Open Space Advisory Board Agenda and Packet 2021 05 12

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L City f Louisville COLORADO • SINCE 1878 B. Trails Tiger Team Update The new Trails Tiger Team met. Charles and David talked about the Boulder County trails request (which is later on the agenda) and social trails. They would like to see an inventory of social trails and a list of social trails that staff is most concerned about. Ember replied that there are maps and aerial photography of social trails within the City, but they may be a little out of date. She added that in the past the city has not had strong movement to remove social trails. Ember said that social trails that staff are planning to eventually develop into formal trails tend to not get removed. David said the topic of social trails needs a holistic and strategic approach, rather than trying to target specific properties individually. Charles said they also talked about underpasses and how much OSAB should or could be involved in their planning. Nathan commented that underpasses are so expensive that council has been discussing a ballot measure to the voters to specifically fund infrastructure projects, including underpasses. Nathan said that OSAB should weigh in but cautioned that this topic might be complicated. He said there are 10 potential underpasses currently proposed by the Transportation Master Plan and thought it would be interesting to have board members look at the list and rank them by their priority. The ballot initiative would be on the scale of 15 million dollars. Jessamine thought it would worth adding the board's opinion. Helen asked the Trails Tiger Team about processes on trails, social trails, and the introduction of a third category of trail ("single track"). She asked for suggestions on how OSAB should work on this. Peter suggested the Trails Tiger Team should work up a proposal that the full board could comment on. Ember said that this will be a complex issue and that we should consider social trails in the context of the larger network and consider maintenance challenges. Nathan said that social trails and a "third type of trail" would have to be on the radar of the city council. Jessamine said the board needed to table this issue for now, since it should be a formal discussion item announced on the agenda. She suggested that the Trails Tiger Team work on some goals the board could discuss. VIII. Action Item: Revisions to the Open Space Master Plan Plant List. Presented by Steve Roels, Senior Natural Resource Specialist. This information starts on page 19 of the packet. Steve said the goal of this project was to create guidelines for use of native plants, including restoration in natural areas, but also in higher -traffic, more traditional landscaping. He created a replacement document for an old standards and guidelines document that was 20-year-old, and included in the appendix of the Open Space Master Plan. Originally the standards were fairly vague and based on different classes of open space. They mostly included pre -approved plant lists. Steve said native plant availability has changed a lot in twenty years. He thought the document should include simple, clear criteria for picking plants, rather than specified plant lists. It could be a standard for the entire city, private developers, and citizens. Steve tried to write the new standards to be resistant to changing understanding of goals and species lists (including climate change). He noted that the original document and species lists were supposed to be revisited every 5 years, which never actually happened. Helen asked about the "dominant" species written in bold on the old appendix. Steve answered that he thought the intent was to have these be the high -abundance species, but that it was never very clear. He wanted the new standards to be more general.