Open Space Advisory Board Agenda and Packet 2018 06 13

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Background Boulder County Parks and Open Space (BCPOS) and Boulder County Transportation (Transportation) share responsibility for planning, designing, constructing, and maintaining Boulder County's trail system. Each department has its own source of dedicated funding along with corresponding focus and in some cases, restrictions on how those funds can be spent. The Parks and Open Space Department focuses on the development of recreational and educational trails on open space properties. Funding is through a portion of the Parks and Open Space sales tax and the use is restricted to eligibility within that fund. Project priorities come through the Parks and Open Space Capital Improvement Plan (Attachments D and E) adopted annually by the Boulder County Board of Commissioners, and are usually identified in one or more of the open space management plans developed by the department. The Transportation Department has a dedicated funding stream to implement the Regional Trails Plan, a multi-year effort to plan, design and construct a series of soft -surface multi -use trails that connect communities within Boulder County. Transportation focuses its trail planning and development on regional trails that are multi -use, provide a county -wide benefit, and serve as both transportation and recreation corridors. The Regional Trails Plan focuses on regional trails priorities developed through a public process and adopted by the Board of County Commissioners in 2003. The regional trails plan links together existing and planned trails within the cities and towns, existing and planned County POS trails (as described above), and a series of connector trails on county -owned easements and rights-of-way to link the previously disconnect trail systems. Both the POS and Transportation leverage a significant amount of additional trail funding through partnerships with towns, cities, and private non-profit trail programs; state and federal grants; and intergovernmental agreements with larger trail planning efforts such as the Rocky Mountain Greenway and the Front Range Trail program. Ongoing Impacts of the September 2013 Flood The historic flood in September 2013 caused severe damage to the County's parks and trails infrastructure. The most costly damages are to the stream corridor, reservoirs and irrigation infrastructure along St. Vrain Creek, with a repair estimate of $50 million. County trails and facilities in the foothills and eastern portions of the county sustained damages ranging from relatively minor erosion to total destruction, with repair costs estimated at nearly $2.4 million on trails, facilities and structures. A huge amount of staff time has been reallocated to flood recovery work, and as a result, the County has had to scale back on some other projects, including CIP work. The domino effects are still playing out as we work to catch up from the delays in 2014, and though tapering off, these effects will continue for a couple more years. Obtaining County Support and Funding Boulder County is most likely to partner on trails that connect to county open space trails, or are part of identified regional trail priorities, and have been vetted through a planning process that includes input from members of the public and other interested parties. Boulder County welcomes the opportunity to further discuss these requests with your staff or boards. 30