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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNatural Resources Advisory Board - Minutes - 01/05/2005MINUTES CITY OF FORT COLLINS NATURAL RESOURCES ADVISORY BOARD REGULAR MEETING 281 N. COLLEGE January 5, 2004 For Reference: Nate Donovan, NRAB Chair - 472-1599 Eric Hamrick, Council Liaison - 225-2343 John Stokes, Staff Liaison - 221-6263 Board Members Present Joann Thomas, Clint Skutchan, Linda Knowlton, Gerry Hart, Glen Colton, Ryan Staychock, Rob Petterson, Nate Donovan, Randy Fischer Board Members Absent None Staff Present Natural Resources Dent: Mark Sears, Terry Klahn, John Stokes Guests Dell Price Anne Hutchinson, Fort Collins Chamber Of Commerce Agenda Review Stokes: I would like to move the Bartran item to the end of the meeting. CDOT may or may not be coming. I think we'll be ready to start the revisions to the General Management Guidelines before 7:45. Maybe we can see how the meeting progresses. Public Comments Anne Hutchinson: On behalf of the Chamber I would like to congratulate the NRAB, staff and others in the community on the GOCO grant. It's a tremendous opportunity and will stick around for a lifetime. I look forward to working with this organization and others. Stokes: I would like to thank Anne Hutchinson for inviting me to speak to the Legislative Affairs Committee. It was a great meeting, and I appreciated the chance to get with those folks. Approval of Minutes: November 17, 2004: The minutes of the November 17, 2004 meeting were unanimously approved with the following change. • Knowlton: Paget, halfway down, correct to "given the apparent differences between the boards". Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 December 1.2004: The minutes of the December 1, 2004 meeting were unanimously approved with the following changes: • Staychock: Page 10, 7ch bullet: change to read "I went to a meeting put on by the City Manager's Office, with attorney's present" and three sentences later "The holdup is we don't have the option to go to P&Z, even as individuals?" • Thomas: Page 8, bottom: Correct grammar in Randy Fischer's comment. Donovan: On Ryan's comment, my concern with that topic is that even though we could go to P&Z as individuals there was a chill put on by the City Manager's Office when the board dealt with a specific development application. It would give me pause, just because I'm on the board. Knowlton: We need to be careful with the amount of time we allow for public comments. We need to tighten up the agenda when there are not comments. Perhaps we should change the public comments to ten minutes. CDOT Rest Area Easement, Mark Sears Sears said this is a straightforward request, a no-brainer. The easements and additional right-of-way are needed to implement the new rest area. They need right-of-way for a left turn lane. The total they need is a little over .2 acre, the part they need from natural areas is .075. We ended up keeping a sliver of land where the trail goes to Running Deer Natural Area. They need an easement across the trail for a gas/water line, and another to connect into the sewer line. They are two very small easements, no impact of significance. They will replace the gravel trail and some vegetation. The right-of-way along Prospect would have been acquired in the future when Prospect was widened. At this time there is no impact. Linda Knowlton made the following motion: Move that the NRAB recommends that City Council pass an Ordinance granting the permanent Easements and Right -of -Way to CDOT as requested for the consideration in the sum of $1,370.00. i ne motion was seconaea oy unnt Jkutcnan. Hart: We had a non -productive meeting with CDOT. Our relationship with CDOT is pretty one-sided. We're continually helping them out, but when we raise concerns on environmental matters they are not responsive. It doesn't seem like there's much quid -pro -quo between us and CDOT. Is there anything we can do about that? Sears: That perception is probably correct as it relates to the natural areas program. As it relates to the City as a whole there's a lot of good, positive interaction. I did relay our comments back to CDOT on the bridge project. They built themselves into a box. Right now they're planning to go in and do a maintenance type project. They don't have time work anything out with us and get the easements before the spring runoff. I don't think they even have the money. Donovan: The whole idea of moving the rest area off the interstate is curious to me. Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 3 The motion passed unanimously. Annual Report to Council, Nate Donovan Donovan said that in the past the board has been cranky about getting things handed to them at meetings and I apologize for this. I intended to email it so you could have it in advance. It's fairly routine, there's not a lot of substance. We don't have to vote on it so we can go either way on approving it. We can do whatever you think is best. • Knowlton: We might say that Arvind moved out of the GMA so it doesn't look like he resigned. He didn't really want to leave the board. The board agreed to go ahead and send the report to the City Clerk's Office. Bartran Deal, Mark Sears Stokes said we'll have to do a brief executive session, then come back and do a regular meeting. Nate Donovan said that since this involves confidential information we need to go into executive session. It's January 5, 2005, and the time is 6:37 p.m. For the record I am Nate Donovan, the presiding officer. As required by the Open Meetings Law, this executive session is being electronically recorded. Also present at this executive session are the following persons: Clint Skutchan, Mark Sears, Terry Klahn, Rob Petterson, Joann Thomas, Jerry Hart, Randy Fischer, Ryan Staychock, Linda Knowlton, Glen Colton, John Stokes. This is an executive session for the following purpose: discuss real property acquisitions. I caution each participant to confine all discussion to the stated purpose of the executive session, and that no final legislative action may occur in the executive session. If at any point in the executive session any participant believes that the discussion is going outside the proper scope of the executive session, please interrupt the discussion and make an objection. The regular meeting resumed at 7:20 p.m. Stokes said this is a 450 acre community separator on the edge of the GMA that we propose to purchase and place a conservation easement on. We need to go to Council for permission to lease back the property to the current sod farm operator for an initial term of four years, maximum of twelve years. We're asking the board for a recommendation to Council to have the City staff execute the lease back and we hope they'll fully endorse the concept of putting an easement on the property and selling the underlying fee. • Fischer: We wouldn't necessarily have to sell the land under this arrangement? We could potentially keep the land? • Stokes: That's correct. Most of you know our principal strategy for community separators is to buy conservation easements, and not own and hold the land. We will if we feel it's the right choice, or if we cant find a buyer. Our preference is to acquire easements when we can. Linda Knowlton made the following motion: Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 4 Move that the NRAB recommend that Council pass an ordinance granting the lease of the sod farm back to Bartran, and advise Council to support the concept of selling the land with a conservation easement on it to another huver. I be motion was seconded by Rob Petterson and unanimously approved. Nate Donovan said he doesn't feel a memo is necessary, the motion will be in the AIS. Revisions to Natural Areas General Management Guidelines, Mark Sears Sears said that Council asked the Natural Areas Program to review the General Management Guidelines as they relate to recreation. There are a few proposed changes. Camping: Currently we do not allow camping. That was written when all of the natural areas were in the City limits, now we've added two regional natural areas. • Colton: What is the intent of "back country" camping. • Sears: As opposed to a drive -up campground. We're not proposing that type of camping. • Colton: There should be a definition of "back country" in the code. • Hart: You talk about specifically designated. How is it designated? • Sears: Sites specifically designated for camping, such as at Bobcat Ridge there might be two or three sites specifically marked. They wouldn't be designated in the master plan. Initially we're not designating any sites, much like we're not specifically locating the trail. • Fischer: I think that language is confusing. What you're proposing is to have a permanent campsite and give people a permit. The way it's worded is just a little confusing. • Sears: We're talking about a specifically designated back country site for which a permit is required. • Donovan: It looks like this will be a code change, it should say "for purposes for the code...". • Fischer: I have another concern about camping issues. Would you allow fires, or stoves only? • Sears: Stoves only. I don't feel that's necessary to put in the language. • Donovan: It might be appropriate for the guidelines, but not the code. • Stokes: If we ever do decide to do this, we'd come back to the board with a map. • Sears: These are changes in the guidelines that just allow us to consider those as uses. • Staychock: In relationship to the changes, what is the process in the future if we find that any of the recreational activities are hypocritical to the goal of natural areas. What's the process to make our goal more attainable? What if we find any of our recreational opportunities are not allowing us to attain our goal, or are working against the goal? What then? • Knowlton: Hopefully we'll determine the impacts before we allow the activity. Backing off is not an easy thing to do. We need to be proactive in trying to remedy situations. Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 • Sears: We would define an area where there is little to not impact. We're not designating any campsites or rock climbing now. We feel like we need to own it for more years to know, until we feel comfortable knowing where we can designate a campsite or rock climbing. • Stokes: We have a mission statement, the first part is about conserving natural resources. The second is about providing recreation. The overarching mandate is to conserve the natural resources and the other things follow. • Stokes: The management plan for Bobcat essentially echoes that mission statement. There are guidelines that guide staffs action when it contemplates activity on a property. There are many levels of protection. We'll have to come back to the board when we contemplate hunting or camping. As we notice changes to resources we adaptably manage our activities. We need to adaptably manage. Trying to find the balance, and not be overwhelmed is going to be a tough thing for us to do. Fort Collins has been a leader, and has avoided make egregious mistakes that the Boulder open space program has had. Dogs off leash is the number one problem they have on their properties. These are guidelines that give us only the ability to consider allowing more intensive uses. • Skutchan: There's nothing in the language that impinges on your ability, or states specifically, that you cant take something away. It just may not be politically popular. • Knowlton: There are a couple instances already. On Gray Rock trail you used to be able to bike and have dogs off leash. They took both of those away. At Lory you used to be able to ride bikes up to the top and you cant do that any more. You can take things away, but its better to study and determine the right use beforehand, if possible, so that you don't have to take something away later. • Sears: We're anxious to get Bobcat open, but the items we're not confident in we're going to take a much slower approach. • Hart: Does there need to be any criteria for the comment on rock climbing, or do you feel this is adequate? • Sears: We're not planning for criteria. It's so dynamic from site to site, we wouldn't want to bind ourselves in any way. • Staychock: As far as shelters. Where do we want to put shelters? • Donovan: I don't think we should get that specific in the guidelines. Is there a catchall term for things that aren't listed here? • Sears: We're looking at shelters for users, I suppose there could be other types of shelters for storing equipment. • Donovan: I think you should consider a catchall so it doesn't become limiting. • Stokes: Different levels of detail will be brought forward in management plans as we do specific site management plans. • Knowlton: Picnicking will generate trash. That will generate maintenance issues. • Knowlton: I would like to see hunting weekdays only, never on weekends as is done at Lory. That generates some real conflicts with other users who come only on weekends. Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 • Donovan: If all or part of a natural area will be closed I don't know if it's feasible to close it during the week and open it on the weekends. • Sears: We'll consider it. We're not saying there will be hunting. At Bobcat we'd like to have it open for several years and study the visitor patterns. We may find no one is there Tuesday through Thursday. We need to know where the abundance of wildlife is in the area. We don't have a handle on that yet. • Thomas: If the language were kept as is could you still have hunts to thin a herd? • Stokes: The DOW culls herds for chronic wasting disease. They call those controlled hunts. • Stokes: The code would have to be changed to allow firearms to be discharged on a natural area outside of the city limits. The controlling law is the state law. They can come to our property and do what is needed to manage wildlife. • Gorby (audience): The law in the state is that a projectile cannot leave the confines of the property. You're talking about fire arms, but you'll have to adhere to the state hunting regulations. Those don't include just rifles. There is such a thing as a bow season you would want to take into consideration. As far as during the week, has there been discussion about rotation? You can hunt on a property, or a section of property only at certain times so that you don't over hunt an area? I assume you'll work with the DOW on the concept of how you will manage the wildlife. • Stokes: Specific to the management prescriptions on properties, we'll be getting familiar with these properties, and trying to understand how to manage hunting on the properties. There are complicated management questions. What we're trying to do with these guidelines is provide that ability and authority for staff to consider having a dialogue. Right now we're prohibited from doing that. • Staychock: I would like the proposed language to say that hunting may be allowed for the purposes of ecosystem management, it's a catchall and includes flora and fauna. It's not just a wildlife issue. • Hart: Philosophically, if we're going to allow the public, we need to allow all of the public. If there's shooting you shut it down to the public. It's the high powered rifles that I have a problem with any time of the year. I would really like to see us look into that. I don't feel comfortable shutting down the natural areas for that purpose. • Donovan: There are other lands to hunt. • Skutchan: To a certain degree there are reasons these acres should be opened up. Areas get inundated with elk. They're adaptive and that can be detrimental. Hunters are members of the general public, and they should be given access. We now have land far removed from the City limits. We have to understand hunters are also members of the general public. • Hart: Other uses are not exclusive. Hunting with high powered rifles is. • Knowlton: I hike during hunting season, it doesn't exclude me if I want to go. • Skutchan: It should be posted. • Fischer: 1 find myself agreeing with Jerry. I don't think hunting in natural areas is appropriate. Natural areas should be open to everyone. I agree that hunting is an exclusive use. I don't know how you get around it. I know you need something that allows you to do some sort of management if you feel it's necessary. I'm wondering if Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 some type of language could be crafted that wouldn't be geared so much toward hunting, but toward management of resources. • Stokes: We've tried to cover our bases. We've deliberately left the recreation factor on the table. • Colton: Some states only allow slugs. I don't know if that will get to the nature of Jerry's safety concerns. I envision Soapstone, we have 12,000 acres and maybe specific trails through 1000 acres of that. Is it really inappropriate to allow hunting on the other 11,000? I think we need to look at specific areas. • Stokes: If we ever do allow hunting on our properties we will approach it very cautiously. It will raise issues we've never had to deal with before. Our rangers are not armed, and will have to deal with people who are armed. When we design a management plan around hunting we'll bring that back to the board. • Audience: How are you differentiating between the natural areas and say, National Forest land? What's different there? • Sears: The primary difference is we anticipate a higher level of visitor usage from a wider variety of users. Most National Forest land wouldn't have as many mountain bikers, and people who want to view wildlife. The other difference is those are nationally managed lands. This is a local piece of property. • Audience: The game is not managed by the national parks or forests, it's managed by the State of Colorado. They will own the game on your property. I'm not seeing the difference. I understand that you may have mountain bikers, but I'm assuming that you're not going to allow hunting on all of your properties, just selective ones where it makes sense, or see a game load that would support hunting, whether its turkeys or elk. It doesn't seem like its that big of a deal. • Stokes: This property is owned by the City of Fort Collins. As managers of this property we have the responsibility to draft the management plans. • Audience: Don't you already have somewhat of a plan that has been outlined by the forest service and other agencies? • Stokes: Game management is site specific. We need to talk about how to manage the game in a specific site. We will take their information and probably do our own wildlife surveys as well. We'll use them as experts. • Hart: Maybe a lot of this conversation could occur down the road. My major concern is high powered rifles. • Stokes: At Eagles Nest, Larimer County will only allow muzzle hunting and bow hunting. They wont allow rifles on that property. • Knowlton: That's a relatively small piece of property. • Fischer: Any private land owner can prohibit hunting, and we can if we want. The thing is that we do have millions of acres of national forest land. It's not like people cant find a place to hunt. The issue to me is that in particular areas the best times of year to use those areas are hunting seasons. If we have hunting, you're excluding a group of people. My wife will not go anywhere where there's hunting. Partly because she doesn't want to see the blood and guts. It's a reality. There's a segment of the population that isn't going to be very keen on that, and we'll be excluding some people if we allow hunting. Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 • Audience: Hunting is a necessary tool for wildlife management. As far as your properties go you'll have to have some type of hunting. If not you'll look at transplanting or trapping. You'll have to foot the bill. Hunting can be limited to weekends, or two days during the week, or two weeks during the fall hunting period. You would have to limit other uses, I don't think it would be too much to ask. Hunters have contributed to the acquisitions. However you want to manage your lands, you'll have to allow some type of rifle hunting. You're going to have to have to allow some type of discharge. • Dell Price (audience): I've spent a good portion of my career writing regulations and found that you have to leave some flexibility in there. You're surrounded on three sides by national forest. With the management of the wildlife population firing firearms will be necessary. • Stokes: Right now we do not have the ability to even consider hunting. That's the window we're suggesting we ought to open. • Michel Magers (audience): If you're striving to work with the DOW for management of wildlife resources, one of the things you might consider is the percentage of land that the City's ownership would represent within a game management unit. That could have significant effect on the DOW's plans on the land they manage. • Petterson: In terms of the wording on firearms, it appears you could potentially have hunting within the natural areas within the city limits, or discharge a firearm. We don't want to introduce confusion. • Stokes: We can clarify that. Jerry Hart made the following motion: Move that the NRAB recommends that City Council pass a resolution to modify the municipal code to reflect the proposed changes. The motion was seconded by Glen Colton. • Knowlton: Can you come back with what you think you heard us say and the changes you think should be incorporated? • Sears: If you're not ready to make a recommendation tonight that's fine. • Donovan: I think it would be good for us to communicate something, specific or general. • Knowlton: I'm not comfortable with some of the suggestions. • Stokes: If you'd like us to, we can incorporate some of what we heard and bring it back. What's not going to change is the overarching staff recommendation. We wont change the recommendation that these activities be contemplated in the guidelines and change code to allow us to do it, if it's what we feel is needed. • Sears: We need to accomplish that you're comfortable with the guidelines. We wont be taking code changes at this time. Before we come back we'll work with the municipal code changes. Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 9 • Donovan: I think we're all in agreement about camping, rock climbing and shelters. If we could get some read on where each person is on the idea of hunting it would be good to communicate that to Council. We can always work on the specific wording. • Donovan: My concern about hunting is the high powered rifles, and the issue of needing to close off part or all of an area during specific times. • Thomas: Are we voting on something or not. I'm upset that hunting is included. Something you haven't discussed is fear. I'm strongly opposed to the proposed language, and I'm song it's linked to the other uses. I would not support the recommended changes if they're all linked together. • Audience: I'm not sure if you've addressed the need for some sort of facilities, outhouses. There's the control of human waste in back country camping. You have to pack your trash. • Staychock: Recreation on public lands is one of the three causes for losses of bio- diversity. If we don't understand the recreational impacts on our flora and fauna we'll have systems degraded to where we can't bring them back. I have reservations against recreation, and I do recreate. The question is where we draw the line. • Doug Ouren (audience): Are these considered public lands? It sounds like you want to manage as a private entity. • Sears: We're managing public lands in a very public environment. What you've not seen is that we've had four public open houses. We've had meetings with the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and other citizen groups. This is the first year we've had something other than local natural areas to deal with • Stokes: When we write management plans for our property we go through an extensive public process. What staff is talking about tonight are guidelines staff uses when we're trying to figure out how to manage a property. We develop management concepts and we bring those forth to the public. We try to balance all of these interests. What we're talking about tonight are the guidelines we use to help us figure those out. These are the four issues not currently addressed in the guidelines, and that's why we're asking for input. • Skutchan: I'm not a big believer in absolutes. I don't think you want to close the door on possibilities. There are tradeoffs and balances. People will feel excluded from time to time. I trust in John and staff to move forward in an appropriate way. We do have to think of game management. On my family's land the concentration of animals goes way up during the hunting season, and you're being detrimental to your lands if its not managed. I don't think you say absolutely yes or no. I trust a dialogue would be a quality one, and don't see this as a huge problem. • Hart: I withdraw the motion. • Colton: If you intend to control the big game you could have a two week window. I withdraw the motion also. • Fischer: It's important to reflect the board's consensus on the first three uses. • Donovan: We should have a vote on the hunting. If there are dissenting votes, and if it's adopted to recommend that hunting be considered the concerns of those who vote no could be included. Rob Petterson made the following motion: Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 10 Move that the NRAB advise City Council they are supportive of the guidelines changes as they relate to camping, rock climbing and shelters. Randy Fischer seconded the motion and it passed unanimously. Linda Knowlton made the following motion: Move that the NRAB advise City Council they are supportive of staffs recommendation of limited hunting for the purposes of wildlife management and recreation, and the associated firearms changes to support that. Jerry Hart seconded the motion. • Skutchan: I would like the addition of beyond wildlife management and support the idea of allowing for and opening the idea of wildlife and ecosystem management. I have no problem with recreation and will be supporting this. I would also like to make mention that I still believe mountain bike parks would be a valid use. It's a valued thing and something that should be looked at as the process moves forward. • Knowlton: That doesn't relate to this. • Fischer: I don't think hunting is the only tool available. The motion passed with five votes in favor (Donovan, Knowlton, Skutchan, Hart, Colton) and four votes opposed (Thomas, Fischer, Staychock, Petterson). New Business • Donovan: The Sustainability Forum is on January 10. If you plan to attend and have not rsvp'd you should. • Joann Thomas will not be here for the January worksession or the first meeting in February. She will email Nate and Terry. • Glen Colton will not be at the February 2 meeting. He will email Nate and Terry. • Stokes: The County closed on the Red Mountain Ranch on December 30, and we closed on the conservation easement. • Sears: The grand total of conservation in 2004 was 21,000 acres. • Hart: Staff did a good job. • Colton: The interchange for I-25 and Highway 34 will be anywhere from $80 to $160 million. • Fischer: It's great that our next move will be the Bartran and community separator deal. It's important to show people that we're concentrating on community separators. • Stokes: We'll be focusing more on community separators. Committee Reports Natural Resources Advisory Board January 5, 2005 11 • Fischer: We will have a Solid Waste Reduction Committee meeting on Wednesday, February 2. • Sears: I don't have anything for the Natural Areas committee. I haven't talked to Craig Foreman about a Trails Committee meeting. They might both get canceled. We'll get an announcement out. Council Six Month Planning Calendar • Donovan: We'll want to talk about single stream recycling and educate the board on that. • Fischer: That will be the main topic at the SWR Committee meeting. • Petterson: What are the anticipated impacts of the repeal of the sales tax on food. • Stokes: It wont impact the funding for the natural areas program. It will potentially affect the general fund side of the department. There are scenarios that have been posted, suggestions for how to arrive at the required budget cuts if the initiative passes. One of those contemplates us losing half of our people on the general fund side. It could potentially have a profound impact on NRD. You can find that information on the web. I recommend that you read that. It's the same information Council is using to plan for this eventuality. It's retroactive, the effective date is January 1, 2005. • Petterson: Is there some comment or other role we want to play? • Donovan: We have a naming policy for natural areas. Some in the City want to go to a comprehensive naming policy. It's under unscheduled items. Do you know where that is in the process? • Stokes: No, I don't. That was there when I took my job. There had been a lot of dialogue of how we name natural areas. We do have an administratively adopted policy. I'm reluctant to take that on as a City-wide dialogue when we have a NA"s policy that works well. • Colton: Anything in the Flood Plain regulations that might affect natural areas. • Donovan: We've beat that up already. • Stokes: I'll call and see if it's any different than what was brought to the board before. Adjournment The meeting was adjourned at 9:30 p.m. Submitted by Terry Klahn Admin Support Supervisor s