Notes From The Meeting:

Steve Castle and I presented our open space project to the TOPS Working Committee.  It was very well received and we managed to pack the room with more people than had ever shown up for a TOPS meeting.  The committee was receptive to our proposal even though Parks and Recreation staff had administratively denied our application.  There was confusion on how to even go about the appeal because nobody else had tried an appeal.

I began the presentation with a quick review of the congested nature of northern Colorado Springs with the use of a satellite photo and discussion on suburban hell.  The Union property is one of the easiest open space areas to access and is used by folks from 6 to 91 years of age.  Steve Castle followed with a wonderful video of the trail and open space.  It included some great interviews from people along the trail.  I then showed that there are four different phases in this project.  The first is to convert the 13 acre city property to park land or a secure land trust.  The second is to get some kind of formal permission for all of us to be using the trail.  The next phase is to buffer the city land and protect the northern end of the wetlands through the procurement of part of the church property.  Finally, we need to have a 3-5 year goal of protecting the remaining parcels on the hillside.

We specifically did not present a funding proposal because our project is not nearly far enough along and a lack of funding is a major concern of the committee.  However, we did answer questions and specified that the asking price of the land was $550,000 but we had a tentative offer of 7 acres for $180,000.  There are still some serious questions regarding the ability to build on the southern end of the section.  A formal funding request will be put together as more details become available.

The committee agreed to come take a tour after their review of another property on Friday on November 19th.  The expected time for the tour is about 9 am.  Lets hope for great weather.

In a separate matter, the Park and Recreation staff is going to pull back $150,000 from the Rock Island trails project.  This trail will be completed with funding from a transportation bill.  Several members on the TOPS committee recommended that we work hard to get that money moved over to our project.  The issue going against us is that our project is too small to be on the master plan.  However, several of the master plan projects recently died and the others are multi-million dollar deals.  The Rock Island funds fully cover the foreseeable costs of our project.

Private funding has begun and we have tentative commitments for $10,000 - $15,000 in private donations.  Several folks in the neighborhood believe that a significant amount of the project can be internally funded.  We are now looking for several people who are interested in taking over the funding project.  If you are interested, please contact Steve or I.

Scot