitkin County Library 120 N. Mill St.,Aspen OSTB Present: Graeme Means Howie Mallory Hawk Greenway Tim McFlynn Wayne Ives Dist. 1 Dist. 2 Dist. 3 Dist. 4 Dist. 5 Chair Staff Present: Gary Tennenbaum, Dale Will, Lindsey Utter, Jessie Young, Janet Urquhart, Richard Neiley BOCC Present: Greg Poschman Media Present: Elizabeth Stewart-Severy, Aspen Public Radio; Scott Condon, The Aspen Times; M. John Fayhee, Aspen Daily News; GrassRoots TV crew Others present: members of the public, including Gideon Kaufman, Chuck Downey, Mike Pritchard, Tom Cardamone, Lisa Tasker Wayne Ives called the meeting to order at 9:32 a.m. Carbondale to Crested Butte Trail Wayne Ives introduced the work session as the board's first opportunity to discuss the proposed Carbondale to Crested Butte Trail as a group at a meeting. He framed the session as an opportunity for the board to give direction to staff and ask for more information. The agenda was divided into a discussion of the planning process and discussion of issues. Each of the board members then introduced themselves. Process—Graeme Means said he felt the process had become too heated and controversial and called for a collaborative process. He suggested a consultant or point person to lead the public process. The trail is an idea that will involve a long-term process and a lot of future input, he said, suggesting the project be divided into sections that get greater focus. Wayne Ives agreed, saying stakeholders in the Crystal Valley need the ability to be more involved. Moving forward, the planning process needs to proceed more slowly, he said. Richard Neiley entered the meeting at 10 a.m. Tim McFlynn also endorsed the involvement of a consultant with expertise in public process, noting the trail is the most costly and controversial project the open space program has ever considered. The public has called for a more transparent, collaborative process and a consultant could help, he said. Howie Mallory agreed, calling for a"holistic" approach that includes not only a consideration of a trail, but of other conservation and environmental needs in the Crystal 12/21/2017 OSTB Work Session Minutes Page 1 of 5 Valley. Mallory also called for expediency, rather than letting the planning process bog down. Ives, too, said he wants to see momentum on the project continue. Board members, with the exception of Hawk Greenway, agreed on the hiring of a consultant. Greenway opposed the hiring of a consultant and said he does not want to see the project set back 2 to 5 years or studied to death. The heated debate is a good sign—of public interest and a wide range of opinions, Greenway said. The public's call for a"no trail"option was valid input, Greenway added. He also said it was not always clear to the public that the alignment does not have to be all one option or the other; and the county could have done a better job of showing where it owns a trail easement and where it does not. Greenway complimented the Open Space and Trails staff and said he sees no need for a consultant. McFlynn agreed the staff has been exemplary. Greg Poschman entered the meeting at 10:20 a.m. Gary Tennenbaum asked the board if the consultant is envisioned to shepherd the trail planning through the draft plan process. Yes, Tim McFlynn responded. Wayne Ives suggested the project is complex enough that the process may require an extra step before a plan is drafted. McFlynn agreed and asked that the trail project be on all of the board's future regular meeting agendas for a check-in(other board members did not specifically endorse the agenda request). McFlynn said public process might make a good topic for the board's next annual retreat. Issues—The topic of issues was divided into several subtopics, including feasibility of alignments, wildlife and habitat impacts, costs, habitat improvement, aesthetics and areas of consensus on trail alignment. Wayne Ives said he would like to see cost estimates for a more modest trail platform—something that isn't 10 feet wide, and possibly the cost of a singletrack trail extending up the valley from the terminus of the existing Crystal Trail. If there is no contiguous trail, he asked what segments could stand alone. Graeme Means suggested a contiguous trail is unrealistic in the near term and said he favors looking at connecting neighborhoods rather than regions. Means also said he supports narrower, soft-surface trails to connect neighborhoods and a widened shoulder on Hwy. 133. Where there is not support for a trail segment, that sentiment should be honored, he said. Lisa Tasker entered the meeting at about 10:30 a.m. Howie Mallory said he favors trail connectivity but acknowledged it may need to be achieved incrementally. The issue of private property has yet to be dealt with, he said. Mallory said he sees the trail segments as Carbondale to Redstone, and Redstone and beyond. He said he does not envision it as entirely a singletrack trail and that soft surface lends itself to a social trail,but not one for bicycle transit. He suggested the highway alignment be looked at for transit and that widened shoulders could make multiple alignments more doable. Mallory and Hawk Greenway both said they consider Filoha Meadows Nature Preserve to be off the table for a trail alignment. All five board members agreed Filoha Meadows should not be considered for the trail. 12/21/2017 OSTB Work Session Minutes Page 2 of 5 Greenway also said he sees no point to a non-contiguous trail and he asked staff to come up with a trail proposal that avoids sensitive areas such as Filoha Meadows. Tim McFlynn said there are private lands and subdivisions where it may not be possible to put a trail. Those areas, like important wildlife areas, could accommodate a soft-surface trail but not bicycles, he added. McFlynn called for a trail plan that respects private lands until there is an analysis that shows a public right-of-way exists. Ives agreed. He also said few people would ride from Carbondale to Crested Butte,but that connecting Carbondale and Redstone makes sense if it is feasible. Howie Mallory called for involving the Colorado Department of Transportation in a discussion about establishing a trail corridor along the highway. The highway platform of today should not be considered the platform of the future, he said. Wayne Ives asked staff for more information about CDOT's requirements related to widened highway shoulders, about the potential for a trail corridor on the west side of the highway and about the cost of a more modest trail platform. The other four board members concurred with this request. On the subject of wildlife impacts, Graeme Means said the option for Alignment A along the highway would be an expensive project that has environmental, construction and riparian impacts. He also said seasonal trail closures could be effective in some areas and should be considered as the various segments get further study. Tim McFlynn noted the open space board's charter mandates the protection of wildlife habitat, connectivity and corridors, and that the program's biodiversity policy applies to more than simply wildlife. The trail discussion should be about more than protecting Filoha Meadows, he said. Wayne Ives agreed. The concern is not just winter wildlife habitat,but also wildlife connections from place to place and to the river, Ives said. Additional human use, and especially via a paved bike trail, would violate the biodiversity policy in some places, Ives said. Tom Cardamone entered the meeting at about 11 a.m. Howie Mallory said there is no question a trail would have impacts on wildlife. He noted the board has no information about what those impacts would be and asked for data and specificity on impacts before ruling out trail segments. A trail platform cannot be singled out as the only impact to wildlife, Mallory added, noting the Crystal Valley's bighorn sheep population has been in decline without impact from a trail. Open Space and Trails shares responsibility for wildlife with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, the Forest Service and others, Mallory said,urging the program to engage those other agencies on the issue. Tim McFlynn noted the Open Space and Trails program is working with the Colorado Natural Heritage Program to identify important conservation areas. Wildlife habitat improvement will be part of a trail plan, said Gary Tennenbaum. The staff has already recognized that need as a component of the plan, he said. Hawk Greenway urged working with Colorado Parks and Wildlife on wildlife management in addition to habitat. Howie Mallory asked about goals for riparian restoration. That, too, will be included in the trail plan, Tennenbaum said. Areas have already been identified; there is much that can be done in conjunction with a trail project, he said. 12/21/2017 OSTB Work Session Minutes Page 3 of 5 With regard to project cost, Tim McFlynn called the engineering estimates of the project "daunting" and noted some costs are difficult to estimate, such as acquiring private lands. He noted that, in the open space program's history, eminent domain has not been employed and asked how a preferred alignment can be identified without knowing where a trail can and cannot go. The costs of mitigating impacts, such as enforcement of seasonal closures in perpetuity, need to be considered, he added. McFlynn also questioned how the cost of the project would affect other Open Space and Trails projects. Hawk Greenway agreed the private land issue needs to be addressed. Use of eminent domain, while not off the table, is highly unlikely, he said. The potential use of private parcels must be addressed in order to understand where the trail could go, he said. Greenway said he believes it's possible to "thread the needle,"using bridges to hop from the highway corridor(Alignment A)to Alignment B, east of the Crystal River. Determining the cost of circumventing private property will help determine how much a section of trail is worth as the program negotiates with property owners, he said. Graeme Means offered a calculation on how much the open space program could spend on trails for the next 20 years. If trail spending is fixed at 25 percent of what the program has available for trails; and 65 percent of that sum went to the Crystal Trail, that's about$1.33 million per year for the Crystal Trail, he said. The trail project is "enormous" and its cost could prevent the program from pursuing other projects, Means said, suggesting the board focus on what it is willing to spend annually on the project, given the financial realities of the program. The board needs to decide how much it wants to put toward the trail each year, he said. Howie Mallory said he hopes there are partners who can help make the project happen, including the Colorado Department of Transportation on the highway platform, Healthy Rivers and Streams for riparian improvements, and various agencies on wildlife issues. Mallory said a multi-year capital plan is reasonable to accomplish a project. Gary Tennenbaum reminded the board that funding of projects is decided annually and that funds for a multi-year project can only be allocated a year at a time. Bonding can bind a board to a multi-year project, Mallory said. Tennenbaum said staff will analyze the Crystal Trail project costs in conjunction with other future projects expenses. Wayne Ives said he's not sure the board needs hard numbers on the Crystal project yet, since construction isn't imminent. Tim McFlynn said it would be helpful to know how Crystal Trail costs could impact other projects and things the program is already doing. He suggested a spreadsheet that shows the trail project's impact on the program's overall capacity. Howie Mallory agreed, asking staff for a"what if'based on a percentage of funding allocated to trails. Maintenance costs are also a consideration, Tennenbaum said. Dale Will noted one of the strengths of the open space program is that it can be opportunistic, taking advantage of changes that can't be anticipated. Regarding aesthetic impacts of a trail, Hawk Greenway noted a lot of the public indicated a soft- surface trail would be acceptable, particularly on the east side of the river. Graeme Means said he 12/21/2017 OSTB Work Session Minutes Page 4 of 5 doesn't want to see an urban trail going up the Crystal Valley and called on the open space program to concentrate on "low-key connections." Howie Mallory said the board needs to consider the user experience as well as the impact of e-bikes. Hard- versus soft-surface trails represent different experiences, he said. E-bikes belong only on a hard surface in the highway corridor and not on any soft surface, Mallory said. Tim McFlynn agreed, adding that he feels the east side of the river is not the place for any mechanized devices. The county-owned open spaces on the east side of the river should be used by quieter user groups, he said. A video of the meeting is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6SYwKt7YWM ADJOURN The OSTB special work session of Dec. 21, 2017 was adjourned at approximately 11:58 a.m. Approved: Attest: Wayne ves, Chair J Urquhart Pitkin County Open Space &Trails Board T Stewardship and Outreach Coordinator 12/21/2017 OSTB Work Session Minutes Page 5 of 5