Jefferson County needs to be proactive to ensure that recreation options on area Forest Service lands remain as open as possible, Commissioner Leonard Wortman told his fellow commissioners April 11.
The Forest Service plans to begin an inventory of roads in the Boulder River watershed this summer, Wortman said, expressing concern that the inventory would lead to some road and trail closures. Saying the area may well have enough motorized trails, Wortman said there are many user-created trails that could serve as a good base for non-motorized use.
The county needs to gather area citizens and discuss “what roads and trails are important to the citizens of the county,” he said. Wortman said he fears that if the forest service carries out its inventory without hearing a well-supported community position, roads and trails will be lost.
“Once they put them on a piece of paper,” he said, “it’s kind of hard to change them. Their erasers don’t work real well.” If Jefferson County is going to get serious about being a recreational mecca, it needs a paid staffer to oversee recreational issues, the commissioner maintained.
While Commissioner Bob Mullen agreed that the county needs to be “out in front of the forest service,” he questioned where the county would get the funds to pay a recreation liaison. The county really needs an overall recreation plan, and doing that for the entire county “would take some money,” Mullen said. “Trails is just part of it. It’s not the whole enchilada,” he added.
Bill Dawson, head of a recreational committee formed through the Making Boulder’s Future Better effort, said that group wants to foster recreational opportunities on surrounding public lands. But that committee has “no direct influence on the decision-makers,” he noted. That committee wants to attract businesses to the area to serve recreational needs, but “if you’re going to base any type of business on recreational activities” there need to be rules about the use of the public land “and the rules need to be clear,” said Dawson. He said area residents need to “have a greater local voice, and there’s potential for this position to help facilitate that.”
Wortman said his sense is that the forest service is more and more focused on collaborative efforts and might be very amenable to some cooperation with the county. Drew Dawson, chair of the Boulder Transition Advisory Committee, a citizen group overseeing community development efforts, said he sees the proposed position as an opportunity to coordinate.
The BTAC and Boulder citizens cannot carry out the goals of the community master plan without staffing assistance, and having the county recreation liaison could play a role, he said. “We need to avoid having silos and we all need to be pulling in the same direction,” he said.
Area rancher Brud Smith expressed skepticism that hiring a recreational liaison will impact forest service actions. “I’ve been dealing with the forest service and the BLM for, I don’t know, forty years,” he said, “and I just don’t see changing them.”
“I’ve written a thousand or more protests and told the forest service my brilliant ideas,” said Smith, without seeing much impact. Saying he was not opposed to the general idea, he said making any difference would take a great deal of work to involve hunters, motorized users, hikers, timber workers and much more. And if anyone could get all of those diverse users on the same page, “they could probably go over to the Middle East and solve that,” quipped Smith.
Jefferson County GIS mapper Melissa Morris said she backs the notion of a county recreation liaison. There are lots of activities that come out of the surrounding counties to use the public lands within Jefferson County’s borders, and making sure the county keeps options open could pay dividends for such events, she said. Expecting volunteers to do all of that is just not realistic, she suggested.
“This is an awful lot to put on volunteers,” said Morris. She suggested the county check out job descriptions for federal recreation planners for guidance on what the job might look like. Commissioner Mullen voiced concern about funding for the proposed position, saying earmarked economic development funds from metal mines impact payments would mean other existing uses for that money would lose out. He questioned what the cost would be to the community.
“What’s the cost to the community going to be if we don’t do this?” asked Wortman. Voting on a motion by Wortman, the commission agreed unanimously to move forward tentatively, creating a job description and looking into costs and funding.
