Open Space Advisory Board Agenda and Packet 2017 08 09

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Open Space Advisory Board Minutes July 12th, 2017 Page 5 of 6 and Joe said yes. Helen thought that good signs might help the public understand that the closures are for both the facility's and the land's health. Fiona asked whether the new signs were up yet. Joe said they were. Fiona suggested that the ranger share usage data with users (e.g. "how many dogs use the facility per day") so citizens can get a sense of the scope of the impact. Mike reported that PPLAB discussed dog issues at their recent meeting and they seemed to think a new dog area could be a focus of future acquisition. X. Discussion Item: Review of Open Space Zoning History & Review and Revise Past OSAB Zoning Recommendations Ember gave a review of the history of Open Space zoning and also explained the process. Designation is the first step. Zoning is another level of protection and a second step. The City Charter requires OSAB to recommend parcels for designation, which then go to Council for review. City Council then takes OSAB and staff recommendations and makes the final decision on which properties to zone as Open Space Then the land in question is researched, and surveyed as needed, and can be formally zoned as Open Space. This process can be surprisingly tricky to do, because the parcels are sometimes put together piecemeal and must be consolidated. A single property can have multiple parcels and parcels may extend outside of the Open Space footprint. The last time OSAB designated land for Open Space was in 2004 and 2011, so this work is overdue. There is still quite a bit of land to be formally caught up to Open Space status. The board members gathered around a City map that staff had prepared, showing parcels that either had been recommended by OSAB in past reviews or could be designated as Open Space. Properties were shaded as either green (ready to be designated or already designated), yellow (further research needed), or red (survey work needed). The yellow parcels included Walnut Park Open Space Park, (where it is still under discussion whether the land should be considered a Park or Open Space), Harper Lake (where Public Works needs to be included due to the reservoir), and Aquarius Open Space (where additional the land title work may be needed). Red parcels were usually irregularly-shaped pieces of land that wrapped around subdivisions, making their boundaries tricky and require surveys to draw new boundaries. The board discussed prioritizing/phasing the designation for these three categories, so that the difficult, red - shaded parcels wouldn't hold up work on the green -shaded parcels, which would be easier to push through the process. An additional issue is that the green -shaded category included some trail corridors, such as the new trail segment running along the south edge of the new Kestrel subdivision in northern Louisville. Ember described this parcel as a narrow 8 ft trail with a 1-2 ft strip of land alongside the trail. There are other similar trail corridors proposed for Open Space designation radiating out from Helca Lake. The board wasn't sure whether these long, narrow parcels conformed to the traditional notion of "open space." They asked Ember whether designating this land as Open Space provided any tangible budgetary or maintenance simplification for the City. Ember felt that there were some trade-offs, but didn't manifest a strong opinion on the matter. The board seemed ambivalent whether designating/zoning these narrow strips as Open Space was preferable and asked to receive staff's formal recommendation on this matter. The Department will discuss and return to OSAB with a recommendation. 6