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Recording in progress.

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Recreation last year. Okay, we're ready to go. Thank you.

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We are calling to order the parks and Open Space

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Advisory committee for January 23, 2025. We will do the

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roll call, which. Is right here. Drew adams. Present. Trace

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Baker? Present. Carol Byerly? Present. All of it's Gerald. Janet

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George? Present. Christine Johnson? Here. Tony Lewis? I'm here. Jackson

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Mueller? Present. Eric Turner? Here. Full house. Nice job, everyone.

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Nice to have everyone here. Okay. I'm going to switch

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this up for a minute and do approval of previous

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meeting minutes. Do we have a motion to approve? Last

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month. Trace Baker, Postac. I want to bring up. A

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minor typo. I know what it is. Or maybe it's

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a different one. Section 4.2. I'm sorry, section 4.2. Question

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that other media outreach is. Being planned. Should that be?

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What? Question. That's not mine. Does anybody know?

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I found another typo. And. It was just in the.

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I think the public comment. That just needs to be

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proofread. There's one place where. I'm trying to find it

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now with my new glasses, and I'm not going. To

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find it. But. I would just ask that in the

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public comment period for items not on the agenda. That

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it just be proofread. All right, Carol. I was not

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at the meeting, but I looked at the video and

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I saw a typo. On the year's highlights. And that

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video that summarized the years highlights had a typo, and

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the word is sunset. But it was sus net. So

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FYI, I'll tell it to the ether, but there was

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a typo. In the cool video summarizing all the details.

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Okay, thank you. Is there another typhoon? No. Typos? Polyfits,

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jail? I just want to say that. I think the

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newer format. With a little more information, a little more

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narrative of what was discussed is perfect. It's really between

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that being brief and yet having the information there. So

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I really appreciate that. That's great. Agreed. Yeah, I think

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we've all found it to be much. More helpful. Okay,

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so noting those changes. Second with that. Okay with those

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changes. All in favor? Aye, those. Carol and I were

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not there, so we did not vote. And me also.

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Great. On our agenda is the election of officers.

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And this is something we do usually. At the first

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meeting of the year and. Are you guys ready to

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elect officers? Trace Baker post hack. May I suggest that

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we postpone the election of officers? Until the first regular

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meeting after the county commissioners select postac members. For 2025.

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Because I know that we've received some emails saying that.

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It might be February or March before the commissioner's act,

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and I know that there are some people here. Who?

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They've said they are not returning. I don't know if

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we're allowed to make this change. To our bylaws or

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whatever it is that says we have to. Do officers

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today? But it makes sense. Yeah, we can, by vote,

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change that. I think that's perfectly allowable. Let me just

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ask about the time frame. So we have several members.

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Reapplying for another term. We have one member who. Is

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calling it. And. We might not have. People in their

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seats with confirmation until. March or April. Right. So I

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just want to make sure I understand. Your time frame

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trace. Would you think? Election of officers once the dust

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has settled and everybody's in their position. That's what I'm

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putting up for discussion. I just want to make sure

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that. Got the cadence right. So it may be an

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election of officers in March or April, depending on. How

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that goes. Okay, Carol. Caroly pose. I think that's a

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good idea. Because. We aren't really comprised yet and wait

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until the new POS act is comprised and then we

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choose our own officer. I think it's a good idea.

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Other comments? Thoughts? Janet yeah, Janet. George Postac I think

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it's a good idea this time. I think we have

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four, which is almost half of us, that might be

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up for reappointment. So I think it's a really good

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idea this time. With the numbers. Great other thoughts. Yes.

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The only thing I'm thinking is introduce yourself. We're not

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a Friday. Is that if you wait until the new

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people are seated, you would be asking them to vote.

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For officers that they've never met before. So there's that

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consideration. Excellent point. Maybe we just shouldn't have officers at

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all. Make it a free for all. Other thoughts.

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Derek, you're kind of a government guy. I will confess.

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I've reviewed that the bylaws do say. And they were

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only recently, in 2020, approved that we shall elect our

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officers at the first meeting. Of the year. I don't

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think staff would prevent us from delaying that a month

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or two. We're not proposing to change our bylaws.

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Christine and then Jackson. Christine johnson posak. I don't know

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if I'm out of order asking this. But. Who? On

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the current Posac is applying to comeback. Trace baker. I

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am. Drew adams? I am. I think that's the extent.

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So right now, Jackson's seat is up and he is

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not reapplying. If I'm correct, confirmed. And Paula is not

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reapplying. So we have two coming back and two who

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are Xing. Okay, that's helpful to know presumed coming back.

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They've applied. It's true. Who would like to come back?

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Let me just say. Yeah, you never know. Jackson hits

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them. Yeah. I would like to discuss potentially voting today,

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and then you could revote in March or April. You

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could do both. Well, dare turn. And I guess I

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tend to agree. We have this as the first time

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in months. We have all of us here. I appreciate

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Renata's comment that. A new set of pos act really

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doesn't have the experience. Of each other. To, I think,

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meaningfully. Vote. I guess I would support a vote tonight.

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If that's the consensus. Trace. Trace Baker. Yeah. The discussion

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is convincing me that we should. Continue to vote tonight.

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Other thoughts. True? Yeah. I mean, reading the bylaws. It

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actually says will not even shall. Elect from among its

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members the chair and vice chair at the first meeting

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of each year. The fiscal year or the calendar. Gregorian

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which count. Counter. Paula. Paula Fitzgerald. I just want to

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remind people that last year there was election of an

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officer who was not reappointed. And so then it necessitated

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going back and doing that election again. So I see

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some value in waiting until everybody's on the board. But

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I also agree that. Nice to know who you're voting

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for in kind of their record and all that, so.

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I'm going to throw that back to you guys because

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you'll be the ones living. I nominate. Paula for. Chair.

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Well. Let me ask you for tonight. Is there any

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dissent in voting for officers tonight that you're strongly, so

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strongly convinced we should wait. That you would like to

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make that case. Carol Byerly Posak, I propose that we

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extend. Our current confirmation of us terror and Janita's co

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chair. Until we are newly comprised and then revisit it.

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And have another vote. We don't have to depose anybody.

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I think either of us would be happy to be

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deposed, however. Let's see. I guess.

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What I'm thinking is we actually have to vote on

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that, though. Because there has to be a motion. I

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would second it. So is that a motion that was

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my imotion. I will make that a motion that we

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retain our current chair and current co chair. Until. The

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membership has been reformed. Great. Is there a second? A

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second? Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed?

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Okay, the motion passes, and Janet and I will remain

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in our officer roles until a more thoughtful crew comes

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along. This could be dangerous. Monarchy. Exactly. I have no

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executive, okay? So next, do we have Janice Wisman? Good

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evening. Pos can you hear me? Yes. All right. Great.

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I'm Janice Wisman. I'm the real estate division manager, and

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I'm here to give you our 2024 closing summary, which

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also functions as our annual report. For the real estate

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division and before. I get started. I want to do

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what we often do or have been trying to do

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every time that we bring. An acquisition proposal to you

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and read the department's land commitment. It's more than a

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land acknowledgment. I just want to point that out and

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say that this is a commitment. For our department to

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do our work differently from now into the future. We've

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been doing this commitment now for a couple of years

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at least. To recognize all the cultures and people who

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have contribute to this special place. So I would like

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to. If you would indulge me, I'll just read it

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so we get it. On the record. So for much

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longer than parks and open spaces. History of stewarding open

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space the land in this community has been important to

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the diverse indigenous communities that continue to live here. We

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are partnering with indigenous people to make meaningful changes to

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how we do our work. That include indigenous people, incorporate

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their perspectives and honor their land stewardship, legacy parks and

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open space operates within modern legal constructs of land ownership.

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To steward Boulder county open space and accomplish these efforts

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on behalf of our community. So thank you for that.

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And now I will not read slides going forward. But

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I want to give you some highlights, and then we'll

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look at a few of the more interesting deals we

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did this year. So in 2024. We had a total

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of 646 acres that we acquired, including water rights as

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well. In 15 different acquisitions. We acquired 15 building rights,

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which is important for our open space program, because by

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removing building rights, from the land, you prevent the development

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from happening. And we had a net investment of just

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over $11.9 million. And I would like to revisit some

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of those acquisitions, one that we are very excited about

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is the Wall street mill. If you've been up to

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Wall street and. This is just next to, down the

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road a little bit from the assay office. This was

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only a one acre acquisition, and it only cost $63,000.

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But we now own the entire mill. The county previously

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owned half of the mill, and it was very difficult,

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if not impossible. To do any cultural preservation of that

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mill site. So now we do own. The whole mill.

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It's also sound, so there's nothing that needs to be

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done. Right now. But if something does need to be

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done, the county can proceed with the project. The Highlands

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camp was one that was not brought to you because

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it was a donation, and it was a 294 acre

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property. It's up by Allens park, and the donation was

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of a conservation easement to the Estas Valley land Trust.

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The county assisted with project costs and has a backup

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holder position in case the Estes Valley land trust ever

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decides they can't hold the easement anymore. We don't yet.

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Know the value of that. It's been appraised and. There

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is a tax season process for them to make sure

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they get that donation appraised. And do whatever it is

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they want to do to claim their tax benefits. This

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property is real interesting because. It has solid view, protection,

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corridor aspects to it, and it's part of the indian

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peaks. Environmental conservation area. Those are both features in the

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Boulder county comprehensive plan. Can I ask a question? Carol

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byr, Lee Posak. If we. Are not. It's not about

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the money. But if it's a donation, I would. Be

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interested in knowing. What additional lands are being brought into

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the county program. I think. We try to let you

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know about those as they happen. I haven't been to

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a few of the meetings this year, so I'm not

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sure exactly if that happened this year. But. Okay, I

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guess I didn't recognize that. Okay. Because that'll change the

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map. Yes, it does. Yes. And then we had a

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second donation this year, and it was a fee title

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donation. We're calling this the elk draw property, and it's

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40 acres up next to the Tucker property just west

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of Netherland and Colorado open lands owned that property, and

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they retained a conservation easement over it, but gave the

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ownership over to the county, and the county will manage

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that property in. Conjunction with the Tucker property. The Boulder

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County Comprehensive Plan identifies this property as having indian peaks

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environmental conservation area features as well as significant natural communities

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and the Arapaho ranch and Tucker homestead critical wildlife habitat

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areas. And we believe the donation value, and that was

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about $200,000. And then we had another elk property. We

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were trying to name things, not for people, and this

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is in a different part of the property or part

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of the county. Excuse me. We had the elk tracks

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property, which is a 36 acre piece, and it is

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on Highway 72 in Cole Creek. Canyon. It's on the

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north side of the road, and it nearly abuts Reynolds

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ranch. There's a little slive. Sliver of force service in

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between this property and Reynolds Ranch. We bought that for

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the fair. Market value of $535,000. You hopefully remember this

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one because we did bring it. To you. And the

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comprehensive plan identifies this as having view protection quarter features.

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It's also part of the Magnolia Environmental Conservation Area. Has

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00:18:02,421 --> 00:18:06,821
importance for the Winnagar ridge Elkurd migration corridor and significant

234
00:18:06,821 --> 00:18:11,181
natural communities, and it also provides the future. But completely

235
00:18:11,181 --> 00:18:14,541
unplanned and nothing being planned at the moment, but. The

236
00:18:14,541 --> 00:18:16,901
potential for a trail connection to Reynolds Ranch if the

237
00:18:16,901 --> 00:18:20,937
county were to ever desire to do that. A property

238
00:18:20,937 --> 00:18:23,937
that is just west of Hygiene and north of 66.

239
00:18:23,937 --> 00:18:26,177
It's about a mile west of Hygiene, and this is

240
00:18:26,177 --> 00:18:29,097
an aerial photo that the realtor provided for us. And

241
00:18:29,097 --> 00:18:31,497
I thought that was a nice picture to show you

242
00:18:31,497 --> 00:18:35,057
because it puts this in context with Rabbit Mountain. It's

243
00:18:35,057 --> 00:18:42,079
101 acres. It was a $2,975,000. Acquisition. And came with

244
00:18:42,079 --> 00:18:45,359
several shares of a significant priority, ditch water rights, that

245
00:18:45,359 --> 00:18:49,089
we wanted to acquire as well. The fields are irrigated

246
00:18:49,089 --> 00:18:53,756
and very highly productive. And this one is identified as

247
00:18:53,756 --> 00:18:58,276
having agricultural lands of statewide importance. Prebble's meadow jumping. Mouse

248
00:18:58,276 --> 00:19:02,196
suitable contiguous habitat in what's identified as zone three. For

249
00:19:02,196 --> 00:19:07,076
them, it's got the highway 66 view protection corridor. It's

250
00:19:07,076 --> 00:19:10,436
actually part of the Rabbit Mountain Environmental conservation area. Even

251
00:19:10,436 --> 00:19:13,181
though you can see it's a little distance. Away, and

252
00:19:13,181 --> 00:19:15,341
it is part also of the Rabbit Mountain B, one

253
00:19:15,341 --> 00:19:21,972
high biodiversity area. And then the one that. Was the

254
00:19:21,972 --> 00:19:25,292
very interesting and fun and wonderful acquisition for the year,

255
00:19:25,292 --> 00:19:27,412
really the highlight of the year. Was the Haystack Mountain

256
00:19:27,412 --> 00:19:31,012
property. This lies on the south side of Oxford Road.

257
00:19:31,012 --> 00:19:33,372
It's southeast of Table Mountain. You can't see Table Mountain

258
00:19:33,372 --> 00:19:35,692
in this picture, but this is. Another realtor picture that

259
00:19:35,692 --> 00:19:39,772
I thought was good shows the feeder canal passing by

260
00:19:39,772 --> 00:19:42,853
on the south. End of the property. It's about 106

261
00:19:42,853 --> 00:19:47,729
acres. We paid $6.2 million for this. This one was

262
00:19:47,729 --> 00:19:50,329
an auction that the county had to participate in. I

263
00:19:50,329 --> 00:19:53,975
think Terese told you. About this after it happened. It

264
00:19:53,975 --> 00:19:57,055
was a very interesting process and ended up being a

265
00:19:57,055 --> 00:19:59,695
live auction that finished in Hong Kong. With a live

266
00:19:59,695 --> 00:20:04,225
auctioneer, so it was quite fun. And then this property

267
00:20:04,225 --> 00:20:07,745
does have such importance to our community as a natural

268
00:20:07,745 --> 00:20:10,825
landmark. It's designated as such in the county's comprehensive plan.

269
00:20:12,122 --> 00:20:14,282
And it has other resources on the property, and so

270
00:20:14,282 --> 00:20:17,002
it's closed for resource protection and is not open to

271
00:20:17,002 --> 00:20:21,706
the public. Janice, Trace Baker, Postac. Could you give us

272
00:20:21,706 --> 00:20:26,910
some examples of what the resources are? That need protection.

273
00:20:26,910 --> 00:20:28,830
I'm sorry, I can't. I don't have those with. Me

274
00:20:28,830 --> 00:20:32,316
right now. Okay? Thank you. Thank you. And, Janice, before

275
00:20:32,316 --> 00:20:34,756
you get off the slide, can you just give us

276
00:20:34,756 --> 00:20:37,676
a sense of where the boundary goes on the backside

277
00:20:37,676 --> 00:20:42,415
of that property. Yeah. So what you're looking at, this

278
00:20:42,415 --> 00:20:47,402
is looking kind of northeast. And if you look at

279
00:20:47,402 --> 00:20:50,042
Haystack Mountain, over the hill and down on the other

280
00:20:50,042 --> 00:20:53,447
side, Oxford Road runs along there. I don't think you

281
00:20:53,447 --> 00:20:56,807
can quite see it in this picture. Oxford Road runs

282
00:20:56,807 --> 00:20:59,687
generally east and west, and that Oxford Road is the

283
00:20:59,687 --> 00:21:02,527
north edge of the property. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes.

284
00:21:02,527 --> 00:21:04,487
And I can also say that this property used to

285
00:21:04,487 --> 00:21:07,287
be part of the haystack mountain golf course, which is

286
00:21:07,287 --> 00:21:08,807
south of the canal, and some of it you can

287
00:21:08,807 --> 00:21:14,849
see in the photo there. Thank you. All right. And

288
00:21:14,849 --> 00:21:18,249
then those are the acquisitions that I wanted to highlight.

289
00:21:18,249 --> 00:21:21,009
There were more because we did 15 altogether. I gave

290
00:21:21,009 --> 00:21:22,609
you a list of those. I know that list is

291
00:21:22,609 --> 00:21:28,311
a little bit. Dense. But hopefully you could expand it

292
00:21:28,311 --> 00:21:31,231
on your computers and read it. Feel free to ask

293
00:21:31,231 --> 00:21:33,111
me questions. About it if you would like, but I'd

294
00:21:33,111 --> 00:21:35,551
like to highlight another section on that list. Are the

295
00:21:35,551 --> 00:21:37,671
dispositions that we do. And as you know, a lot

296
00:21:37,671 --> 00:21:40,311
of times we have to respond to a taking from

297
00:21:40,311 --> 00:21:44,585
a condemning authority. But we also do dispositions when it

298
00:21:44,585 --> 00:21:46,825
makes sense for open space purposes, and I wanted to

299
00:21:46,825 --> 00:21:49,945
highlight this one, which is an amended easement we did

300
00:21:49,945 --> 00:21:53,265
with Broomfield for the Lakelink. Trail that runs through part

301
00:21:53,265 --> 00:21:56,825
of Ruth Roberts park. And there was erosion happening in

302
00:21:56,825 --> 00:21:58,505
the drainage. You can see here, and they needed a

303
00:21:58,505 --> 00:22:02,275
little more area to control the erosion. And the prior

304
00:22:02,275 --> 00:22:04,115
easement that they had for the trail was just a

305
00:22:04,115 --> 00:22:07,555
30 foot wide street. Width and they needed more of

306
00:22:07,555 --> 00:22:10,936
a polygon in this area. So we were able to

307
00:22:10,936 --> 00:22:13,816
amend that easement, and then now they can do the

308
00:22:13,816 --> 00:22:15,736
erosion control. That they need to do into the future.

309
00:22:16,947 --> 00:22:20,427
And then another major area of our work is working

310
00:22:20,427 --> 00:22:22,627
on oil and gas activity that happens on open space.

311
00:22:25,415 --> 00:22:28,295
And I know that you understand this, but some members

312
00:22:28,295 --> 00:22:29,975
of the public may not, so I'm going to explain

313
00:22:29,975 --> 00:22:32,935
that this activity is occurring on open space because these

314
00:22:32,935 --> 00:22:36,215
leases were typically in place. They were in place, typically

315
00:22:36,215 --> 00:22:39,855
decades before the county acquired the properties. Most of the

316
00:22:39,855 --> 00:22:42,735
leases started back in nineteen seventy eight, seventy nine, eighty,

317
00:22:42,735 --> 00:22:46,390
eighty one in that time frame. And our staff lead

318
00:22:46,390 --> 00:22:48,910
our department in the real estate division, lead our department's

319
00:22:48,910 --> 00:22:51,830
oil and gas team, which includes a plant ecologist, a

320
00:22:51,830 --> 00:22:55,990
wildlife biologist and someone from the ag resources division. And

321
00:22:55,990 --> 00:22:58,870
then, when needed, somebody from the trails crew and trails

322
00:22:58,870 --> 00:23:03,030
groups to evaluate the operator's needs. And right now, really

323
00:23:03,030 --> 00:23:05,525
what's happening is they just are coming onto. These well,

324
00:23:05,525 --> 00:23:10,868
pads insights to do maintenance. And there were 14 groups

325
00:23:10,868 --> 00:23:16,388
of maintenance projects this year that involved work on 258

326
00:23:16,388 --> 00:23:20,668
different wells, some of that number. That 258 is multiple

327
00:23:20,668 --> 00:23:22,748
times coming back because they would do different kinds of

328
00:23:22,748 --> 00:23:27,687
maintenance. On each property, each wellhead. And then pad site.

329
00:23:29,363 --> 00:23:32,163
Also, that also involves work on non county open space.

330
00:23:33,824 --> 00:23:36,384
Because our department is the one that has the expertise

331
00:23:36,384 --> 00:23:38,584
on how to minimize the impacts to the land and

332
00:23:38,584 --> 00:23:41,912
how to reclaim and restore things. And so. Our oil

333
00:23:41,912 --> 00:23:45,912
and gas team serves as the county's resource experts for

334
00:23:45,912 --> 00:23:49,944
that work. Altogether, we're able to minimize the impacts and

335
00:23:49,944 --> 00:23:53,104
reclaim things and help landowners who have wells. On their

336
00:23:53,104 --> 00:24:00,023
private land. And then the last major group of our

337
00:24:00,023 --> 00:24:02,983
work that we do is our conservation easement program. And

338
00:24:02,983 --> 00:24:06,503
they again monitored 450 easements. That's typically about how many

339
00:24:06,503 --> 00:24:09,023
they can do every year, which is a little over

340
00:24:09,023 --> 00:24:13,103
50% of our 848 easements that we have that require

341
00:24:13,103 --> 00:24:17,727
monitoring. There are some other interests in our program that

342
00:24:17,727 --> 00:24:21,167
we manage, like deed restrictions or restrictive covenant. They're not

343
00:24:21,167 --> 00:24:23,807
technically conservation easements, but they're part of what we manage

344
00:24:23,807 --> 00:24:26,887
to make. Sure the landowners are abiding by the restrictions

345
00:24:26,887 --> 00:24:30,847
on their property, and then the county also has granted

346
00:24:30,847 --> 00:24:35,127
conservation easements out to our partners on open space properties,

347
00:24:35,127 --> 00:24:39,230
and there are. 154 of those. So all told, our

348
00:24:39,230 --> 00:24:45,909
program. Manages about 1046 conservation easement. And similar types of

349
00:24:45,909 --> 00:24:49,789
interest. Nice. Christine, you have a question? Christine Johnson Posak

350
00:24:49,789 --> 00:24:53,429
I really appreciated the document that you gave us ahead

351
00:24:53,429 --> 00:24:58,454
of time that came. With the agenda, and I found

352
00:24:58,454 --> 00:25:01,454
this part of it to be really eye opening. I

353
00:25:01,454 --> 00:25:04,294
don't. Think I had understood the degree to which you

354
00:25:04,294 --> 00:25:07,974
are involved with this, and I was curious. What does

355
00:25:07,974 --> 00:25:12,566
it look like? When you are doing monitoring. What? Does

356
00:25:12,566 --> 00:25:15,166
the monitoring visit entail? I assume you're going to a

357
00:25:15,166 --> 00:25:18,006
property and looking for. Something. Sure, I'll be happy to

358
00:25:18,006 --> 00:25:21,538
describe that. And before I get into that, I can

359
00:25:21,538 --> 00:25:26,403
also share that for context. This represents about 40,000 acres

360
00:25:26,403 --> 00:25:30,444
of our 107,000 acre holdings, so it's. Significant. They're private

361
00:25:30,444 --> 00:25:33,164
properties. But the landowners who are there now, or their

362
00:25:33,164 --> 00:25:38,094
prior landowners, restricted their uses, so. They vary, and some

363
00:25:38,094 --> 00:25:40,254
of these are about 300 of them that were done

364
00:25:40,254 --> 00:25:43,134
through land use processes. And then quite a few that

365
00:25:43,134 --> 00:25:46,294
were done through our own acquisitions and donations and things

366
00:25:46,294 --> 00:25:49,483
like that. So each easement is different, but they all

367
00:25:49,483 --> 00:25:52,563
do some sort of development restriction, and then they also

368
00:25:52,563 --> 00:25:56,134
do some sort. Of natural resource or other type of

369
00:25:56,134 --> 00:25:59,283
protection. So we have to look at each one, and

370
00:25:59,283 --> 00:26:02,443
what we do is we have a rotational scheme. Set

371
00:26:02,443 --> 00:26:05,768
up so that. If you're headed out to monitor for

372
00:26:05,768 --> 00:26:08,488
the day, you have a group of eight to ten,

373
00:26:08,488 --> 00:26:11,408
maybe twelve or 15 at the most. Easements to monitor

374
00:26:11,408 --> 00:26:13,728
it depends on the size of them and where you

375
00:26:13,728 --> 00:26:16,688
are in the county, you can monitor quite a few

376
00:26:16,688 --> 00:26:18,928
ones on the planes. In a day. Whereas up in

377
00:26:18,928 --> 00:26:22,656
the mountains you might be just monitoring one property. And

378
00:26:22,656 --> 00:26:25,776
we send notices out to the landowner to say that

379
00:26:25,776 --> 00:26:27,736
we are, and we usually do that. Early in the

380
00:26:27,736 --> 00:26:29,816
year, and we say you're on the schedule for monitoring

381
00:26:29,816 --> 00:26:32,376
this year. We plan to come out and do a

382
00:26:32,376 --> 00:26:34,656
monitoring visit. Would you please let your tenants know if

383
00:26:34,656 --> 00:26:37,696
you have tenants. And if you would like to be

384
00:26:37,696 --> 00:26:40,016
there when we come, give us a call. We're happy

385
00:26:40,016 --> 00:26:42,745
to arrange a visit while you're there, but. The county

386
00:26:42,745 --> 00:26:45,305
does have the right to go out, and we literally

387
00:26:45,305 --> 00:26:49,905
can't arrange 450 visits. So we set it up that

388
00:26:49,905 --> 00:26:52,265
way to just say, tell us if you need to

389
00:26:52,265 --> 00:26:54,974
be there. And if you want to be there. It

390
00:26:54,974 --> 00:26:56,934
also gives them an opportunity. If they have questions for

391
00:26:56,934 --> 00:26:58,694
us, sometimes they can call and talk. To us ahead

392
00:26:58,694 --> 00:27:02,614
of time or afterwards or whatever. And then we go

393
00:27:02,614 --> 00:27:05,814
out and we have a buddy system so that nobody's

394
00:27:05,814 --> 00:27:07,814
going by. Themselves in the mountains because we want to

395
00:27:07,814 --> 00:27:11,654
be safe and make sure everybody, if you're climbing over

396
00:27:11,654 --> 00:27:14,094
logs and things. You don't want to have a medical

397
00:27:14,094 --> 00:27:16,214
issue if you break. Your leg or something and be

398
00:27:16,214 --> 00:27:18,654
by yourself. So we have protocols for how we do

399
00:27:18,654 --> 00:27:21,254
the site. Visits, but then we go in a count.

400
00:27:21,316 --> 00:27:24,903
County vehicle. You can see the equipment in the picture

401
00:27:24,903 --> 00:27:28,783
here. That is just basically a backpack with a GPS.

402
00:27:28,783 --> 00:27:32,703
Some information about the conservation easement, and they've got a

403
00:27:32,703 --> 00:27:35,743
sense of the property boundaries. And they're going out to

404
00:27:35,743 --> 00:27:40,060
look for changes, primarily. We typically have these properties well

405
00:27:40,060 --> 00:27:45,380
documented, with photographs and aerials as well. So we know

406
00:27:45,380 --> 00:27:47,867
what's out there to start with. Most of the properties

407
00:27:47,867 --> 00:27:52,002
have baseline reports. The ones that got assigned to our

408
00:27:52,002 --> 00:27:56,282
department. Just going way back when I started. On June

409
00:27:56,282 --> 00:27:59,802
1, 2005. So I'm coming up on my 20th anniversary.

410
00:27:59,802 --> 00:28:03,320
I was tasked with starting our program. And we had

411
00:28:03,320 --> 00:28:06,760
about 550 easements. And after we got that going for

412
00:28:06,760 --> 00:28:09,400
about a year, the commissioners said, why don't you monitor

413
00:28:09,400 --> 00:28:12,960
and manage all of the land use process easements? As

414
00:28:12,960 --> 00:28:16,280
well. And those came to us with no baselines, but

415
00:28:16,280 --> 00:28:19,640
we did have baseline data, so. We did have title

416
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,400
work, we had assessor data. We had all kinds of

417
00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,417
things from the. Land use record, but not an official

418
00:28:24,417 --> 00:28:27,577
baseline report. But we do use that baseline report that

419
00:28:27,577 --> 00:28:31,537
talks. About uses and what's allowed and intentions, and you

420
00:28:31,537 --> 00:28:35,323
look at the conservation easement document. As well as past

421
00:28:35,323 --> 00:28:38,243
photographs. And so you compare all of that to what

422
00:28:38,243 --> 00:28:41,843
you're seeing. Today to see if there are changes and

423
00:28:41,843 --> 00:28:44,163
if those changes are allowed by the terms of the

424
00:28:44,163 --> 00:28:46,523
conservation easement, and then if they're not, then there are

425
00:28:46,523 --> 00:28:51,485
a lot of follow up. Conversations. And various resolutions to

426
00:28:51,485 --> 00:28:55,080
issues that they might find. And the program uses volunteers

427
00:28:55,080 --> 00:28:59,080
as well, of which trace is a longtime volunteer. Paula

428
00:28:59,080 --> 00:29:02,840
has volunteered. I volunteered for a couple of seasons already,

429
00:29:02,840 --> 00:29:06,111
which we very much appreciate. It's such an amazing program,

430
00:29:06,111 --> 00:29:09,896
and it's such a great opportunity to volunteer. Tracy, did

431
00:29:09,896 --> 00:29:11,336
you want to add anything to it? Do you have

432
00:29:11,336 --> 00:29:18,184
trace Baker Postac? And at least as volunteers. We're given

433
00:29:18,184 --> 00:29:23,306
a geo referenced map on our phone. And so that

434
00:29:23,306 --> 00:29:28,112
will allow us to respect the boundaries. And then there

435
00:29:28,112 --> 00:29:33,072
is a protocol that we follow where. We will. Make

436
00:29:33,072 --> 00:29:39,482
either photographs of changes that we observe. Or reference photographs.

437
00:29:40,774 --> 00:29:46,363
And. Those are geolocated on the map so you can

438
00:29:46,363 --> 00:29:49,003
get a precise idea of where the photograph was made.

439
00:29:50,892 --> 00:29:58,856
And. Some of the. Places are very rugged. A lot

440
00:29:58,856 --> 00:30:04,863
of them are old mining claims. But there's steep terrain,

441
00:30:04,863 --> 00:30:09,939
lots of bear droppings out there. So it's a fun

442
00:30:09,939 --> 00:30:18,525
program. Questions, Janet. Just a quick question for clarification. So

443
00:30:18,525 --> 00:30:23,729
when you say photograph changes or document changes, Do you

444
00:30:23,729 --> 00:30:26,129
mean changes that the owner might have made, or does

445
00:30:26,129 --> 00:30:30,169
that include natural kind of changes? To. Well, we do

446
00:30:30,169 --> 00:30:31,889
see all of them, but the ones that are of

447
00:30:31,889 --> 00:30:34,689
concern are the ones the owner made. Okay, that's what

448
00:30:34,689 --> 00:30:39,004
I thought. If the flood comes through and damages the

449
00:30:39,004 --> 00:30:41,764
property, we can't and don't make the landowner put things

450
00:30:41,764 --> 00:30:44,964
back because that's just too expensive to do. But we

451
00:30:44,964 --> 00:30:46,604
do want to make sure that they're staying within their

452
00:30:46,604 --> 00:30:50,124
building envelopes for allowed buildings. They're not getting too close

453
00:30:50,124 --> 00:30:52,644
to riparion areas, or they're supposed to not have buildings.

454
00:30:52,644 --> 00:30:55,764
And that sort of thing. Yeah, but these document things

455
00:30:55,764 --> 00:30:57,999
like a flood that. Would come through. Okay, we do.

456
00:31:00,343 --> 00:31:08,034
Other questions. Great general firely. What percentage of problems do

457
00:31:08,034 --> 00:31:12,834
you find? Is it, like, virtually none, or is it.

458
00:31:12,834 --> 00:31:15,874
It's. Virtually none. Now. It's not very many. When I

459
00:31:15,874 --> 00:31:18,234
first started, it was a lot because people were asking

460
00:31:18,234 --> 00:31:22,524
me. Well, who are you? What are you doing here?

461
00:31:22,524 --> 00:31:24,204
What are you doing here and why? I don't have

462
00:31:24,204 --> 00:31:27,244
a. Conservation easement, that sort of thing, because the county

463
00:31:27,244 --> 00:31:31,174
had not had a monitoring program before. But now, because

464
00:31:31,174 --> 00:31:33,254
we're out there almost every other year on each property,

465
00:31:35,080 --> 00:31:38,357
People are used to it. They know. What the restrictions

466
00:31:38,357 --> 00:31:42,336
are and. It's a very solid relationship, usually with the

467
00:31:42,336 --> 00:31:46,614
landowners. So thank you for your interest in that program.

468
00:31:49,382 --> 00:31:50,662
And then to end with, I just want to let

469
00:31:50,662 --> 00:31:54,089
you know about a couple of staffing. Changes. Don Derso,

470
00:31:54,089 --> 00:31:56,569
who has been our person to present all of our

471
00:31:56,569 --> 00:32:00,609
condemnations with you. He was in a term position and

472
00:32:00,609 --> 00:32:03,249
that term position expired and he was ready to retire.

473
00:32:04,827 --> 00:32:06,227
So we don't have his position, and we don't have

474
00:32:06,227 --> 00:32:10,629
Don, unfortunately. But he has retired and we wish him

475
00:32:10,629 --> 00:32:12,989
well, and we do miss him. We do have a

476
00:32:12,989 --> 00:32:17,076
new staff member, though, because Michael Sylvester. Who I don't

477
00:32:17,076 --> 00:32:18,556
have in this picture because he hadn't joined us at

478
00:32:18,556 --> 00:32:22,177
this. Point, but. He has just joined our team from

479
00:32:22,177 --> 00:32:26,349
the county attorney's office and. He is the designee on

480
00:32:26,349 --> 00:32:28,829
staff to receive all the oil and gas maintenance requests

481
00:32:28,829 --> 00:32:32,629
for the county, and then he coordinates with public health

482
00:32:32,629 --> 00:32:36,229
and community planning and permitting and other departments as well.

483
00:32:36,229 --> 00:32:40,090
As parks and open space. On those requests. So he's

484
00:32:40,090 --> 00:32:43,290
coming onto our team. He's taking over the internal. Team

485
00:32:43,290 --> 00:32:46,669
coordination role that we have as well. And then that

486
00:32:46,669 --> 00:32:49,349
will allow Megan Green, as one of our real estate

487
00:32:49,349 --> 00:32:51,669
specialists who's been doing that to work on some other

488
00:32:51,669 --> 00:32:53,749
things. And we're trying to do a little shuffling. To

489
00:32:53,749 --> 00:32:56,309
try to fill what Don was doing. So you're going

490
00:32:56,309 --> 00:32:58,949
to see more of our other land officers doing the

491
00:32:58,949 --> 00:33:02,189
work that Don was doing. But we're very glad that

492
00:33:02,189 --> 00:33:05,494
Michael has joined us, and he's going to be. Handling

493
00:33:05,494 --> 00:33:09,724
primarily oil and gas activity for us. That's great. That's

494
00:33:09,724 --> 00:33:13,525
all I have. Thank you very much. Are there any

495
00:33:13,525 --> 00:33:16,365
members of the public here who want to speak on.

496
00:33:18,134 --> 00:33:21,295
The topic of the closings. And Nick, do we have

497
00:33:21,295 --> 00:33:26,530
anybody online? For those members that are on attending on

498
00:33:26,530 --> 00:33:28,730
zoom. If you want to make comments on the current

499
00:33:28,730 --> 00:33:31,090
agenda item. Please use the raise hand feature and we

500
00:33:31,090 --> 00:33:35,212
can call on you. I am not seeing any raised

501
00:33:35,212 --> 00:33:38,572
hands. Great. Thank you. Derek. Did you have any? Yeah,

502
00:33:38,572 --> 00:33:41,572
I had. A question, Derek Turner. And I guess I

503
00:33:41,572 --> 00:33:43,412
wanted to go back to the very first thing you

504
00:33:43,412 --> 00:33:46,332
presented on which is the land commitment, and I thought.

505
00:33:49,531 --> 00:33:51,811
It'd be appropriate. If there's anything you could tell us

506
00:33:51,811 --> 00:33:57,973
about. Which efforts from this last year to live up

507
00:33:57,973 --> 00:34:02,373
to this commitment ways you partnered and worked with indigenous

508
00:34:02,373 --> 00:34:05,588
communities. I can do that because this is a real

509
00:34:05,588 --> 00:34:07,388
estate division, so I'm going to do that from that

510
00:34:07,388 --> 00:34:11,105
perspective, if that's okay. So one of the things I

511
00:34:11,105 --> 00:34:13,225
mentioned as I was going through is we're no longer

512
00:34:13,225 --> 00:34:16,185
using landowner names for naming properties, and that's something we

513
00:34:16,185 --> 00:34:20,337
implemented a couple of years ago. And it's continuing to

514
00:34:20,337 --> 00:34:25,641
be a successful way to honor. The land, really, and

515
00:34:25,641 --> 00:34:29,161
not necessarily the people who typically, a lot of the

516
00:34:29,161 --> 00:34:32,668
landowners. Are members of the white culture. Not all of

517
00:34:32,668 --> 00:34:36,379
them are, but a lot of them are. And that's

518
00:34:36,379 --> 00:34:38,579
why in this commitment, we talk about the fact we

519
00:34:38,579 --> 00:34:41,579
have to use real estate principles and landownership, et cetera.

520
00:34:43,831 --> 00:34:47,976
But it's a broader way to acknowledge. What the land

521
00:34:47,976 --> 00:34:52,198
brings. And to be more cognizant of the value of

522
00:34:52,198 --> 00:34:56,327
that land to the open space. Program. I am also

523
00:34:56,327 --> 00:34:59,649
doing that. And every year I've been doing a volunteer

524
00:34:59,649 --> 00:35:04,053
naturalist training session. To sort of kick off that training

525
00:35:04,053 --> 00:35:07,773
that we do. It's several weeks long, and I bring

526
00:35:07,773 --> 00:35:10,133
in the history of the area and how our program

527
00:35:10,133 --> 00:35:15,423
got started. And. I have been augmenting what I have

528
00:35:15,423 --> 00:35:18,783
been doing in that space for several years now. To

529
00:35:18,783 --> 00:35:22,899
try to recognize those who were here before us. And

530
00:35:22,899 --> 00:35:25,899
kind of how things have happened. And the fact that,

531
00:35:25,899 --> 00:35:29,379
for example, people from the city of Longmont and Boulder

532
00:35:29,379 --> 00:35:32,779
county mustard and went to the Sand Creek massacre and

533
00:35:32,779 --> 00:35:35,179
participated in it. So bring in all that kind of

534
00:35:35,179 --> 00:35:42,595
history, including all the. Western doctrine. Of discovery and expansion

535
00:35:42,595 --> 00:35:45,515
and how that all works. So that's something that I've

536
00:35:45,515 --> 00:35:49,115
adopted and we've been doing my team. Then, as I

537
00:35:49,115 --> 00:35:53,795
mentioned, we've been doing this acknowledgment before every POsAC meeting

538
00:35:53,795 --> 00:35:57,475
and every board of commissioner. Hearing on a land acquisition

539
00:35:57,475 --> 00:36:00,889
or even a disposition project. So that members of the

540
00:36:00,889 --> 00:36:04,289
public know that we care about this, and this is

541
00:36:04,289 --> 00:36:08,009
a commitment that we are using because it's short enough

542
00:36:08,009 --> 00:36:10,529
to put in a memo doesn't take too long to

543
00:36:10,529 --> 00:36:14,569
read, but accomplishes the purpose for what we're doing without

544
00:36:14,569 --> 00:36:19,169
taking too much of the public meeting and hearing space,

545
00:36:19,169 --> 00:36:23,202
but our department, as. A whole. Has a longer land

546
00:36:23,202 --> 00:36:26,962
commitment. That is really about thinking on a daily basis

547
00:36:26,962 --> 00:36:30,324
how you can do things differently. So one of the

548
00:36:30,324 --> 00:36:33,164
other things that you'll be hearing about is we've been

549
00:36:33,164 --> 00:36:36,937
working on. My group's been working on. The flood buyout

550
00:36:36,937 --> 00:36:40,057
properties. There were 45 of those that got bought out.

551
00:36:41,485 --> 00:36:45,005
With FEMA and HUD funding after the 2013 flood, our

552
00:36:45,005 --> 00:36:47,525
department adopted a lot of those into open space, and

553
00:36:47,525 --> 00:36:50,165
they were part of our open space program, but some

554
00:36:50,165 --> 00:36:54,157
of them. Are just lots in a subdivision. And we

555
00:36:54,157 --> 00:36:57,503
don't feel it like Boulder county is. The best owner

556
00:36:57,503 --> 00:37:02,303
of those properties, necessarily. And so last May, we advertised

557
00:37:02,303 --> 00:37:06,383
16 of those is being available for new owners. They

558
00:37:06,383 --> 00:37:09,063
have to abide by the deed restrictions that require that

559
00:37:09,063 --> 00:37:12,343
they be used only for open space purposes, and we've

560
00:37:12,343 --> 00:37:16,183
been working since then to develop through both an equity

561
00:37:16,183 --> 00:37:20,414
lens in general. And then. Just also trying to make

562
00:37:20,414 --> 00:37:25,618
sure we do outreach to cultures who don't necessarily. Find

563
00:37:25,618 --> 00:37:28,018
it easy to hear about things that parks and open

564
00:37:28,018 --> 00:37:29,538
space is doing to make sure that we had some

565
00:37:29,538 --> 00:37:34,603
robust outreach before. As we launch that program. And we

566
00:37:34,603 --> 00:37:36,803
had a two month window for application, so we tried

567
00:37:36,803 --> 00:37:41,643
to make sure that that outreach was done early, so

568
00:37:41,643 --> 00:37:44,923
those are some of the examples. Thanks. I appreciate that.

569
00:37:44,923 --> 00:37:48,723
Thank you and great. Presentation and congratulations on a very

570
00:37:48,723 --> 00:37:51,003
successful year. Looks like. Well, thank you. And thank you

571
00:37:51,003 --> 00:37:53,483
for your support. Your recommendations are really important to the

572
00:37:53,483 --> 00:37:56,513
commissioners and. To staff as well. Thank you. Thank you,

573
00:37:56,513 --> 00:38:01,302
Janice. Okay. Susan, would you like to come up and

574
00:38:01,302 --> 00:38:03,542
talk to us about white notice syndrome?

575
00:38:20,864 --> 00:38:24,111
And I was just up at Blue Jay Mines. So

576
00:38:24,111 --> 00:38:26,587
it's prime on my mind. Okay.

577
00:38:35,858 --> 00:38:41,900
Okay. All right, so I'm Susan Spalding. I'm the environmental

578
00:38:41,900 --> 00:38:45,180
senior specialist with Boulder. County open space and also a

579
00:38:45,180 --> 00:38:48,100
wildlife biologist. So today I'm going to give an update.

580
00:38:48,100 --> 00:38:52,020
On Whiteno syndrome in Boulder county. So I've structured the

581
00:38:52,020 --> 00:38:56,220
presentation today to cover Batson. Boulder county what species we

582
00:38:56,220 --> 00:39:01,109
have and how. Do we know? Our past and present

583
00:39:01,109 --> 00:39:04,429
monitoring efforts in the wildlife program. And with the arrival

584
00:39:04,429 --> 00:39:09,428
of Whiteno syndrome, into Boulder County. Our internal management, coordination

585
00:39:09,428 --> 00:39:12,348
and response. So if you have questions as I go

586
00:39:12,348 --> 00:39:16,228
through the presentation, please. Just go ahead and ask. I

587
00:39:16,228 --> 00:39:17,988
also want to mention that we have other staff here

588
00:39:17,988 --> 00:39:22,458
today to help answer questions. Such as education, Outreach and

589
00:39:22,458 --> 00:39:27,623
our reckon facilities group. Okay. So before we go any

590
00:39:27,623 --> 00:39:31,263
further, let's talk about bats. So they are beyond amazing

591
00:39:31,263 --> 00:39:33,743
as you guys probably know they have a super long

592
00:39:33,743 --> 00:39:41,746
lifespan, which most people are surprised by. They're highly social

593
00:39:41,746 --> 00:39:44,906
and they develop long term associations, like friendships with other

594
00:39:44,906 --> 00:39:49,546
bats. They've. Been documented visiting neighboring roof sites, and they

595
00:39:49,546 --> 00:39:52,066
hang out with a different individual bat and then they

596
00:39:52,066 --> 00:39:54,386
go back to their original roof site, and no one

597
00:39:54,386 --> 00:39:56,026
really knows why they do this, but. It really seems

598
00:39:56,026 --> 00:39:59,996
like they're hanging out and having conversation. So most bats

599
00:39:59,996 --> 00:40:02,156
give birth to only one pup per year. And you

600
00:40:02,156 --> 00:40:07,057
can see the x ray. Image there. So very slow

601
00:40:07,057 --> 00:40:10,417
reproduction, which is why, when their populations are impacted, it

602
00:40:10,417 --> 00:40:14,371
takes a very long time. To recover. So worldwide there

603
00:40:14,371 --> 00:40:19,531
are 1480 species, so that means they make up 25%

604
00:40:19,531 --> 00:40:23,291
of all living. Mammal species. So the only other order

605
00:40:23,291 --> 00:40:29,006
that. Has more species is rodents, which make up 45%.

606
00:40:29,006 --> 00:40:32,286
So if you're a mammal today, you have a 75.

607
00:40:33,816 --> 00:40:35,176
Percent chance of being either a bat or a rodent.

608
00:40:37,378 --> 00:40:41,898
Yeah. So bats evolve from shrews, which are not rodents.

609
00:40:41,898 --> 00:40:46,218
They are in the order Insectivora. Along with hedgehogs and

610
00:40:46,218 --> 00:40:52,065
moles. And truths actually have primitive echolocation capabilities, but nothing

611
00:40:52,065 --> 00:40:56,945
compared to like, what bats have. So what is echolocation?

612
00:40:56,945 --> 00:40:59,305
So basically, the bats are screaming at the top of

613
00:40:59,305 --> 00:41:03,136
their lungs. With their vocal cords. And if we could

614
00:41:03,136 --> 00:41:06,336
hear it, it's as loud as a smoke detector. And

615
00:41:06,336 --> 00:41:10,216
that's. 120 decibels recorded within six inches of the bat

616
00:41:10,216 --> 00:41:13,856
itself, so it's probably pretty loud out there for animals

617
00:41:13,856 --> 00:41:17,776
that can hear them. So their eyesight is good to

618
00:41:17,776 --> 00:41:21,056
excellent and they don't use it much at night. Due

619
00:41:21,056 --> 00:41:24,456
to the darkness, obviously, but they also have some ability

620
00:41:24,456 --> 00:41:29,281
to detect color as well. So any bat biologist will

621
00:41:29,281 --> 00:41:31,841
tell you that they are amazingly complex on so many

622
00:41:31,841 --> 00:41:36,641
levels, and I hadn't even mentioned their physiological capabilities, including

623
00:41:36,641 --> 00:41:39,561
how they control their heart rates, how they. Hibernate. Their

624
00:41:39,561 --> 00:41:44,217
crazy immune systems. And how they physically catch their food.

625
00:41:45,735 --> 00:41:47,815
There are so many things, and, of course, the benefits

626
00:41:47,815 --> 00:41:51,559
they provide to humans. And our crop production. They eat

627
00:41:51,559 --> 00:41:54,359
a lot of insects and save, or I should say,

628
00:41:54,359 --> 00:42:00,609
assist. The farming community, like 23 billion per year. It's

629
00:42:00,609 --> 00:42:07,526
pretty incredible. Okay, so bats in Boulder county. So Colorado

630
00:42:07,526 --> 00:42:10,606
is home to 20 species of baths, and of these

631
00:42:10,606 --> 00:42:14,566
20 species, 14 are known hibernators, and the other six

632
00:42:14,566 --> 00:42:17,486
migrate south for the winter. So not all bats hibernate.

633
00:42:21,189 --> 00:42:23,749
That's important information because hibernating bats are the species that

634
00:42:23,749 --> 00:42:27,229
are suffering from widenose syndrome. Okay, so now let's zero

635
00:42:27,229 --> 00:42:30,789
in on Boulder county bats of the 20. Species in

636
00:42:30,789 --> 00:42:34,789
Colorado. There are twelve species in Boulder county. And later

637
00:42:34,789 --> 00:42:36,229
on I'm going to show you a list of the

638
00:42:36,229 --> 00:42:40,045
species we actually have. Okay, so how do we know

639
00:42:40,045 --> 00:42:42,285
what bats are in Boulder county and on open space

640
00:42:42,285 --> 00:42:46,125
specifically? First? Off. We've been very fortunate that through our

641
00:42:46,125 --> 00:42:49,845
small grants program and our non funded research, program. Dr.

642
00:42:49,845 --> 00:42:53,085
Rick Adams from the University of Northern Colorado has been

643
00:42:53,085 --> 00:42:56,085
serving and tracking bats on open space for about 20

644
00:42:56,085 --> 00:43:01,691
years. He's a globally renowned researcher, and we're lucky to

645
00:43:01,691 --> 00:43:05,667
have him locally. He's basically. His research is how we

646
00:43:05,667 --> 00:43:10,118
know. Who's on our properties, and that helps us make

647
00:43:10,118 --> 00:43:14,238
management recommendations. So over the years, Rick has conducted misnating

648
00:43:14,238 --> 00:43:19,078
and telemetry work. Also egress surveys from historic structures. He's

649
00:43:19,078 --> 00:43:22,558
looked at that responses to different forestry management techniques and

650
00:43:22,558 --> 00:43:27,158
also fire response. He's kept track of elevation, migratory movements

651
00:43:27,158 --> 00:43:32,019
using. Acoustic monitoring techniques. Say these acoustic monitors record back

652
00:43:32,019 --> 00:43:34,659
calls, and then you can analyze them using software to

653
00:43:34,659 --> 00:43:38,820
determine species. He's also come to open space several times

654
00:43:38,820 --> 00:43:40,980
to talk to our department about bats in general, so

655
00:43:40,980 --> 00:43:47,038
that we all understand. Altogether. He's an amazing bat ambassador.

656
00:43:48,636 --> 00:43:50,556
I just want to mention here, too, that our wildlife

657
00:43:50,556 --> 00:43:53,756
open space program has purchased acoustic monitors in the last

658
00:43:53,756 --> 00:43:55,796
couple of years. So now we have ten and we're

659
00:43:55,796 --> 00:43:57,916
pretty excited because we're going to repeat what Rick has

660
00:43:57,916 --> 00:44:01,316
done over these 20 years to continue that data through

661
00:44:01,316 --> 00:44:04,892
the years. Okay, so let's look at threats to bats

662
00:44:04,892 --> 00:44:14,103
in Colorado overall. So energy development is like wind

663
00:44:14,103 --> 00:44:18,063
turbines, extermination and eviction, as people typically in their homes.

664
00:44:19,474 --> 00:44:24,474
Or elsewhere. There's rangeline management, which basically refers to riparian

665
00:44:24,474 --> 00:44:29,074
corridor management because bats need streamside vegetation for insects and

666
00:44:29,074 --> 00:44:35,794
other things. Pesticides. Forest fires and forest management that impacts

667
00:44:35,794 --> 00:44:41,634
the habitat directly. Recreation is basically human disturbance, climate change,

668
00:44:41,634 --> 00:44:45,114
which means less water on the landscape and habitat alterations.

669
00:44:46,805 --> 00:44:50,818
And disease, including Lygno syndrome. So I just want to

670
00:44:50,818 --> 00:44:54,738
mention here that the Colorado bat working group has threats.

671
00:44:54,738 --> 00:44:58,538
Matrix that's. Pertinent to each bat species in Colorado, and

672
00:44:58,538 --> 00:45:00,418
it kind of goes through all the threats that are

673
00:45:00,418 --> 00:45:05,215
listed here and how they impact individual species. So, for

674
00:45:05,215 --> 00:45:11,504
example, direct impacts. Of wind turbine engines. They pose an

675
00:45:11,504 --> 00:45:14,544
immediate threat to migratory bat species like Hori bats and

676
00:45:14,544 --> 00:45:19,084
silverhead bats. These guys are migratory, like I said. And.

677
00:45:20,458 --> 00:45:22,338
It's been discovered that it's not the blades that actually

678
00:45:22,338 --> 00:45:25,378
hit the bats, it's the change in air pressure and

679
00:45:25,378 --> 00:45:31,456
that changing air pressure. Basically explodes their lungs. So that's

680
00:45:31,456 --> 00:45:34,856
tough. It kills up to 150,000 hori bats, for instance,

681
00:45:34,856 --> 00:45:39,582
every year. Actually, Susan, is that nationally? Nationally, yeah. Horrible.

682
00:45:39,582 --> 00:45:46,785
Distributed across the nation. 1 second Jackson Molar Post I've

683
00:45:46,785 --> 00:45:50,145
been doing a lot of work with compensatory mitigation with

684
00:45:50,145 --> 00:45:55,248
energy. Have you had any success or explored. Compensation from

685
00:45:55,248 --> 00:45:58,408
wind turbines and other energy? That's an excellent question. I

686
00:45:58,408 --> 00:46:03,008
don't know. Yeah, I can follow up. Okay. So anyway,

687
00:46:03,008 --> 00:46:05,128
I just wanted to mention all these threats, kind of.

688
00:46:05,128 --> 00:46:07,408
Layered up in white nose syndrome is another one of

689
00:46:07,408 --> 00:46:12,710
those threats. Yeah. Susan jan. George posack. As far as

690
00:46:12,710 --> 00:46:15,230
recreation, can you give us an example of what kind

691
00:46:15,230 --> 00:46:19,710
of recreation is a threat? To bats. Yes, I mentioned

692
00:46:19,710 --> 00:46:23,710
liberian corridors and how important they are for bats. Let's

693
00:46:23,710 --> 00:46:26,830
just talk about the tricolored bat. Those guys have their

694
00:46:26,830 --> 00:46:30,310
pups and trees in Riperian. Corridors. And so, during the

695
00:46:30,310 --> 00:46:34,371
puppering season, when. The young are not. They can't fly

696
00:46:34,371 --> 00:46:37,291
yet, so they're just hanging out in the trees. If

697
00:46:37,291 --> 00:46:40,296
people are underneath the trees. You can't see that they're

698
00:46:40,296 --> 00:46:43,616
there. You don't know they're. Very cryptic, and you might

699
00:46:43,616 --> 00:46:46,656
be making noise or the dogs barking or something, and

700
00:46:46,656 --> 00:46:48,256
those bats might. Get scared and fall out of the

701
00:46:48,256 --> 00:46:51,136
tree. So that's an example of how humans can affect

702
00:46:51,136 --> 00:47:00,264
bats with recreation. Okay. All right, so let's talk about

703
00:47:00,264 --> 00:47:06,323
white nose syndrome. It's a new species that was discovered

704
00:47:06,323 --> 00:47:09,809
after it arrived here in the US. It is called

705
00:47:09,809 --> 00:47:14,529
pseudo chimneys destructins, or PD for short, and it was

706
00:47:14,529 --> 00:47:17,129
unknown to science. Before it arrived in the US, but

707
00:47:17,129 --> 00:47:22,304
it did come. From Europe and Asia. So PD reproduces

708
00:47:22,304 --> 00:47:25,744
using sexually created spores, as you would expect from a

709
00:47:25,744 --> 00:47:30,424
fungus. They also send out reproductive vessels, non sexually called

710
00:47:30,424 --> 00:47:38,155
arthrokinidia. So fungus is a very interesting organism, right? But

711
00:47:38,155 --> 00:47:40,915
in any case, both of these vessels are long lived

712
00:47:40,915 --> 00:47:43,715
in the environment, and they can be easily spread. They're

713
00:47:43,715 --> 00:47:49,787
tiny by air currents, humans, water and other animals. We

714
00:47:49,787 --> 00:47:53,267
do know that the fungus stops growing above 68 degrees

715
00:47:53,267 --> 00:47:56,427
and it doesn't like it. Cooler than 40 degrees, which

716
00:47:56,427 --> 00:47:59,570
is kind of exactly what the fat's like. So no

717
00:47:59,570 --> 00:48:01,930
other animals, including humans, are known to have gotten white.

718
00:48:01,930 --> 00:48:06,371
No syndrome other than bats. So what's interesting is PD

719
00:48:06,371 --> 00:48:08,931
does not need a bat to grow. They're in. The

720
00:48:08,931 --> 00:48:11,371
cave environment. It's in the cave environment, and it just

721
00:48:11,371 --> 00:48:14,331
takes advantage of the bat. Being there. It's kind of

722
00:48:14,331 --> 00:48:20,325
a devastating coincidence, really. So incective, bats experience the fungus

723
00:48:20,325 --> 00:48:24,709
growing into their cellular structure. Including their circulatory system and

724
00:48:24,709 --> 00:48:27,629
their skin, and it's very painful, and it wakes the

725
00:48:27,629 --> 00:48:30,269
bats up. And if they're in hibernation when they wake

726
00:48:30,269 --> 00:48:35,048
up. They're depleting their critical fat reserves. This can lead

727
00:48:35,048 --> 00:48:38,299
to starvation. Before it gets to be spring, they leave

728
00:48:38,299 --> 00:48:41,019
the cave and find food. But if it's the dead

729
00:48:41,019 --> 00:48:43,899
of winter, they leave the cave, they freeze, or they

730
00:48:43,899 --> 00:48:48,305
can't find food and. They starve. Okay, so here's a

731
00:48:48,305 --> 00:48:52,265
big old slide. So we have 47 species of bats

732
00:48:52,265 --> 00:49:00,091
in the US and Canada. So those half are susceptible

733
00:49:00,091 --> 00:49:02,971
to white no syndrome because they hibernate in caves as

734
00:49:02,971 --> 00:49:06,082
part of their life cycle. Again. Remember, not all bad's

735
00:49:06,082 --> 00:49:10,602
hypernate. Some are migratory, similar to birds. So twelve of

736
00:49:10,602 --> 00:49:17,085
these 47 species have experienced 95% to 100% declines. And

737
00:49:17,085 --> 00:49:20,205
of these twelve, six are in Boulder county, where white

738
00:49:20,205 --> 00:49:23,085
no syndrome is just showing up. So. Again, we have

739
00:49:23,085 --> 00:49:26,285
20 species in Colorado, and of those, twelve are in

740
00:49:26,285 --> 00:49:29,805
Boulder county. And of those twelve. Six are known to

741
00:49:29,805 --> 00:49:34,084
be impacted by Whiteno syndrome. So half the species in

742
00:49:34,084 --> 00:49:37,444
Boulder county are in immediate danger of flight no syndrome.

743
00:49:37,444 --> 00:49:44,023
Susan Paula Fitzgerald. So we know six species are affected.

744
00:49:45,779 --> 00:49:49,548
Are the other species? Potentially going to. Is it just

745
00:49:49,548 --> 00:49:53,090
a matter of time? Or do they have some sort

746
00:49:53,090 --> 00:49:57,772
of resistance? So if you look at the species listed

747
00:49:57,772 --> 00:50:02,417
there, The top species are known to die from white

748
00:50:02,417 --> 00:50:05,497
nose syndrome. Like, they get it, it grows on their

749
00:50:05,497 --> 00:50:10,333
fur, they die. The second list there. Is. The fungus

750
00:50:10,333 --> 00:50:12,853
is on them. It's been confirmed to be on the

751
00:50:12,853 --> 00:50:17,509
bat, but it. Doesn't seem to. Grow and cause them

752
00:50:17,509 --> 00:50:23,265
harm. So those bats, whatever sort of bacterial or fungal.

753
00:50:25,218 --> 00:50:29,258
Communities on their fur and skin. Somehow PD doesn't get

754
00:50:29,258 --> 00:50:32,918
a hold. And some bets we don't know yet. You

755
00:50:32,918 --> 00:50:35,198
can see here, like the California Myodus. Which is not

756
00:50:35,198 --> 00:50:39,524
in Boulder county, but it's in Colorado. It probably is

757
00:50:39,524 --> 00:50:41,524
going to be affected, but it hasn't been yet, so

758
00:50:41,524 --> 00:50:47,662
it's unknown. Yeah. And it's interesting because that second. List.

759
00:50:48,969 --> 00:50:53,289
Say, like, the townsend's bigger that. They might. Well, this

760
00:50:53,289 --> 00:50:55,329
does happen in our historic structures where we have other

761
00:50:55,329 --> 00:50:57,729
bats and I'll. Talk about that in a minute, but

762
00:50:57,729 --> 00:51:01,089
they might go and hang out with another species of

763
00:51:01,089 --> 00:51:04,249
bat that is susceptible. They've got it on there fur.

764
00:51:04,249 --> 00:51:07,129
They leave it on the wall. Or they touch noses

765
00:51:07,129 --> 00:51:09,649
or whatever so they can actually spread it back to

766
00:51:09,649 --> 00:51:17,239
bat. So, yeah, the good question. Okay. Now let's go

767
00:51:17,239 --> 00:51:19,999
back to how devastating this disease is. Again, it's killed

768
00:51:19,999 --> 00:51:24,759
over. 90% of northern long eared, little brown and tricolored

769
00:51:24,759 --> 00:51:28,119
bat populations in the eastern US in fewer than ten

770
00:51:28,119 --> 00:51:33,620
years. So again, we can see what could happen. Do

771
00:51:33,620 --> 00:51:39,253
you guys have any more questions about that? Okay. So

772
00:51:39,253 --> 00:51:42,253
let's talk about the timeline of when widenose syndrome came

773
00:51:42,253 --> 00:51:49,082
to Colorado in February. Of 2024. There was a little

774
00:51:49,082 --> 00:51:53,507
brown bat. That's a type of bat. It was turned

775
00:51:53,507 --> 00:51:56,387
in by a rehabber and it tested. Positive for white

776
00:51:56,387 --> 00:52:00,108
nose syndrome. And then from March through the end of

777
00:52:00,108 --> 00:52:05,973
June 2024, an additional 58 bats of eight species. Were

778
00:52:05,973 --> 00:52:08,653
submitted to the CPW health lab via rehabbers and the

779
00:52:08,653 --> 00:52:12,711
public. So we started noticing dead bats on the ground,

780
00:52:12,711 --> 00:52:15,151
and people were telling CPW about it, and. Turning them

781
00:52:15,151 --> 00:52:19,471
in. So of those, an additional 32 bats tested positive

782
00:52:19,471 --> 00:52:24,087
for white nose syndrome. Including fringed myodus, which I'll talk

783
00:52:24,087 --> 00:52:28,554
about in a second. And one big brown bat. So

784
00:52:28,554 --> 00:52:30,434
I should mention that at least two of these baths

785
00:52:30,434 --> 00:52:32,714
were rehabbed and released so that's kind of a bright

786
00:52:32,714 --> 00:52:35,554
spot. If you can get them early enough, they can

787
00:52:35,554 --> 00:52:39,295
be saved. And there are signs of slow recovery in

788
00:52:39,295 --> 00:52:43,142
some parts of the Midwest. Suggesting that some bats may

789
00:52:43,142 --> 00:52:48,342
be developing natural immunity, but again, that they're slow reproduction

790
00:52:48,342 --> 00:52:51,302
and all the other challenges. We're just crossing our fingers.

791
00:52:52,680 --> 00:52:56,876
Susan polyfits Gerald again. So question. I had a bat

792
00:52:56,876 --> 00:52:59,836
in my backyard last year. Middle of the day, down

793
00:52:59,836 --> 00:53:05,695
on the ground called animal control. Became quite responsibly, but

794
00:53:05,695 --> 00:53:11,299
wondering. Are animal control trained in white bat syndrome to

795
00:53:11,299 --> 00:53:13,419
test for that so that you guys can keep a

796
00:53:13,419 --> 00:53:16,379
handle on that, as well as rabies and some of

797
00:53:16,379 --> 00:53:19,899
the more things we think of. More commonly, yeah. So

798
00:53:19,899 --> 00:53:21,619
depending on the time of year that that bat was

799
00:53:21,619 --> 00:53:25,259
found, was it summer? Was it summer? Yeah. They may

800
00:53:25,259 --> 00:53:28,068
not have turned it into CPW. Huff lab because of

801
00:53:28,068 --> 00:53:32,068
the time of year. Like if you find bats early

802
00:53:32,068 --> 00:53:36,468
spring or winter, that's when they're leaving hibernation areas because.

803
00:53:37,925 --> 00:53:40,685
They're itchy and running out of food storage, fat storage.

804
00:53:40,685 --> 00:53:45,485
So they leave their hibernation. Sites. So that's when animal

805
00:53:45,485 --> 00:53:49,562
control would probably turn it into CPW. The health lab,

806
00:53:49,562 --> 00:53:53,657
so they're kind of trained in. Oh, definitely. Yeah, they're

807
00:53:53,657 --> 00:53:59,342
coordinated. Susan trace Baker, Postac. You said that bats have

808
00:53:59,342 --> 00:54:06,421
been. Successfully rehabilitated. What is the treatment? That's my next

809
00:54:06,421 --> 00:54:14,336
slide. Okay. So. This map is updated. This is from

810
00:54:14,336 --> 00:54:19,368
the whiteness syndrome.org website. And it's updated all the time.

811
00:54:21,180 --> 00:54:22,540
And I just wanted to show you because it shows

812
00:54:22,540 --> 00:54:26,870
how Colorado. Now has white nose syndrome, and you can

813
00:54:26,870 --> 00:54:30,750
see that the colors denote whether whiteness syndrome has actually

814
00:54:30,750 --> 00:54:33,590
been detected on a bat or if its PD has

815
00:54:33,590 --> 00:54:35,950
been detected, but no white nut syndrome. On a bat.

816
00:54:37,486 --> 00:54:40,046
Has been confirmed yet, so I wanted to show you

817
00:54:40,046 --> 00:54:44,662
that. And then zooming in on Colorado. These are the

818
00:54:44,662 --> 00:54:51,334
counties. And their status currently. So right now, Route, Laramer,

819
00:54:51,334 --> 00:54:57,814
Boulder, Douglas, El Paso, Ataro, Otero, Bacca counties have confirmed

820
00:54:57,814 --> 00:55:00,734
PD in the past two years. And again, the dots

821
00:55:00,734 --> 00:55:03,774
show PD positive, but no white, no. Syndrome has been

822
00:55:03,774 --> 00:55:11,915
detected yet. Okay, so treatments. What can we do?

823
00:55:13,946 --> 00:55:16,586
There's no silver bullet, which is what researchers are figuring

824
00:55:16,586 --> 00:55:21,216
out. It's got to be many different things layered up.

825
00:55:21,216 --> 00:55:25,305
So here's some things that have been researched. By folks

826
00:55:25,305 --> 00:55:29,138
to see how effective they are. So again, they have

827
00:55:29,138 --> 00:55:31,618
to be effective safe for bats and other animals and

828
00:55:31,618 --> 00:55:39,049
also the environment. So that's another consideration, but biological? Techniques,

829
00:55:39,049 --> 00:55:42,529
they can stimulate the growth of beneficial microorganisms that either

830
00:55:42,529 --> 00:55:47,965
attack or secrete substances that attack PD. Or compete with

831
00:55:47,965 --> 00:55:52,261
PD in other ways. Probiotics, they can apply a probiotic

832
00:55:52,261 --> 00:55:56,461
mix of bacteria and fungi naturally found on bat wings

833
00:55:56,461 --> 00:56:00,861
to kill or weaken. PD Kaidovan is a naturally derived

834
00:56:00,861 --> 00:56:06,149
antifungal agent. With wound healing and antiinflammatory properties. It decreases

835
00:56:06,149 --> 00:56:11,016
infection rates and limits tissue damages. Then bacteria. You can

836
00:56:11,016 --> 00:56:16,887
apply strains of bacteria that have antifungal activity properties. UV

837
00:56:16,887 --> 00:56:21,570
light. You can kill the spores with uv light. Of

838
00:56:21,570 --> 00:56:25,663
certain wavelengths. Just a note on that. This is an

839
00:56:25,663 --> 00:56:28,383
example of if you put a uv light in a

840
00:56:28,383 --> 00:56:30,503
cave. What else were you killing with that light? So

841
00:56:30,503 --> 00:56:35,939
again, this applies to all these. And then a vaccine,

842
00:56:35,939 --> 00:56:41,735
which is being developed now. Delivers a protective. Immune response.

843
00:56:41,735 --> 00:56:43,375
And I'm going to play this little clip here. I

844
00:56:43,375 --> 00:56:48,718
hope it works. This is a little brown bat getting

845
00:56:48,718 --> 00:56:51,598
a very big dose of vaccine. And this was in

846
00:56:51,598 --> 00:56:57,678
July. Of 2024. And this is CPW at work. I'm

847
00:56:57,678 --> 00:57:07,101
going to play it again. Yeah, he's just like. I

848
00:57:07,101 --> 00:57:09,821
mean, that's a huge pipette for him, but that's the

849
00:57:09,821 --> 00:57:12,021
amount they need to give him. And I'm going to

850
00:57:12,021 --> 00:57:16,052
talk more about that vaccine trial. Whatever the vehicle is,

851
00:57:16,052 --> 00:57:19,715
it must be very tasty. Yeah, actually, I didn't ask.

852
00:57:19,715 --> 00:57:23,139
I don't know. I'm playing it again. One more time.

853
00:57:28,205 --> 00:57:35,825
Okay. He kind of has to take it. Okay.

854
00:57:40,178 --> 00:57:42,578
All right, so just a bit more on CPW's current

855
00:57:42,578 --> 00:57:49,084
vaccination effort. So this happened up in Larmer county in

856
00:57:49,084 --> 00:57:53,377
2024. 200 bats were captured at a site that's known

857
00:57:53,377 --> 00:57:55,137
to have. These are little brown bats. And there's a

858
00:57:55,137 --> 00:57:58,829
huge colony up there. 200 bats were captured and 100

859
00:57:58,829 --> 00:58:02,592
were given either a vaccine or a placebo. All the

860
00:58:02,592 --> 00:58:06,272
bats received wing bands. All were pit tagged for mark

861
00:58:06,272 --> 00:58:11,175
recapture. Studies this year that are going to happen. The

862
00:58:11,175 --> 00:58:13,455
effort is being done in other states as well, using.

863
00:58:15,554 --> 00:58:20,914
Similar methodology, including Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

864
00:58:20,914 --> 00:58:25,918
So that's a really good coordinated effort. So, again, giving

865
00:58:25,918 --> 00:58:27,678
these vaccines to the bats, you have to do it

866
00:58:27,678 --> 00:58:30,838
by hand, but they're. Thinking of other ways to distribute

867
00:58:30,838 --> 00:58:34,878
the vaccine, such as an aerial spray or they've talked

868
00:58:34,878 --> 00:58:39,386
about maybe. Smearing it on the wall of the cave

869
00:58:39,386 --> 00:58:40,786
and the bats land on it and then lick. It

870
00:58:40,786 --> 00:58:43,586
off their fur, so there's some ideas being bantered about.

871
00:58:45,133 --> 00:58:48,493
So of interest. The vaccine uses a modified raccoon pox

872
00:58:48,493 --> 00:58:54,361
virus to deliver the fungal. Antigens. And this is the

873
00:58:54,361 --> 00:58:58,721
same process that's been used for plague vaccine for blackfooted.

874
00:58:58,721 --> 00:59:01,601
Ferrets and prairie dogs. And we at open space have

875
00:59:01,601 --> 00:59:05,241
been using that vaccine since 2016. On our prairie dogs.

876
00:59:07,250 --> 00:59:10,690
And that's been successful. So crossing fingers for the bats.

877
00:59:12,607 --> 00:59:19,790
Okay, so current internal management practices. At BCPos. So what

878
00:59:19,790 --> 00:59:21,670
are we doing at open space? Both in response to

879
00:59:21,670 --> 00:59:25,728
whiteness. Syndrome, but also for bats in general. So these

880
00:59:25,728 --> 00:59:29,999
two structures that are shown on this slide. Have multiple

881
00:59:29,999 --> 00:59:33,159
species maternity colonies inside them. That's why I put them

882
00:59:33,159 --> 00:59:36,938
on the slide. So the top one is called the

883
00:59:36,938 --> 00:59:39,418
Rocky Mountain mammoth, and the one on the bottom is

884
00:59:39,418 --> 00:59:42,298
a. Barn structure at Myers Gulch, which seems to be

885
00:59:42,298 --> 00:59:48,318
a summer roost for bats. So for many years, we've

886
00:59:48,318 --> 00:59:50,798
been focused on what we can do to basically make

887
00:59:50,798 --> 00:59:53,798
bats. Lives easier knowing that they are threatened by many

888
00:59:53,798 --> 00:59:58,922
different things. And now, especially in light of white no

889
00:59:58,922 --> 01:00:02,162
syndrome. So climate change, as we talked about, is one

890
01:00:02,162 --> 01:00:04,762
threat to bats. And one aspect of this is less

891
01:00:04,762 --> 01:00:09,244
water on the landscape. So Rick Adams bringing him, and

892
01:00:09,244 --> 01:00:12,044
again, he's done a lot of research at Highlevelley. Ranch

893
01:00:12,044 --> 01:00:16,971
in gear canyon, specifically. And one of his studies telematured.

894
01:00:16,971 --> 01:00:20,891
He misnetted and then telemetured. Different species and found that

895
01:00:20,891 --> 01:00:24,891
there's a fringed meiotis maternity colony up in these palisades

896
01:00:24,891 --> 01:00:27,251
up in Gear Canyon. And so we have three different

897
01:00:27,251 --> 01:00:30,211
species of maternity. Colonies in this palisade, which is a

898
01:00:30,211 --> 01:00:39,357
rock facing slope. Sorry. A rock palisade. And so what

899
01:00:39,357 --> 01:00:44,064
we found is that. With less water on the landscape.

900
01:00:44,064 --> 01:00:46,584
We decided to try this, and this is a linear

901
01:00:46,584 --> 01:00:50,184
water feature. For the bats to water from, because when

902
01:00:50,184 --> 01:00:53,504
you have a maternity colony, those female mother bats, they're

903
01:00:53,504 --> 01:00:56,104
nursing their pups all day long, and so when they

904
01:00:56,104 --> 01:01:00,259
emerge at night, they're basically little raisins. They are just

905
01:01:00,259 --> 01:01:03,619
dry. Right. And so they need to find water immediately.

906
01:01:03,619 --> 01:01:05,379
And so to make it easier and to keep it

907
01:01:05,379 --> 01:01:08,379
available longer into the summer. This is the idea with

908
01:01:08,379 --> 01:01:11,659
this linear feature. We're calling it a bat trough. And

909
01:01:11,659 --> 01:01:13,299
we used youth core to build it, and they loved

910
01:01:13,299 --> 01:01:16,139
it, and we taught them about bats. And it's fed

911
01:01:16,139 --> 01:01:18,939
by gear creek like I said so the water percolates

912
01:01:18,939 --> 01:01:21,696
back into. Gear Creek, but it does get held for

913
01:01:21,696 --> 01:01:24,296
a little bit longer, and it doesn't have the vegetation

914
01:01:24,296 --> 01:01:27,176
in the way of the bats. So right after we

915
01:01:27,176 --> 01:01:30,673
built that, We asked Rick to put up an acoustic

916
01:01:30,673 --> 01:01:34,364
monitor. So that's when an acoustic monitor looks. Like. And

917
01:01:34,364 --> 01:01:36,804
those fringe meiotis. The maternity colony that I was talking

918
01:01:36,804 --> 01:01:40,604
about. Those guys that's. The big graph there, so they

919
01:01:40,604 --> 01:01:44,250
used it immediately, and. Often. So basically, they could come

920
01:01:44,250 --> 01:01:47,250
right out of their roost and go straight to this

921
01:01:47,250 --> 01:01:51,131
water. So we only know of two friends of Myodius

922
01:01:51,131 --> 01:01:56,919
maternity colonies. In Boulder county, they don't use historic structures,

923
01:01:56,919 --> 01:01:59,799
they use rock faces. So it's really hard to find

924
01:01:59,799 --> 01:02:01,759
them. So when we do find them, we treat them

925
01:02:01,759 --> 01:02:05,439
very carefully. For instance, we had a forestry project that

926
01:02:05,439 --> 01:02:10,219
was going on in Deer Canyon. And we buffered the

927
01:02:10,219 --> 01:02:13,259
maternity colony by a lot so that they would still

928
01:02:13,259 --> 01:02:17,603
have their forging habitat intact right outside their roost. Okay.

929
01:02:19,274 --> 01:02:23,090
We're going to continuously monitor this area. Okay, so another

930
01:02:23,090 --> 01:02:25,770
thing we've been doing for many years is the installation

931
01:02:25,770 --> 01:02:33,338
of specialized escape. Ramps in stock tanks. And in spring

932
01:02:33,338 --> 01:02:37,418
development. So bats use stock tanks for water, and they

933
01:02:37,418 --> 01:02:40,098
often get stuck as we know, sometimes lots of animals

934
01:02:40,098 --> 01:02:43,978
get stuck in stock tanks, so these escape ramps help

935
01:02:43,978 --> 01:02:46,098
the animals swim. Around the edge, and then they find

936
01:02:46,098 --> 01:02:49,638
it and they crawl out. So currently we have 30

937
01:02:49,638 --> 01:02:56,581
fabricated. Metal escape ramps and then five constructed rock ramps.

938
01:02:58,288 --> 01:02:59,968
Another thing I want to mention on this slide is

939
01:02:59,968 --> 01:03:03,968
that our tenants all received so our agricultural tenants all

940
01:03:03,968 --> 01:03:08,408
received a letter back in mid 2024 from uS outlining

941
01:03:08,408 --> 01:03:11,128
the arrival of Whiteno syndrome. What it is, what it

942
01:03:11,128 --> 01:03:12,968
means, what to do if you find a dead bat,

943
01:03:12,968 --> 01:03:14,528
because. They have a lot of barn structures and things

944
01:03:14,528 --> 01:03:18,010
on our agricultural properties. And that letter went out to

945
01:03:18,010 --> 01:03:21,982
all of our 60 tenants. Okay, so another big part

946
01:03:21,982 --> 01:03:26,022
of our program is managing historic structures that house bats.

947
01:03:26,022 --> 01:03:28,502
So this is the blue jay mine up near Jamestown.

948
01:03:28,502 --> 01:03:30,942
It houses a maternity colony of bats, but also was

949
01:03:30,942 --> 01:03:33,102
receiving a lot of public access that was kind of

950
01:03:33,102 --> 01:03:40,965
unmanaged. They were lighting fires in the structure and. Doing

951
01:03:40,965 --> 01:03:44,981
other dangerous things. So we all work together in the

952
01:03:44,981 --> 01:03:48,901
department and our grands crew formalized the site with the

953
01:03:48,901 --> 01:03:52,674
fencing you see there that was put up. And eno.

954
01:03:54,305 --> 01:03:57,985
Created an installed interpretive signage to tell the public what

955
01:03:57,985 --> 01:04:02,025
the property is, and it also mentions the bats and

956
01:04:02,025 --> 01:04:06,585
our buildings and historic preservation closed that hoist house entrance.

957
01:04:07,881 --> 01:04:12,996
And then the wildlife group, we created that signage. So

958
01:04:12,996 --> 01:04:15,276
we close those windows so that the bats could still

959
01:04:15,276 --> 01:04:17,236
come in and out, and then we interpreted it for

960
01:04:17,236 --> 01:04:19,596
the public to hopefully understand that there are bats in

961
01:04:19,596 --> 01:04:22,996
there. So moving forward with this site in relation to

962
01:04:22,996 --> 01:04:26,996
Whitenose syndrome. We're investigating the collection of guano. Samples, which

963
01:04:26,996 --> 01:04:30,156
can tell you if you have the fungus, because the

964
01:04:30,156 --> 01:04:38,088
fungus survives through the digestive. System. Yeah. I just want

965
01:04:38,088 --> 01:04:42,479
to mention, too, that anytime. We enter these structures for

966
01:04:42,479 --> 01:04:45,119
any reason, we'll try to do it after the puppearing.

967
01:04:45,119 --> 01:04:49,101
Season. But also we have a decontamination protocol. That we

968
01:04:49,101 --> 01:04:53,868
are working on now across the department. It's basically 70%

969
01:04:53,868 --> 01:05:01,115
isopropyl alcohol solution that you spray. Okay. And is that

970
01:05:01,115 --> 01:05:04,315
decontamination for the people working on it, or is this

971
01:05:04,315 --> 01:05:08,635
for other bats. Oh, that's for the people. Okay. Yeah,

972
01:05:08,635 --> 01:05:12,629
if we could decontaminate the bats. Okay, so this is

973
01:05:12,629 --> 01:05:14,309
the cardinal mill, and you guys have a lot of.

974
01:05:14,309 --> 01:05:16,509
You have been up. There. It hosts several species of

975
01:05:16,509 --> 01:05:20,549
maternity colonies. It's pretty big time for bats. So what?

976
01:05:20,549 --> 01:05:23,429
We've done for many years is conduct public tours. We

977
01:05:23,429 --> 01:05:26,109
do it later in the season. After the puffering seasonist

978
01:05:26,109 --> 01:05:31,360
pup ring is mostly done. We've also conducted egress surveys

979
01:05:31,360 --> 01:05:33,480
to determine how late in the season the bats are

980
01:05:33,480 --> 01:05:39,915
still there. So we've also done thermal imaging surveys. You

981
01:05:39,915 --> 01:05:41,515
can see in one of the photos are the little

982
01:05:41,515 --> 01:05:43,995
slats on the ceiling are really hard to see the

983
01:05:43,995 --> 01:05:47,595
bats in there. They tuck themselves into these lofts and

984
01:05:47,595 --> 01:05:49,555
so with thermal. Imaging we can get a better sense

985
01:05:49,555 --> 01:05:53,185
of where they are. So that was helpful, and we

986
01:05:53,185 --> 01:05:59,428
did that through. A contractor. But we also have started

987
01:05:59,428 --> 01:06:03,188
to conduct maintenance outside the puppering season. So anything buildings

988
01:06:03,188 --> 01:06:06,468
and historic preservation. Do they typically wait until the end

989
01:06:06,468 --> 01:06:09,901
of the season? As far as possible. So the species

990
01:06:09,901 --> 01:06:13,421
in the cardinal mill, we've got long legged myodus, which

991
01:06:13,421 --> 01:06:19,504
is. Not typically found in human built structures and. They're

992
01:06:19,504 --> 01:06:22,384
also really highly disturbed by a human presence. That particular

993
01:06:22,384 --> 01:06:25,304
species we have little brown bats. And again, those guys

994
01:06:25,304 --> 01:06:28,384
have lost 95% of their population in the eastern United

995
01:06:28,384 --> 01:06:31,464
States because of white no syndrome, and they are petitioned

996
01:06:31,464 --> 01:06:35,024
for listing right now. Federally. We also have small footed

997
01:06:35,024 --> 01:06:39,160
myodus, which is third most rare species. In Boulder county

998
01:06:39,160 --> 01:06:42,739
by numbers. And right now, it's not clear that that

999
01:06:42,739 --> 01:06:45,019
species are going to be impacted by whiteness syndrome. So

1000
01:06:45,019 --> 01:06:47,339
people are kind of waiting. They are western species, so

1001
01:06:47,339 --> 01:06:50,749
we're not sure. Yet. And then big brown bats are

1002
01:06:50,749 --> 01:06:54,029
also in this structure. So, moving forward, in response to

1003
01:06:54,029 --> 01:06:57,869
whitenose, syndrome. We're discussing this year's public access and whether

1004
01:06:57,869 --> 01:07:00,269
to wait a year. Or to not visit the structure,

1005
01:07:00,269 --> 01:07:02,869
or if we do, wait until mid September after the

1006
01:07:02,869 --> 01:07:05,549
young have dispersed. And if we do this, we will

1007
01:07:05,549 --> 01:07:12,054
require decontamination of all visitors and staff. And then. We'll

1008
01:07:12,054 --> 01:07:15,294
continue to monitor doing egress surveys and acoustic monitoring at

1009
01:07:15,294 --> 01:07:19,214
this site and that first picture with the circled areas

1010
01:07:19,214 --> 01:07:22,054
on the cardinal, that's the egress sites. Where they're all

1011
01:07:22,054 --> 01:07:26,014
coming out at night. So we've identified those important exit

1012
01:07:26,014 --> 01:07:31,630
areas. Susan paula fitzgerald again. Has it been found that

1013
01:07:31,630 --> 01:07:35,990
white nose syndrome transfers from bats to people? No, it

1014
01:07:35,990 --> 01:07:42,151
doesn't. No. Doesn't affect humans. Okay, so back to the

1015
01:07:42,151 --> 01:07:45,791
Rocky Mountain mammoth. This is another historic structure with several

1016
01:07:45,791 --> 01:07:51,298
species using for maternity colonies. It's also used as a

1017
01:07:51,298 --> 01:07:54,498
migratory roof site for species such as townspoons bigard bats.

1018
01:07:56,735 --> 01:07:58,455
This is of interest to me because my family owned

1019
01:07:58,455 --> 01:08:02,561
this property for about 100 years. So we started conducting

1020
01:08:02,561 --> 01:08:06,201
bat surveys around 2006, which was before the county owned

1021
01:08:06,201 --> 01:08:11,943
it. In 2009, the county purchased this site. Its historical

1022
01:08:11,943 --> 01:08:16,393
significance. And it's now in the National Historic Register, thanks

1023
01:08:16,393 --> 01:08:24,901
to the county. It's the most well maintained. Preserved shaft

1024
01:08:24,901 --> 01:08:27,461
house in all of Boulder county. Like it didn't get

1025
01:08:27,461 --> 01:08:29,861
picked apart for Barnwood. Somehow because our family was there.

1026
01:08:31,226 --> 01:08:37,452
So anyway, for Whitenose syndrome again, this structure. Is intermittently

1027
01:08:37,452 --> 01:08:41,332
visited for Hard Rock mining tour and we're going to

1028
01:08:41,332 --> 01:08:44,372
wait. We already have been waiting until later in the

1029
01:08:44,372 --> 01:08:47,572
season to do those, but this is again, more discussions

1030
01:08:47,572 --> 01:08:50,572
amongst our group as Whitenous syndrome is here. Are we

1031
01:08:50,572 --> 01:08:53,172
going to visit it this year? If we do are

1032
01:08:53,172 --> 01:08:55,012
we going to decontaminate and when are we going to

1033
01:08:55,012 --> 01:09:03,319
visit? Janet, you have a question? Yeah. Janet George Posack.

1034
01:09:03,319 --> 01:09:06,319
So when you're talking about Ruse and this building and

1035
01:09:06,319 --> 01:09:10,272
the one before. How many individuals are we talking about?

1036
01:09:10,272 --> 01:09:17,257
Adults. Stick with that hundreds. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

1037
01:09:18,594 --> 01:09:22,747
And actually, on that note, the CPW vaccine. It may

1038
01:09:22,747 --> 01:09:26,187
be unrelated to Janice, but this picture on the left,

1039
01:09:26,187 --> 01:09:28,267
what are we looking at there? Is there a bad

1040
01:09:28,267 --> 01:09:30,867
hiding in there that I should be looking for? Well,

1041
01:09:30,867 --> 01:09:33,307
there is a bat. There, but you can't see him.

1042
01:09:33,307 --> 01:09:36,507
Yeah, that shows they tuck themselves up into those little.

1043
01:09:36,507 --> 01:09:43,458
Crevices. You don't see it. I see a bunch. But

1044
01:09:43,458 --> 01:09:46,418
you can hear them. It's pretty interesting when you sneak

1045
01:09:46,418 --> 01:09:48,778
around outside of this structure. In the middle of the

1046
01:09:48,778 --> 01:09:51,018
summer. You can hear the young talking to their moms.

1047
01:09:51,018 --> 01:09:55,514
It's. Just squeaky, squeaky, squeaky. There's a lot of them.

1048
01:09:55,514 --> 01:10:00,028
Yeah. Susan pulls or Janet George again, Postac. So if

1049
01:10:00,028 --> 01:10:02,868
there's hundreds of bats in a couple of these places,

1050
01:10:02,868 --> 01:10:05,948
is there some monitoring? You can do to detect any

1051
01:10:05,948 --> 01:10:10,462
changes in population numbers. That's a great question. We can

1052
01:10:10,462 --> 01:10:14,302
monitor using those acoustic monitors. We can do passes per

1053
01:10:14,302 --> 01:10:18,262
night. So relative activity of a site and then we

1054
01:10:18,262 --> 01:10:21,062
can identify to species, so it's. Kind of the activity

1055
01:10:21,062 --> 01:10:25,881
in general, we can monitor. We can't count the bats,

1056
01:10:25,881 --> 01:10:30,316
necessarily. With that process, but we can get a general

1057
01:10:30,316 --> 01:10:36,176
sense. So with acoustic monitor. What percentage of the population

1058
01:10:36,176 --> 01:10:39,296
decline or increase would you need to actually detect it?

1059
01:10:39,296 --> 01:10:48,410
Are we talking 30%, 50%. But I'm just wondering. Say

1060
01:10:48,410 --> 01:10:55,907
you record 100,000 calls, right? And then. Say half of

1061
01:10:55,907 --> 01:10:59,347
those are analyzable due to the quality of the recording.

1062
01:11:01,498 --> 01:11:09,014
That's pretty consistent. Across. All the software analysis. So what

1063
01:11:09,014 --> 01:11:13,620
am I trying to tell you? Not all car calls

1064
01:11:13,620 --> 01:11:21,174
are identifiable. Identifiable? But it's pretty consistent which ones are.

1065
01:11:22,831 --> 01:11:25,631
What percentage of the calls are from each individual species,

1066
01:11:25,631 --> 01:11:28,151
so I think you could detect even up to a

1067
01:11:28,151 --> 01:11:32,591
10% decline because we have the baseline data already. We've

1068
01:11:32,591 --> 01:11:36,836
done acoustic monitoring. There already. So. Yeah, I hope that

1069
01:11:36,836 --> 01:11:40,343
helps. Yeah. Thanks. That's really good. And a wild population

1070
01:11:40,343 --> 01:11:42,343
to be able to detect that small of a change.

1071
01:11:42,343 --> 01:11:47,063
Yeah, so good job. Okay. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. Well, I

1072
01:11:47,063 --> 01:11:50,263
wanted to say, in addition, that we've been poking at

1073
01:11:50,263 --> 01:11:53,183
CPW to be part of their vaccine trial. This could

1074
01:11:53,183 --> 01:11:55,503
be a spot for that. And so could the cardinal

1075
01:11:55,503 --> 01:11:58,343
because it's easily accessible by the researchers. There's a lot

1076
01:11:58,343 --> 01:12:02,072
of bat. Bats. So we'll see. I don't know. Crossing

1077
01:12:02,072 --> 01:12:09,239
our fingers again. Okay. All right, so this is our

1078
01:12:09,239 --> 01:12:15,072
internal team. We have our white nose syndrome response team,

1079
01:12:15,072 --> 01:12:18,552
and basically we've convened all workgroups. That might interface with

1080
01:12:18,552 --> 01:12:24,015
bats or bad habitat. We've started by discussing. What we

1081
01:12:24,015 --> 01:12:27,975
already do for bats within each workgroup and what Whitenose

1082
01:12:27,975 --> 01:12:31,735
syndrome will mean. For our future management actions. We also

1083
01:12:31,735 --> 01:12:34,215
have CPW come and give us an overview on Wyno

1084
01:12:34,215 --> 01:12:37,175
syndrome altogether so that we understand it and ask questions

1085
01:12:37,175 --> 01:12:41,236
as a group. So again, the department understands the importance

1086
01:12:41,236 --> 01:12:44,676
of bats and this severe threat and our overarching goal

1087
01:12:44,676 --> 01:12:47,636
is to again make their lives easier while Whiteno syndrome

1088
01:12:47,636 --> 01:12:51,980
arrives and probably is going to wreak havoc. We're also

1089
01:12:51,980 --> 01:12:55,540
coordinating with the city of Longmont, City, Boulder, OSFP on

1090
01:12:55,540 --> 01:12:57,900
their strategies. Too, to kind of inform and learn from

1091
01:12:57,900 --> 01:13:01,924
each other. So we're hoping to not assist the spread

1092
01:13:01,924 --> 01:13:07,564
of spores by again using those decontamination. Protocols. And we're

1093
01:13:07,564 --> 01:13:11,244
also committed to limiting disturbance, especially in these first few

1094
01:13:11,244 --> 01:13:16,672
years. Of it's here now. We're also going to be

1095
01:13:16,672 --> 01:13:18,912
on the lookout for dead bats very soon, because, again,

1096
01:13:18,912 --> 01:13:20,672
this is the time of year that they might start

1097
01:13:20,672 --> 01:13:25,293
showing up. And we're developing an eternal response team to

1098
01:13:25,293 --> 01:13:27,693
collect any dead bats and get them out. To the

1099
01:13:27,693 --> 01:13:32,815
CPW Health lab. Susan tony lewis with postac I'm curious

1100
01:13:32,815 --> 01:13:37,722
if this came from. Europe and asia. How long has

1101
01:13:37,722 --> 01:13:41,682
it been there and what treatments have they figured out?

1102
01:13:41,682 --> 01:13:46,122
What have we learned from her continents across the sea.

1103
01:13:46,122 --> 01:13:49,642
Yeah, the bats there are immune to it. They're not

1104
01:13:49,642 --> 01:13:54,082
really. Impacted, really. They've probably coevolved with it for thousands

1105
01:13:54,082 --> 01:13:57,656
and thousands of years, so. It's there. It's there? Yeah,

1106
01:13:57,656 --> 01:14:00,896
it's part of the system. It hadn't been identified. Because

1107
01:14:00,896 --> 01:14:04,911
it's just a fungus among lots of fungus. But when

1108
01:14:04,911 --> 01:14:09,808
it came here, it had no competition. No resistance, right?

1109
01:14:17,169 --> 01:14:22,763
Like a wall joke. So public involvement. So at this

1110
01:14:22,763 --> 01:14:24,723
time of year, again, this is when we might start

1111
01:14:24,723 --> 01:14:29,083
seeing dead bats. And as they arouse early from hibernation

1112
01:14:29,083 --> 01:14:32,523
through the infection. So CPW has a bat hotline to

1113
01:14:32,523 --> 01:14:35,003
report dead bats, where you can send an email with

1114
01:14:35,003 --> 01:14:40,521
any sort of questions or concerns. And again, the color

1115
01:14:40,521 --> 01:14:42,961
of that working group has a conservation plan, which is

1116
01:14:42,961 --> 01:14:46,361
also super helpful in understanding how to help the bats.

1117
01:14:48,538 --> 01:14:50,458
And spread the word. Talk to your neighbors. A lot

1118
01:14:50,458 --> 01:14:53,698
of its education about the importance of bats. And changing

1119
01:14:53,698 --> 01:14:56,018
the attitude that that's, you know what? They're not scary.

1120
01:14:57,351 --> 01:14:59,711
They're incredibly important for us as humans and for the

1121
01:14:59,711 --> 01:15:07,204
ecosystem. Yeah. Susan, one other question. Talk to us about

1122
01:15:07,204 --> 01:15:10,444
bat boxes, right? Yeah. Actually, I'm glad you said that.

1123
01:15:10,444 --> 01:15:12,964
I'm. Just kind of curious if that's a good thing,

1124
01:15:12,964 --> 01:15:15,263
bad thing. How do you view that? With the white

1125
01:15:15,263 --> 01:15:18,744
nose syndrome as well. I think it's a good thing

1126
01:15:18,744 --> 01:15:21,584
again to try to make bats lives easier, right? We

1127
01:15:21,584 --> 01:15:26,104
actually talked about with our building and historic preservation group

1128
01:15:26,104 --> 01:15:29,904
is they be willing to build sort of larger structures

1129
01:15:29,904 --> 01:15:34,280
that would house bats. And they're totally down with that,

1130
01:15:34,280 --> 01:15:40,075
so we're going to try that. Eventually. But. It doesn't

1131
01:15:40,075 --> 01:15:41,715
have to be like a bat boxy stick on the

1132
01:15:41,715 --> 01:15:43,115
side of a house. It can be an actual, like,

1133
01:15:43,115 --> 01:15:46,224
a shed structure. With certain little heidi holes and nooks

1134
01:15:46,224 --> 01:15:51,862
and things for the bats. Great. Yeah. Trace Baker post

1135
01:15:51,862 --> 01:15:56,022
sack. Susan. That was an excellent, detailed presentation. I loved

1136
01:15:56,022 --> 01:16:01,243
all the photographs. Great. So. Thank you. My question. One

1137
01:16:01,243 --> 01:16:05,239
of your slides. Had a picture of the continental us.

1138
01:16:07,390 --> 01:16:12,051
And Mexico and Canada with infected areas. And I noticed

1139
01:16:12,051 --> 01:16:18,178
that those areas are not contiguous. And so. How does

1140
01:16:18,178 --> 01:16:24,087
the syndrome propagate across those very large areas? That's a

1141
01:16:24,087 --> 01:16:27,765
great question. You're right. You're saying some counties don't have

1142
01:16:27,765 --> 01:16:34,125
it. There was, like, none in Idaho. Yeah. There. That's

1143
01:16:34,125 --> 01:16:41,124
the picture. Well, wait. Nevada? Yes. So basically it showed

1144
01:16:41,124 --> 01:16:44,564
up in New York in 2006. It's been moving across.

1145
01:16:46,299 --> 01:16:48,419
The country ever since. So it's now arriving in the

1146
01:16:48,419 --> 01:16:52,339
west. So that explains Idaho and Nevada and Utah, arizona.

1147
01:16:52,339 --> 01:16:54,099
It just hasn't gotten there yet, and we're hoping it

1148
01:16:54,099 --> 01:16:56,379
doesn't. Okay. That's why I wanted to mention Utah, because

1149
01:16:56,379 --> 01:17:00,229
that's pretty. Bad that it showed up there. In Florida?

1150
01:17:00,229 --> 01:17:03,389
I can't explain, other than it's warm and they don't.

1151
01:17:03,389 --> 01:17:05,069
Hibernate. Probably in Florida. We don't have a lot of

1152
01:17:05,069 --> 01:17:09,107
hibernating. Batch in Florida. And then some of those areas

1153
01:17:09,107 --> 01:17:16,079
probably don't have suitable hibernation areas for bats. You need

1154
01:17:16,079 --> 01:17:20,572
that substrate. You need mines, you need caves. Carl's bed

1155
01:17:20,572 --> 01:17:28,771
caverns. Got white nose bat. Where is that? Mexico. It

1156
01:17:28,771 --> 01:17:31,953
sure looks like it. Yeah, I think I heard that.

1157
01:17:31,953 --> 01:17:38,363
It's recently confirmed. That Christine Johnson Post act.

1158
01:17:43,866 --> 01:17:47,546
That makes me wonder what kind of federal resources and

1159
01:17:47,546 --> 01:17:53,108
federal coordination there is. And to what extent people are

1160
01:17:53,108 --> 01:17:55,988
looking for it, or are we on our own and

1161
01:17:55,988 --> 01:18:01,586
just. Working within the county and with CPW. Maybe someone

1162
01:18:01,586 --> 01:18:04,266
else knows that. I don't know. I don't think the

1163
01:18:04,266 --> 01:18:06,386
federal response it took a long time for the feds

1164
01:18:06,386 --> 01:18:10,654
to get. Interested. I think if you tie it back

1165
01:18:10,654 --> 01:18:14,134
to the damage to humans. In fact, here's something that

1166
01:18:14,134 --> 01:18:17,861
was released last year. So in the county's back east

1167
01:18:17,861 --> 01:18:21,421
that have white no syndrome and all these die offs.

1168
01:18:24,035 --> 01:18:27,315
It's been shown that farmers have to use 35% more

1169
01:18:27,315 --> 01:18:32,431
chemicals and pesticides and that has been. A direct connected

1170
01:18:32,431 --> 01:18:37,111
the dots directly to an increase in infant mortality. 8%

1171
01:18:37,111 --> 01:18:41,785
increase. So that's a pretty stark tie in. And you

1172
01:18:41,785 --> 01:18:45,745
would hope that that would get federal. Response. I'm sure

1173
01:18:45,745 --> 01:18:48,865
there's money. I don't know why it's not like they're

1174
01:18:48,865 --> 01:18:51,985
pouring money into this because bats are critical for us.

1175
01:18:53,816 --> 01:18:56,982
I don't want to misspeak. I'm not all that knowledgeable

1176
01:18:56,982 --> 01:19:00,729
about it. But I mentioned that a couple of species.

1177
01:19:02,148 --> 01:19:04,188
Are supposed to be listed soon. Like the tricolored bat

1178
01:19:04,188 --> 01:19:06,108
with the fish and Wildlife Service. And my guess is

1179
01:19:06,108 --> 01:19:08,788
that's on hold for a while, which means I won't.

1180
01:19:08,788 --> 01:19:13,791
Get that kind of federal protection, unfortunately. Right now. I

1181
01:19:13,791 --> 01:19:15,991
mean, it was supposed to be listed a year ago.

1182
01:19:15,991 --> 01:19:20,897
I don't know. What the hold up is. Yeah. Other

1183
01:19:20,897 --> 01:19:25,057
questions. Susan paula fitzgerald, so I know this is just

1184
01:19:25,057 --> 01:19:33,175
one. Of many things on your plate that you're monitoring,

1185
01:19:33,175 --> 01:19:38,080
you're studying. You're trying to mitigate certain things, and I

1186
01:19:38,080 --> 01:19:41,120
just want to applaud your efforts, because this is huge.

1187
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:44,560
This is a big project, and I hope you have

1188
01:19:44,560 --> 01:19:49,519
staffing. And I know you probably have support from parks

1189
01:19:49,519 --> 01:19:55,777
and open space, but I'm just impressed. By. Here. You've

1190
01:19:55,777 --> 01:20:00,215
been given this. In just very recent years. And being

1191
01:20:00,215 --> 01:20:04,623
able to manage everything together is a big thing. To

1192
01:20:04,623 --> 01:20:10,382
you and good luck on it. Thank you. Other comments.

1193
01:20:12,425 --> 01:20:15,185
Thank you, Susan. That was a great presentation. We really

1194
01:20:15,185 --> 01:20:19,638
appreciate it. Thank you. Is there anybody here in the

1195
01:20:19,638 --> 01:20:25,829
audience that wanted to comment on this agenda item? See?

1196
01:20:25,829 --> 01:20:29,752
None. Nick, is there anybody online? I'll give a second

1197
01:20:29,752 --> 01:20:31,672
for anybody on the zoom call. If you would like

1198
01:20:31,672 --> 01:20:34,192
to make a public comment for this agenda item, please

1199
01:20:34,192 --> 01:20:38,004
use the raise hand feature. I am not seeing any

1200
01:20:38,004 --> 01:20:41,364
raised hands. Great. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Susan. Thank

1201
01:20:41,364 --> 01:20:48,192
you. Okay, we're going to move to public comment period

1202
01:20:48,192 --> 01:20:51,272
for items not on the agenda and I think we

1203
01:20:51,272 --> 01:20:54,955
have some folks here in the audience. That were planning

1204
01:20:54,955 --> 01:20:59,180
to speak to us. Would you like to come up

1205
01:20:59,180 --> 01:21:03,794
and talk to us? Anybody? I have a list, it

1206
01:21:03,794 --> 01:21:06,474
looks like. I think, Nick, that you gave me is

1207
01:21:06,474 --> 01:21:15,012
Cindy Johnson. And then deborah kanette, eileen, carmen, janie.

1208
01:21:18,719 --> 01:21:21,879
Is that your whole crew? They're not all here. Some

1209
01:21:21,879 --> 01:21:27,927
people. Were giving me their minutes online. I thought they

1210
01:21:27,927 --> 01:21:29,567
had to be here. I don't know. Did they have

1211
01:21:29,567 --> 01:21:33,337
to be here? Who knows? I think what would be

1212
01:21:33,337 --> 01:21:37,281
helpful if you're pooling time. To just cap it at

1213
01:21:37,281 --> 01:21:41,026
ten minutes. Would be great. I think I can do

1214
01:21:41,026 --> 01:21:45,353
that. Thank you. And if you'll state your name. And

1215
01:21:45,353 --> 01:21:49,473
where you live in Boulder county. No address, specific information,

1216
01:21:49,473 --> 01:21:53,871
just like where generally. Last time I was here. There's

1217
01:21:53,871 --> 01:21:56,231
only five of you. I know. Nice to see you.

1218
01:21:56,231 --> 01:22:02,177
It's a little overwhelming. Thank you. My name is Cindy

1219
01:22:02,177 --> 01:22:06,868
Johnson, and I'm from Boulder County. I am here to

1220
01:22:06,868 --> 01:22:09,588
continue our discussion. Could you please hold the microphone just

1221
01:22:09,588 --> 01:22:12,917
a little bit closer? To you. Thank you. You have

1222
01:22:12,917 --> 01:22:16,637
to get really close to these. I am here to

1223
01:22:16,637 --> 01:22:20,277
continue our discussion on horse communities. Thoughts and concerns on

1224
01:22:20,277 --> 01:22:23,477
the cancellation of our public open writing sessions in the

1225
01:22:23,477 --> 01:22:26,197
winter months. One day a week at the Boulder county

1226
01:22:26,197 --> 01:22:31,237
fairground. As you know, there are hundreds of historical equine

1227
01:22:31,237 --> 01:22:35,903
activities and event. Events. And agricultural events taking place at

1228
01:22:35,903 --> 01:22:39,223
the fairgrounds. We no doubt will be working together in

1229
01:22:39,223 --> 01:22:41,983
the future on these events and therefore we wish to

1230
01:22:41,983 --> 01:22:48,121
keep our relationships good and amicable with you. We respect

1231
01:22:48,121 --> 01:22:50,801
your commitment to parks and open space, but want to

1232
01:22:50,801 --> 01:22:55,270
make sure the decisions concerning the fairgrounds were made. With.

1233
01:22:56,562 --> 01:23:01,839
Accurate information. And adequate public input. The information we have

1234
01:23:01,839 --> 01:23:05,079
received leads us to believe this decision was driven by

1235
01:23:05,079 --> 01:23:09,799
staff without connecting with the actual stakeholders who are affected

1236
01:23:09,799 --> 01:23:13,679
by this decision. To begin, the horse community would like

1237
01:23:13,679 --> 01:23:16,639
some answers. To our questions, and I know you can't

1238
01:23:16,639 --> 01:23:18,919
answer them at this time, but maybe we could have

1239
01:23:18,919 --> 01:23:26,322
an audience later. First question. We submitted a petition. With

1240
01:23:26,322 --> 01:23:30,242
over 100 signatures signed by Boulder county residents. This is

1241
01:23:30,242 --> 01:23:32,802
just a copy of it. A lot of these people

1242
01:23:32,802 --> 01:23:35,682
were in the indoor arena attending an equine event when

1243
01:23:35,682 --> 01:23:39,362
we collected the signatures. They were shocked. We gave the

1244
01:23:39,362 --> 01:23:43,442
petition to the county commissioners to share with you and

1245
01:23:43,442 --> 01:23:48,339
review. Or comment. Our question is. Did you see it?

1246
01:23:48,667 --> 01:23:52,667
If so, what was your response, and did it mean

1247
01:23:52,667 --> 01:23:55,787
anything to you and Cindy? Could I ask? When you

1248
01:23:55,787 --> 01:24:00,025
gave it to the commissioners. In September, I believe. Okay.

1249
01:24:00,025 --> 01:24:04,381
Thanks. You bet. What are your reasons for the second

1250
01:24:04,381 --> 01:24:06,901
one is what are your reasons for closing the only

1251
01:24:06,901 --> 01:24:09,981
public indoor riding session one day a week. We were

1252
01:24:09,981 --> 01:24:13,741
told that there were not enough staff. Is that true.

1253
01:24:13,741 --> 01:24:18,861
When we wrote letters to you, Pozack staff responded. Another

1254
01:24:18,861 --> 01:24:21,501
reason they gave us was you had a tight budget.

1255
01:24:22,990 --> 01:24:25,070
And quote and the amount of revenue it generates. And

1256
01:24:25,070 --> 01:24:27,790
staff time does not add up to keeping it open

1257
01:24:27,790 --> 01:24:29,790
and that you are not going to change your opinion.

1258
01:24:31,398 --> 01:24:35,039
End quote. We pay a minimum usage fee along with

1259
01:24:35,039 --> 01:24:38,079
our taxes for this service. With all due respect, this

1260
01:24:38,079 --> 01:24:42,199
public writing session is supposed to be a community service.

1261
01:24:42,199 --> 01:24:45,519
Open space is a beautiful example of the gift, community

1262
01:24:45,519 --> 01:24:48,399
service that you already give us, and we so appreciate

1263
01:24:48,399 --> 01:24:51,079
it. So how is this any different is what I'm

1264
01:24:51,079 --> 01:24:55,695
asking. Can you tell us what is currently scheduled in

1265
01:24:55,695 --> 01:24:59,055
the indoor arena on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. We were

1266
01:24:59,055 --> 01:25:03,255
informed it was for doing maintenance on equipment. Is that

1267
01:25:03,255 --> 01:25:05,775
true? And if that is. So don't you have an

1268
01:25:05,775 --> 01:25:09,055
operations facility? And I'm certainly hoping you're not using the

1269
01:25:09,055 --> 01:25:14,257
indoor arena as a garage. Okay, number four, with all

1270
01:25:14,257 --> 01:25:16,857
the information and knowledge you have gained over the last

1271
01:25:16,857 --> 01:25:20,337
six months from our communications with you. Have you decided

1272
01:25:20,337 --> 01:25:23,017
that now is the time to take some favorable action

1273
01:25:23,017 --> 01:25:26,657
before the winter is over. I have been passionately trying

1274
01:25:26,657 --> 01:25:30,747
to find a simple solution for all of this. I'm

1275
01:25:30,747 --> 01:25:33,507
so determined, it prompted me to do some research on

1276
01:25:33,507 --> 01:25:36,907
my own with other fairgrounds and how they handle open

1277
01:25:36,907 --> 01:25:41,402
writing sessions. By contrast, I discovered our neighbors at Jefferson

1278
01:25:41,402 --> 01:25:45,042
county fairgrounds have used a practical approach that can serve

1279
01:25:45,042 --> 01:25:49,482
as an example of a best practices solution. The events

1280
01:25:49,482 --> 01:25:52,442
coordinator schedules open ride dates based on how many of

1281
01:25:52,442 --> 01:25:55,682
the 900 equine events that are going on and chooses

1282
01:25:55,682 --> 01:25:58,282
a slow day? During the week to offer open ride.

1283
01:25:59,072 --> 01:26:01,552
She then contacts her operations manager and they get it

1284
01:26:01,552 --> 01:26:04,432
ready. She said it's no big. Deal and that it

1285
01:26:04,432 --> 01:26:07,432
takes them one day to prepare the arena for usage.

1286
01:26:07,432 --> 01:26:10,432
They also have a John Deere tractor, just like our

1287
01:26:10,432 --> 01:26:13,672
fairgrounds has. And they say it's old and they only

1288
01:26:13,672 --> 01:26:16,032
do maintenance on it two times a month or as

1289
01:26:16,032 --> 01:26:19,335
needed. We would like to know what is going on

1290
01:26:19,335 --> 01:26:22,455
in the indoor arena again Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays. I

1291
01:26:22,455 --> 01:26:24,935
went by there today and there was nothing going on.

1292
01:26:24,935 --> 01:26:27,935
It looked immaculate. It looked clean and it was ready

1293
01:26:27,935 --> 01:26:31,295
for horses. Surely there must be one of those three

1294
01:26:31,295 --> 01:26:33,895
weekdays that Rebecca and Joe could schedule three or four

1295
01:26:33,895 --> 01:26:37,375
times a month for public open ride if Boulder wants

1296
01:26:37,375 --> 01:26:40,496
to. Pride itself on being an inclusive community. We need

1297
01:26:40,496 --> 01:26:43,736
to change our current model and practices to include this

1298
01:26:43,736 --> 01:26:47,096
essential part of our agricultural heritage. Without it, we are

1299
01:26:47,096 --> 01:26:49,896
being exclusive, which will cause us to lose touch with

1300
01:26:49,896 --> 01:26:53,523
our roots. I have a whole diatribe of stuff I

1301
01:26:53,523 --> 01:26:57,484
was going to say to you. Still have five minutes

1302
01:26:57,484 --> 01:27:03,355
and 40. I'll continue. So this isn't our first rodeo,

1303
01:27:03,355 --> 01:27:05,435
and this is just a bump in. A bump in.

1304
01:27:05,435 --> 01:27:09,555
The road to us. But we remember. 25 years ago,

1305
01:27:09,555 --> 01:27:12,998
I stood in front of you. When open space was

1306
01:27:12,998 --> 01:27:15,678
worried about the possibility that hordes of people would be

1307
01:27:15,678 --> 01:27:19,767
using open space. So we needed to work together on

1308
01:27:19,767 --> 01:27:22,687
how to make it sustainable for all users. We spent

1309
01:27:22,687 --> 01:27:28,127
countless hours helping Pozac, agonizing over all sorts of concerns

1310
01:27:28,127 --> 01:27:31,727
to preserve our horse communities. Rights and others to ride

1311
01:27:31,727 --> 01:27:35,847
and enjoy open space. We were told many things that

1312
01:27:35,847 --> 01:27:38,613
we proved not to be true. Here are just a

1313
01:27:38,613 --> 01:27:42,253
few to give you an example. Horses cause social trails.

1314
01:27:42,253 --> 01:27:45,373
Not true. Horses have 4ft that land in different places.

1315
01:27:45,373 --> 01:27:48,213
Unlike a bicycle tread that creates a social trail with

1316
01:27:48,213 --> 01:27:51,867
a single line. Number two. Horses are a threat to

1317
01:27:51,867 --> 01:27:56,187
wildlife. Not true. We simply explain the predator prey relationship.

1318
01:27:56,187 --> 01:27:59,227
Horses are prey animals, just like wildlife. They are not

1319
01:27:59,227 --> 01:28:03,787
a threat. Dogs are. However, they are predators. Horses. Spread

1320
01:28:03,787 --> 01:28:07,387
noxious weeds. Not true. Horses avoid them in the pasture

1321
01:28:07,387 --> 01:28:09,867
and it would be irresponsible if we, the stewards of

1322
01:28:09,867 --> 01:28:13,504
our. Horses and the land fed them weeds. We do

1323
01:28:13,504 --> 01:28:16,584
not feed our horses noxious weeds. Therefore, they don't pass

1324
01:28:16,584 --> 01:28:26,212
them. Okay. Let's see. Well. I'm not sure where it

1325
01:28:26,212 --> 01:28:30,509
went. But anyway, truly, I believe. Together. Oh. As a

1326
01:28:30,509 --> 01:28:33,749
result, my involvement with open space. I became an open

1327
01:28:33,749 --> 01:28:37,149
space mountain guide volunteer. Trail guide on horseback. We are

1328
01:28:37,149 --> 01:28:40,589
the eyes and ears for open space. Continuing to protect

1329
01:28:40,589 --> 01:28:42,549
it, I would like to keep my herd of horses

1330
01:28:42,549 --> 01:28:45,549
healthy, sound and in shape so I may continue this.

1331
01:28:45,549 --> 01:28:49,286
Labor of love. In the indoor riding arena. The horse

1332
01:28:49,286 --> 01:28:53,486
community has had the opportunity to speak publicly since August

1333
01:28:53,486 --> 01:28:57,126
to the county commissioners three times. We've been before them

1334
01:28:57,126 --> 01:28:59,126
when we her first heard of the cancellation, and this

1335
01:28:59,126 --> 01:29:02,766
is our second time in front of PoSac. We honestly

1336
01:29:02,766 --> 01:29:05,126
can't. Think of a reasonable cause to shut down. Open

1337
01:29:05,126 --> 01:29:08,312
rise. We can't even use your outdoor. Arena when there

1338
01:29:08,312 --> 01:29:11,392
is snow like today on the ground. I drove by

1339
01:29:11,392 --> 01:29:13,832
it today and it's. Covered with snow. However, the parking

1340
01:29:13,832 --> 01:29:20,621
lot is immaculate and perfectly plowed. So truly. I believe

1341
01:29:20,621 --> 01:29:25,571
together we can create a clear. And easy path to

1342
01:29:25,571 --> 01:29:29,811
a reasonable solution where we all can benefit. Don't you?

1343
01:29:29,811 --> 01:29:32,731
We just. Need to adopt a few neighboring practices and

1344
01:29:32,731 --> 01:29:35,251
be creative to make it easier for the staff to

1345
01:29:35,251 --> 01:29:38,971
implement. For example, an open ride could be offered any

1346
01:29:38,971 --> 01:29:42,384
of those three days. Where the arena is not currently

1347
01:29:42,384 --> 01:29:45,584
being used. They just need to choose. There's so much

1348
01:29:45,584 --> 01:29:48,468
flexibility in this plan. All we are asking for is

1349
01:29:48,468 --> 01:29:51,268
the opportunity to try this again. Let's go back to

1350
01:29:51,268 --> 01:29:54,108
the drawing board. Don't you agree? It's such an easy

1351
01:29:54,108 --> 01:29:56,948
fix we can do. This. So, in closing, I'll leave

1352
01:29:56,948 --> 01:29:59,548
you with this final thought on the best way to

1353
01:29:59,548 --> 01:30:09,212
proceed. And. I am specifically requesting that you decide. Tonight,

1354
01:30:09,212 --> 01:30:14,668
if possible, to reopen the. Boulder fairgrounds public indoor arena

1355
01:30:14,668 --> 01:30:17,788
to open ride in winter months three or four times

1356
01:30:17,788 --> 01:30:22,079
a month this is only with respect to open. Rides

1357
01:30:22,079 --> 01:30:26,119
which benefit our four h kids and the horse community

1358
01:30:26,119 --> 01:30:30,959
at large. You have heard from hundreds of concerned constituents.

1359
01:30:30,959 --> 01:30:33,959
It's time for action. And as my son would say,

1360
01:30:35,961 --> 01:30:38,641
Mom. Pull up your cowboy boots and get her done.

1361
01:30:38,641 --> 01:30:42,794
Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. I really appreciate your comments.

1362
01:30:42,794 --> 01:30:47,640
Sure, that'd be great. Absolutely. Thank you. Absolutely. Thank you

1363
01:30:47,640 --> 01:30:52,179
for coming. Do we have other folks here that would

1364
01:30:52,179 --> 01:30:59,597
like to speak as well? Okay, we'll get to those.

1365
01:30:59,597 --> 01:31:01,837
I just want to make sure your fan base here,

1366
01:31:01,837 --> 01:31:07,458
okay? Nick. Do we have folks who are ready to

1367
01:31:07,458 --> 01:31:10,822
speak on zoom? Yeah. For anybody on zoom, use the

1368
01:31:10,822 --> 01:31:13,982
raise hand feature. We got a Howard reinstain I'm. Going

1369
01:31:13,982 --> 01:31:17,022
to allow you to talk, Howard. You'll unmute yourself and

1370
01:31:17,022 --> 01:31:21,335
you'll. Have three minutes. And if you'll please introduce yourself

1371
01:31:21,335 --> 01:31:25,731
and where you live. Thank you. My name is howard.

1372
01:31:27,163 --> 01:31:29,723
Einstein. And I don't live in Boulder County. I live

1373
01:31:29,723 --> 01:31:34,203
in Adams county. But I have been fortunate enough to

1374
01:31:34,203 --> 01:31:39,114
have utilized Boulder county open space. As well as the

1375
01:31:39,114 --> 01:31:45,310
Boulder county indoor fairground facilities. For 25 years. And I

1376
01:31:45,310 --> 01:31:48,510
certainly appreciate that you allow out of county people to

1377
01:31:48,510 --> 01:31:52,518
do that as well. And certainly as an out of

1378
01:31:52,518 --> 01:31:56,118
county person who doesn't pay Boulder county taxes, I have

1379
01:31:56,118 --> 01:31:59,278
no problem with paying an additional fee to be able

1380
01:31:59,278 --> 01:32:03,358
to utilize both your open space, but your indoor riding

1381
01:32:03,358 --> 01:32:06,478
at this time of year. I just want to support

1382
01:32:06,478 --> 01:32:11,354
all of the things that Cindy said. Colorado and Boulder

1383
01:32:11,354 --> 01:32:19,259
county and other counties have always been. Agriculture equestrian. Based.

1384
01:32:20,717 --> 01:32:24,667
Sort of counties. They started that way. The equestrian business.

1385
01:32:24,667 --> 01:32:29,787
The equestrian heritage is strong in Boulder county, strong with

1386
01:32:29,787 --> 01:32:33,107
those of us across the state, and we would like

1387
01:32:33,107 --> 01:32:37,329
an opportunity to be able to continue. To support that

1388
01:32:37,329 --> 01:32:42,995
heritage and those traditions in your community. At your indoor

1389
01:32:42,995 --> 01:32:51,434
arena and would appreciate. You. Reestablishing open sessions, open writing

1390
01:32:51,434 --> 01:32:55,977
sessions for the public. As Cindy said, three or four

1391
01:32:55,977 --> 01:33:00,478
times a week, one day a week. And allow those

1392
01:33:00,478 --> 01:33:04,278
of us in the Boulder county community, as well as

1393
01:33:04,278 --> 01:33:08,678
the extended community, to continue to utilize that wonderful facility.

1394
01:33:10,153 --> 01:33:16,281
And. Help. Boulder county equestrians. Thank you. Thank you, Howard.

1395
01:33:17,649 --> 01:33:24,272
Nick others. Let's go to Heather Middleton. Great heather.

1396
01:33:27,858 --> 01:33:29,338
Are you on? Can you hear me? Yeah, I can.

1397
01:33:31,128 --> 01:33:35,899
Great. Hi. And I live in Boulder county, and I'm

1398
01:33:35,899 --> 01:33:39,539
here to advocate for keeping open writing available. At the

1399
01:33:39,539 --> 01:33:46,383
Boulder County Fairgrounds Indoor horse arena. My daughter recently joined

1400
01:33:46,383 --> 01:33:51,218
four h and as newcomers to the community, How valuable.

1401
01:33:53,115 --> 01:33:57,555
However, I've also noticed how few kids seem to be

1402
01:33:57,555 --> 01:34:06,572
involved, especially in the horse project. One likely reason. Is

1403
01:34:06,572 --> 01:34:11,068
that for months of the year, kids can't. Due to

1404
01:34:11,068 --> 01:34:15,868
the weather, having a public facility like the fairgrounds for

1405
01:34:15,868 --> 01:34:19,748
open writing could make a huge difference in repainting kids

1406
01:34:19,748 --> 01:34:25,316
in the gram. And encouraging new families to join. I

1407
01:34:25,316 --> 01:34:28,676
was fortunate to have a friend guide us into forage.

1408
01:34:30,460 --> 01:34:35,540
Families who don't have that connection. Instead of expanding fostering

1409
01:34:35,540 --> 01:34:42,302
opportunities for youth, it feels resources are being. Moved for

1410
01:34:42,302 --> 01:34:50,163
affordable. Community based programs like for. Heather, we're losing you.

1411
01:34:54,709 --> 01:34:56,709
Your connection is bad, I think.

1412
01:35:05,203 --> 01:35:12,308
Heather, can you hear us? I can hear. Her. We're

1413
01:35:12,308 --> 01:35:22,087
getting a very broken. Oh, shoot. You have

1414
01:35:22,087 --> 01:35:30,313
been to the. City could finish. Can you hear me?

1415
01:35:30,313 --> 01:35:34,201
We're getting bits and pieces. Yes. I will sign off.

1416
01:35:38,422 --> 01:35:44,107
I agree with everything Cindy said. And. Hope that we

1417
01:35:44,107 --> 01:35:52,318
can find a solution. Thank you. Nick. Who else?

1418
01:35:53,702 --> 01:35:55,782
I'm going to give one more second for more hands.

1419
01:35:58,542 --> 01:36:07,346
I don't see any. Rhonda nicole. Okay. Rhonda.

1420
01:36:12,224 --> 01:36:18,831
There she is. Rhonda, are you with us?

1421
01:36:21,963 --> 01:36:25,508
I'm here now. Awesome. Do you want to introduce yourself?

1422
01:36:25,508 --> 01:36:35,251
And you have three minutes for comment. Okay. How about

1423
01:36:35,251 --> 01:36:44,280
now? I'm 72 years old and I'm still riding my

1424
01:36:44,280 --> 01:36:49,956
horses and enjoying the Colorado agriculture community. I am a

1425
01:36:49,956 --> 01:36:53,996
native Colorado. I have used the Boulder county fairground indoor

1426
01:36:53,996 --> 01:37:00,036
arena for decades and I remember the Powow rodeo grounds

1427
01:37:00,036 --> 01:37:03,131
like it was yesterday. It was torn down in the

1428
01:37:03,131 --> 01:37:06,371
late seventy s and the fairgrounds were moved to Longmont.

1429
01:37:06,371 --> 01:37:11,953
Where it has been utilized beautifully ever since. And. I'm

1430
01:37:11,953 --> 01:37:15,431
really grateful for that. But suddenly the indoor arena was

1431
01:37:15,431 --> 01:37:20,632
not available. For winter. Open writing. I don't know the

1432
01:37:20,632 --> 01:37:25,695
reason for closing the winter open riding program. When I

1433
01:37:25,695 --> 01:37:31,081
found out the program was closed. I spent several hours

1434
01:37:31,081 --> 01:37:35,041
collecting signatures for a petition that was given to the

1435
01:37:35,041 --> 01:37:39,281
county commissioners. This petition opposed the closing of the open

1436
01:37:39,281 --> 01:37:44,361
ride. These signatures were from the horse community collected at

1437
01:37:44,361 --> 01:37:50,307
riding clinics. And horse events. Every single person asked me,

1438
01:37:50,307 --> 01:37:55,779
why is Boulder county closing the indoor arena? Several of

1439
01:37:55,779 --> 01:37:58,859
my friends in our horse community have appeared at your

1440
01:37:58,859 --> 01:38:04,199
parks and open space meetings. And have attended the county

1441
01:38:04,199 --> 01:38:09,399
commissioners meetings, and it presented this petition of 120 signatures

1442
01:38:09,399 --> 01:38:14,439
in opposition to closing the arena, and we can certainly

1443
01:38:14,439 --> 01:38:18,479
get more if you need them. We have reached out

1444
01:38:18,479 --> 01:38:21,559
to Boulder county for answers, and we would love to

1445
01:38:21,559 --> 01:38:26,472
have a discussion. For some kind of compromise. So far,

1446
01:38:26,472 --> 01:38:30,552
we have had no answers or discussion on the satisfactory

1447
01:38:30,552 --> 01:38:36,244
resolution. I'm really frustrated that the horse community. Is denied

1448
01:38:36,244 --> 01:38:41,161
this community service by our government. With no genuine discussion.

1449
01:38:42,592 --> 01:38:47,032
Please. I would love to have an answer soon. Thank

1450
01:38:47,032 --> 01:38:52,157
you. Thank you, Rhonda. Nick, do we have anybody else

1451
01:38:52,157 --> 01:39:00,839
online? I am not seeing any other hands raised. Okay.

1452
01:39:02,582 --> 01:39:11,365
Comments thoughts from Posec. Carol. Carol byerly posac. I'm trying

1453
01:39:11,365 --> 01:39:17,730
to understand. The sequence of events here because. It sounds

1454
01:39:17,730 --> 01:39:21,610
like the county commissioners have already made decisions about funding

1455
01:39:21,610 --> 01:39:26,397
for this. And usually we see things before. They act.

1456
01:39:28,354 --> 01:39:31,114
And so we are kind of disarmed in a way.

1457
01:39:32,850 --> 01:39:39,078
And so I'm wondering. If. That, and I haven't seen

1458
01:39:39,078 --> 01:39:45,313
the petition. And apparently they've been speaking to the county

1459
01:39:45,313 --> 01:39:49,310
commissioners, but. This is new to us as of last

1460
01:39:49,310 --> 01:39:54,916
month. We did actually hear a little bit about. When

1461
01:39:54,916 --> 01:39:59,601
we talked about the fairgrounds. Fairground? Sorry. Probably October, I'm

1462
01:39:59,601 --> 01:40:04,074
guessing. Jared, do you have much of a memory of

1463
01:40:04,074 --> 01:40:07,394
sequence of events and where we're at? With all this.

1464
01:40:09,106 --> 01:40:17,251
Yeah, Tony, we do have one more comment. Bring pam

1465
01:40:17,251 --> 01:40:23,225
andringa. Great. Pam. Two. And introduce yourself and take three

1466
01:40:23,225 --> 01:40:28,251
minutes. Absolutely. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank

1467
01:40:28,251 --> 01:40:31,691
you. I'm Pam Andringa, and. I live in Boulder county,

1468
01:40:31,691 --> 01:40:35,592
unincorporated. And I just want to thank all of you,

1469
01:40:35,592 --> 01:40:39,127
first of all, for amazing work that you do. And

1470
01:40:39,127 --> 01:40:42,047
the amazing care for those little bats that are suffering.

1471
01:40:43,987 --> 01:40:46,867
And preserving the riding opportunities that we do have in

1472
01:40:46,867 --> 01:40:50,927
open space. It's really great to see that you've made

1473
01:40:50,927 --> 01:40:53,567
a lot of efforts in that. Area, and also with

1474
01:40:53,567 --> 01:40:56,087
the help of Cindy and all the other equine community

1475
01:40:56,087 --> 01:41:00,541
that. Has persevered to keep those opportunities available. I think

1476
01:41:00,541 --> 01:41:04,750
one of the frustrations initially. When we were hearing kind

1477
01:41:04,750 --> 01:41:07,710
of the final closure of the Boulder county fairgrounds for

1478
01:41:07,710 --> 01:41:13,674
open riding. Was that? There wasn't enough money in the

1479
01:41:13,674 --> 01:41:17,834
budget to keep it open, although they had no way.

1480
01:41:17,834 --> 01:41:21,795
Of telling us or reporting. What it costs to keep

1481
01:41:21,795 --> 01:41:26,402
it open. And then. The complication was also that the

1482
01:41:26,402 --> 01:41:33,016
tractor wasn't working properly. And. It just seemed like a

1483
01:41:33,016 --> 01:41:37,354
bit of an excuse that hadn't really been investigated. And

1484
01:41:37,354 --> 01:41:39,754
so it felt a little premature to be able to

1485
01:41:39,754 --> 01:41:42,434
say that there wasn't enough. Money to keep it open.

1486
01:41:44,103 --> 01:41:46,863
And that there wasn't enough equipment and it was too

1487
01:41:46,863 --> 01:41:53,137
much work. Where? Every other. Community fairground that I've investigated.

1488
01:41:54,378 --> 01:41:59,143
They have even more open opportunities to ride. And it

1489
01:41:59,143 --> 01:42:01,623
doesn't seem to be a very big issue, and it

1490
01:42:01,623 --> 01:42:03,903
doesn't seem to be an expense that can't be managed.

1491
01:42:05,478 --> 01:42:07,558
And so I think that was part of the frustration

1492
01:42:07,558 --> 01:42:11,518
with the community that it seems sort of short sighted.

1493
01:42:12,926 --> 01:42:18,920
And. Narrowly envisioned by a small group of people. And

1494
01:42:18,920 --> 01:42:24,207
it wasn't necessarily. Open discussion. So I think that was

1495
01:42:24,207 --> 01:42:27,727
a lot of the confusion or the frustration, and then

1496
01:42:27,727 --> 01:42:30,407
just the loss of that great opportunity to be able

1497
01:42:30,407 --> 01:42:34,886
to maintain. People's horses during the winter months when it's

1498
01:42:34,886 --> 01:42:38,126
not feasible to ride outside and what I just want

1499
01:42:38,126 --> 01:42:42,254
to add for sure as well is that. You don't

1500
01:42:42,254 --> 01:42:45,414
see a lot of usage of that open opportunity, but

1501
01:42:45,414 --> 01:42:50,094
the usage that you do have is widespread throughout the

1502
01:42:50,094 --> 01:42:52,734
equine community because every one of the people that are

1503
01:42:52,734 --> 01:42:58,399
involved in riding there. Are outreach people that are helping.

1504
01:42:59,938 --> 01:43:03,961
With. Four H and with other community projects. And community

1505
01:43:03,961 --> 01:43:08,008
services. And for them to be able to keep the

1506
01:43:08,008 --> 01:43:11,128
ability to ride and keep their horses manageable. And help,

1507
01:43:11,128 --> 01:43:15,828
as Cindy said. Also. With open space management. From the

1508
01:43:15,828 --> 01:43:19,508
equine perspective, it's really critical that they have that opportunity.

1509
01:43:19,508 --> 01:43:21,908
So I just hope that it can be reconsidered. Thank

1510
01:43:21,908 --> 01:43:26,706
you very much. Thank you. I appreciate your comments. I

1511
01:43:26,706 --> 01:43:29,866
really appreciate you all coming in and talking to us

1512
01:43:29,866 --> 01:43:33,346
both in person and online, and I really appreciate the

1513
01:43:33,346 --> 01:43:41,358
respectful way you've come to us. And very thoughtful comments.

1514
01:43:42,857 --> 01:43:48,887
I would like to. Task staff with giving us an

1515
01:43:48,887 --> 01:43:54,892
update. And kind of a history. Of this issue from

1516
01:43:54,892 --> 01:43:58,452
back in October, I think it was, when we had

1517
01:43:58,452 --> 01:44:01,372
the fairgrounds manager come and I apologize. I can't remember

1518
01:44:01,372 --> 01:44:09,283
his name. Joe. Joe. Walk us through. The public comment,

1519
01:44:09,283 --> 01:44:17,370
the decisions recommended by staff, the decisions. We incorporated into

1520
01:44:17,370 --> 01:44:23,558
approval of the new fairgrounds contracts and operating procedures. And

1521
01:44:23,558 --> 01:44:28,215
then through the county commissioner. Timeline to understand. How all

1522
01:44:28,215 --> 01:44:30,735
this got done because I think it would be a

1523
01:44:30,735 --> 01:44:38,882
great refresher for all. Of us especially. And. I can't

1524
01:44:38,882 --> 01:44:42,642
imagine that we couldn't have a conversation and try to

1525
01:44:42,642 --> 01:44:49,292
find some. Way. Of making some middle ground here. So.

1526
01:44:50,442 --> 01:44:52,922
I feel like for us on Postac, we need to

1527
01:44:52,922 --> 01:44:56,983
get back to the place of understanding. The decisions and

1528
01:44:56,983 --> 01:45:01,179
timeline and the reasons. And then I think we would

1529
01:45:01,179 --> 01:45:05,764
love to have that conversation. So if we could do

1530
01:45:05,764 --> 01:45:13,033
that, we have a February 27 meeting. And maybe, I

1531
01:45:13,033 --> 01:45:15,433
don't know if we have time, if you have time

1532
01:45:15,433 --> 01:45:22,398
to do any. Of that legwork before our retreat. We

1533
01:45:22,398 --> 01:45:24,878
could talk, maybe offline about that, but it might be

1534
01:45:24,878 --> 01:45:28,738
nice to be able. To. Juice this a little bit.

1535
01:45:29,880 --> 01:45:36,591
Trace. Trace baker. Posac. In addition to the topics that

1536
01:45:36,591 --> 01:45:44,849
Tony just asked for, There is. A possible or perceived

1537
01:45:44,849 --> 01:45:51,962
breakdown in communication. Between staff and the public and would

1538
01:45:51,962 --> 01:45:57,205
like to have that addressed also. Yeah. I think that's

1539
01:45:57,205 --> 01:45:59,365
part of what I'm just searching for, to understand in

1540
01:45:59,365 --> 01:46:05,650
the timeline of decision making. And public input. So that

1541
01:46:05,650 --> 01:46:11,055
whole kind of process timeline. True. And then paula drew

1542
01:46:11,055 --> 01:46:15,698
adams posak. Was mentioned in the presentation that some of

1543
01:46:15,698 --> 01:46:20,338
the surrounding counties are able to offer open riding opportunities.

1544
01:46:21,689 --> 01:46:24,969
For their residents. So I'd like to extend the request

1545
01:46:24,969 --> 01:46:29,525
to have a comparison to some of the surrounding. County.

1546
01:46:30,584 --> 01:46:34,304
Equine opportunities that might exist, what their costs breakdown might

1547
01:46:34,304 --> 01:46:37,344
be, and in addition to that, what number of hours

1548
01:46:37,344 --> 01:46:41,589
they provide. And I would also add on there what

1549
01:46:41,589 --> 01:46:44,549
methods they use to stay in contact with their members.

1550
01:46:44,549 --> 01:46:47,709
And their participants in their arenas because it sounds as

1551
01:46:47,709 --> 01:46:51,657
if. This is just something that we've heard echoed through

1552
01:46:51,657 --> 01:46:54,897
several of these meetings with the same topic where there

1553
01:46:54,897 --> 01:46:57,817
is a breakdown in the communication. The perception was that

1554
01:46:57,817 --> 01:47:01,577
the members were communicated with but then we heard, I

1555
01:47:01,577 --> 01:47:04,017
think it was two sessions ago, where we had a

1556
01:47:04,017 --> 01:47:07,577
very large audience. Of participants from riders who were saying

1557
01:47:07,577 --> 01:47:09,257
the first they ever heard about it is when they

1558
01:47:09,257 --> 01:47:12,428
attempted to. Ride and they noticed that the gates were

1559
01:47:12,428 --> 01:47:16,283
shut, so to speak. We also discussed once before about

1560
01:47:16,283 --> 01:47:20,483
the financial concerns about the maintenance issues for the tractor

1561
01:47:20,483 --> 01:47:22,923
and some of these other items, and I believe Therese

1562
01:47:22,923 --> 01:47:25,323
spoke a little bit about their budget of what they

1563
01:47:25,323 --> 01:47:27,483
might have. So there might be an opportunity for us

1564
01:47:27,483 --> 01:47:30,403
to look and see what are the budgetary? Constraints that

1565
01:47:30,403 --> 01:47:33,483
they might have for their operational cost and potentially some

1566
01:47:33,483 --> 01:47:35,984
of the other types of inf. Infrastructure and capital improvements

1567
01:47:35,984 --> 01:47:37,944
that maybe they want to put forth to the community

1568
01:47:37,944 --> 01:47:40,784
to say maybe there's a way for the community. If

1569
01:47:40,784 --> 01:47:43,184
you really want to see this continue, there could be

1570
01:47:43,184 --> 01:47:45,664
a shared cost or another opportunity to say if there

1571
01:47:45,664 --> 01:47:49,344
needs to replace the tractor or maybe there's a goFundMe

1572
01:47:49,344 --> 01:47:51,544
type of activity that could happen on your side to

1573
01:47:51,544 --> 01:47:55,470
encourage this type of facility to stay open if. It's

1574
01:47:55,470 --> 01:48:01,085
an operational cost concern. Thanks, Paula. Thanks. Paula Fitzgerald. Posek.

1575
01:48:02,834 --> 01:48:06,753
And to just reiterate a little bit, What we talked

1576
01:48:06,753 --> 01:48:10,073
about last month. It sounds like there definitely was a

1577
01:48:10,073 --> 01:48:14,432
communication breakdown. I think it was a little bit. Of

1578
01:48:14,432 --> 01:48:17,632
lack of information, possibly, from what I hear from the

1579
01:48:17,632 --> 01:48:22,472
county's part, but also possibly not an activation or a

1580
01:48:22,472 --> 01:48:26,152
collection of the members part to really participate in those

1581
01:48:26,152 --> 01:48:30,764
sessions. Which. Were to the wise. Those are the times

1582
01:48:30,764 --> 01:48:35,878
to speak up beforehand rather than later. I'd mentioned that

1583
01:48:35,878 --> 01:48:40,761
there's some very talented staff on public process. In Boulder

1584
01:48:40,761 --> 01:48:46,011
county and that hopefully sharing some of. Their best practices

1585
01:48:46,011 --> 01:48:50,685
for outreach would be a benefit in this situation. One

1586
01:48:50,685 --> 01:48:54,344
thing that. Has come up in my mind since then.

1587
01:48:54,344 --> 01:48:56,944
Is that not too many months ago, we saw a

1588
01:48:56,944 --> 01:49:01,734
master plan for the fairgrounds. With a lot of. Very

1589
01:49:01,734 --> 01:49:07,614
fancy and beautiful improvements to the fairgrounds. And yet we

1590
01:49:07,614 --> 01:49:12,086
can't even keep something. As basic. As a once a

1591
01:49:12,086 --> 01:49:17,687
week ride throughout the winter months. Open. So I would

1592
01:49:17,687 --> 01:49:21,847
pass the county to look at those kinds of master

1593
01:49:21,847 --> 01:49:26,967
plan efforts. Because if you lead a master plan effort

1594
01:49:26,967 --> 01:49:31,418
too far ahead, Of when it's actually going to be

1595
01:49:31,418 --> 01:49:36,666
implemented. You may have lost your whole support group by

1596
01:49:36,666 --> 01:49:39,906
the time that implementation happens, and it's sort of to

1597
01:49:39,906 --> 01:49:47,324
me, a wasted effort. So I'd suggest that. A good

1598
01:49:47,324 --> 01:49:52,703
evaluation be done on affordability? Before a master plan and

1599
01:49:52,703 --> 01:49:58,363
process has taken place. And then looking for ways. Of

1600
01:49:58,363 --> 01:50:03,268
maintaining something. As strong for the agricultural community. To me,

1601
01:50:03,268 --> 01:50:10,132
this seems like. Sort of central. Focus of a fairgrounds

1602
01:50:10,132 --> 01:50:14,132
anywhere is to have these kinds of opportunities, especially for

1603
01:50:14,132 --> 01:50:17,292
forage kids. I mean, that's kind of our future farmers

1604
01:50:17,292 --> 01:50:22,620
and our future people. And it seems like. We do

1605
01:50:22,620 --> 01:50:26,915
a lot of. Head nodding about how we need to

1606
01:50:26,915 --> 01:50:32,140
provide. For our kids and give them good, healthy activities.

1607
01:50:32,140 --> 01:50:38,055
And yet we can't afford this. Anyway. I will be

1608
01:50:38,055 --> 01:50:43,078
gone when this happens. But. I think it's a worthwhile

1609
01:50:43,078 --> 01:50:46,078
topic to discuss in the future and keep in front

1610
01:50:46,078 --> 01:50:49,798
of the commissioners who apparently have made the decision for

1611
01:50:49,798 --> 01:50:53,418
this year. But maybe we can get it ahead of

1612
01:50:53,418 --> 01:50:58,617
next year. And try to get something back in place.

1613
01:50:58,617 --> 01:51:03,123
Thank you, Janet. Yeah. I'd like to see a little

1614
01:51:03,123 --> 01:51:06,083
more detail on just how much does it cost to

1615
01:51:06,083 --> 01:51:09,401
have one day of open writing. I heard it was

1616
01:51:09,401 --> 01:51:12,121
12 hours long. Maybe there's an option to make it

1617
01:51:12,121 --> 01:51:14,361
shorter. I mean, how many times do you have to

1618
01:51:14,361 --> 01:51:17,281
drag the arena? I don't think they're. Out there every

1619
01:51:17,281 --> 01:51:20,361
hour dragging the arena twice. Okay, but to just hear

1620
01:51:20,361 --> 01:51:24,479
from Joe. And some dollar figures. On just how much

1621
01:51:24,479 --> 01:51:31,290
this really would cost. Staff time. Does somebody actually be

1622
01:51:31,290 --> 01:51:33,370
there the whole time? I know when I used to

1623
01:51:33,370 --> 01:51:36,050
do it, and it was probably 25 years ago, 20

1624
01:51:36,050 --> 01:51:39,290
years ago. I don't think anybody was really watching us.

1625
01:51:39,290 --> 01:51:42,839
That closely. Yeah. So I'd like to see just a

1626
01:51:42,839 --> 01:51:44,719
little more detail. I mean, what does it really cost.

1627
01:51:46,187 --> 01:51:47,707
The county to have one day a week, and it's

1628
01:51:47,707 --> 01:51:51,411
not even all year long. I think it's, what, November

1629
01:51:51,411 --> 01:51:56,368
through April, May. Yeah. And if there's some compromise, some

1630
01:51:56,368 --> 01:51:59,757
places that make sense, you could even cut cost. Christine.

1631
01:52:01,822 --> 01:52:09,917
Christine johnson. Drew. Asked. A lot of. The requests that

1632
01:52:09,917 --> 01:52:12,157
I wanted to make, and I just want to underscore

1633
01:52:12,157 --> 01:52:19,205
what he said. And to go into the level of

1634
01:52:19,205 --> 01:52:25,875
detail that's feasible, detail is helpful. I think another issue

1635
01:52:25,875 --> 01:52:32,870
that came up. During. The presentation and then during the

1636
01:52:32,870 --> 01:52:39,172
discussion. Is whether or not. There's adequate time. During the

1637
01:52:39,172 --> 01:52:42,772
week and. I think it would be useful to know.

1638
01:52:44,406 --> 01:52:48,046
Again, how many hours it takes, how many hours prep

1639
01:52:48,046 --> 01:52:53,086
takes, and what the normal schedule or a typical schedule.

1640
01:52:55,052 --> 01:52:59,043
For the facility is particularly in the winter. To have

1641
01:52:59,043 --> 01:53:05,884
a sense. Of. What is the availability, particularly on days

1642
01:53:05,884 --> 01:53:11,836
when it looks like it's empty? Okay. I think we

1643
01:53:11,836 --> 01:53:21,747
beat this horse to death. But. I hope. Staff

1644
01:53:21,747 --> 01:53:26,427
plainly there's a lot more detail around process and understanding

1645
01:53:26,427 --> 01:53:29,867
of how this could work that we would like to

1646
01:53:29,867 --> 01:53:33,266
engage in a conversation about that. And I think we'd

1647
01:53:33,266 --> 01:53:36,466
really like to engage with the community in that conversation

1648
01:53:36,466 --> 01:53:39,506
as well. So I'm happy to work a little bit

1649
01:53:39,506 --> 01:53:42,946
offline with staff to make sure we tee up, making

1650
01:53:42,946 --> 01:53:45,562
sure we get all the right information. For us to

1651
01:53:45,562 --> 01:53:47,842
have that discussion and to ensure that we have a

1652
01:53:47,842 --> 01:53:50,762
good discussion with the community. So thank you all for

1653
01:53:50,762 --> 01:53:54,724
coming in. Really appreciate it. Nick, do we have anybody

1654
01:53:54,724 --> 01:54:01,045
else online and any other topics? From the public. No

1655
01:54:01,045 --> 01:54:04,645
other hands raised. Great. We're going to move to PosTC

1656
01:54:04,645 --> 01:54:08,285
members comment period for items not on the agenda, and

1657
01:54:08,285 --> 01:54:11,205
I'm going to start since I'm still cherry. Didn't get

1658
01:54:11,205 --> 01:54:17,284
rid of me. This meeting, you could have. And. I

1659
01:54:17,284 --> 01:54:19,244
want to just first thank everybody for being here tonight.

1660
01:54:20,818 --> 01:54:23,953
I really appreciate it. And it's a good group of

1661
01:54:23,953 --> 01:54:26,797
really caring people. And it's really nice to all be

1662
01:54:26,797 --> 01:54:31,859
together. It's hard, given everybody's schedules and other commitments, paid

1663
01:54:31,859 --> 01:54:36,789
jobs and kind of problems. Like that. But it's really

1664
01:54:36,789 --> 01:54:38,829
great to have everyone here, and I really appreciate all

1665
01:54:38,829 --> 01:54:42,159
the time you all have put into this. There have

1666
01:54:42,159 --> 01:54:45,679
been some very long sessions, some very hard sessions, and

1667
01:54:45,679 --> 01:54:51,377
you've always approached it. With humility and grace. And someone

1668
01:54:51,377 --> 01:54:55,417
who epitomizes that more than anyone is Paula Fitzgerald. And

1669
01:54:55,417 --> 01:54:57,417
I really want to thank you for your six years

1670
01:54:57,417 --> 01:55:00,897
of service to post that and for bringing me into

1671
01:55:00,897 --> 01:55:06,117
this. Which I may never forgive you for. Now. I

1672
01:55:06,117 --> 01:55:11,149
just really appreciate that a lot. And Jackson, I know

1673
01:55:11,149 --> 01:55:16,661
you're taking off, not. Getting returned this time, and thank

1674
01:55:16,661 --> 01:55:18,781
you for your service. It's been great to have you.

1675
01:55:18,781 --> 01:55:22,540
And your perspective here. Absolutely. We have two other members

1676
01:55:22,540 --> 01:55:26,980
who are asking to be returned, and I hope that

1677
01:55:26,980 --> 01:55:31,758
that is the case. We don't ever know what the

1678
01:55:31,758 --> 01:55:35,890
county commissioners are going to do. That. I think from

1679
01:55:35,890 --> 01:55:40,543
my perspective, I really hope that's the case. Other comments

1680
01:55:40,543 --> 01:55:47,474
from Postac members on any agenda items. Paula. Thank you,

1681
01:55:47,474 --> 01:55:50,314
Tony. That was very sweet. And I just wanted to

1682
01:55:50,314 --> 01:55:54,780
give a shout out to the county staff. You are

1683
01:55:54,780 --> 01:55:59,539
a huge resource. I mean, your knowledge is so extensive,

1684
01:55:59,539 --> 01:56:02,752
the way you work with the public and between. Yourselves

1685
01:56:02,752 --> 01:56:05,992
to try to coordinate so that everybody's on the same

1686
01:56:05,992 --> 01:56:12,036
page working together. It's really admirable. And I think. It's

1687
01:56:12,036 --> 01:56:14,916
obviously a benefit to all the projects you work on

1688
01:56:14,916 --> 01:56:18,316
and all the issues you take on. And I also.

1689
01:56:19,922 --> 01:56:23,466
Want to thank fellow members here. It's a great group

1690
01:56:23,466 --> 01:56:27,001
of people. Part of me is like, okay, I'm ready

1691
01:56:27,001 --> 01:56:32,675
to be done. Time for new energy here. But it's

1692
01:56:32,675 --> 01:56:36,943
been a pleasure, and I've learned a tremendous amount. I

1693
01:56:36,943 --> 01:56:39,383
hope to keep involved with some of the other things,

1694
01:56:39,383 --> 01:56:43,903
like the conservation easement, monitoring and maybe some other opportunities.

1695
01:56:45,258 --> 01:56:49,613
But anyway. I think a couple of the things. The

1696
01:56:49,613 --> 01:56:54,803
county does so well. Besides our information given for these

1697
01:56:54,803 --> 01:56:58,846
meetings. And the good presentations and the knowledge of the

1698
01:56:58,846 --> 01:57:02,364
staff are the field trips. I mean, those are just

1699
01:57:02,364 --> 01:57:07,650
fantastic opportunities. And for some of the members who. Have

1700
01:57:07,650 --> 01:57:14,165
jobs still. Come on. Get your priority straight. But they

1701
01:57:14,165 --> 01:57:17,125
are wonderful opportunities to learn and to see some of

1702
01:57:17,125 --> 01:57:22,524
these beautiful sites that we've purchased. And manage. With county

1703
01:57:22,524 --> 01:57:27,326
dollars. Anyway, keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank

1704
01:57:27,326 --> 01:57:31,526
you, Paula. Really appreciate it. Other comments Jackson Tony Jackson

1705
01:57:31,526 --> 01:57:33,806
Mueller Post act I want to follow up with Paul

1706
01:57:33,806 --> 01:57:38,898
is about learning. I know. The application window is closed,

1707
01:57:38,898 --> 01:57:43,018
but to Cindy and others that may still be online,

1708
01:57:43,018 --> 01:57:48,219
please consider applying. I learned a ton about civics. And

1709
01:57:48,219 --> 01:57:52,495
decision making at the county. And learning about the parks

1710
01:57:52,495 --> 01:57:55,295
and open space department that I wasn't aware of just

1711
01:57:55,295 --> 01:57:57,975
from my own little bubble of using. There's so much

1712
01:57:57,975 --> 01:57:59,935
more out there to learn about, so. I just wanted

1713
01:57:59,935 --> 01:58:05,559
to put that plug for the next window. That's awesome.

1714
01:58:05,559 --> 01:58:11,620
Thanks. Okay. We have our new director giving us the

1715
01:58:11,620 --> 01:58:16,432
director report tonight. You should be acting. You should just

1716
01:58:16,432 --> 01:58:23,269
do whatever you want since you're acting. Good evening. Post

1717
01:58:23,269 --> 01:58:26,149
act Jarrett Roberts, acting director. Teresa's out at least till

1718
01:58:26,149 --> 01:58:31,298
Monday. I have a few updates. It's pretty short. First

1719
01:58:31,298 --> 01:58:34,658
update, Aguan wanted you all to. Know that the soil

1720
01:58:34,658 --> 01:58:37,218
health grants came in and we had 15 grants for

1721
01:58:37,218 --> 01:58:41,672
over 350k. For things like compost and soil amendments, and

1722
01:58:41,672 --> 01:58:43,712
we hope those agreements will be out by late. February.

1723
01:58:45,117 --> 01:58:46,877
With all the fires that are going on. I'm in

1724
01:58:46,877 --> 01:58:48,757
California. I'm sure fire is on all of our minds.

1725
01:58:48,757 --> 01:58:52,197
So wanted a quick update that there have been burdens.

1726
01:58:52,197 --> 01:58:54,477
West of lions. You may have seen those. Those are

1727
01:58:54,477 --> 01:58:56,997
controlled burns. And then we are considering and looking. At

1728
01:58:56,997 --> 01:59:01,237
doing burns at Highle and hall the next coming days

1729
01:59:01,237 --> 01:59:05,426
with the sheriff's office. So that's on your radar. We

1730
01:59:05,426 --> 01:59:09,593
just completed. A study with no coat, places to look

1731
01:59:09,593 --> 01:59:11,993
at our illegal trails, and we came in with just

1732
01:59:11,993 --> 01:59:14,793
over 60 miles from that study. That's not to say

1733
01:59:14,793 --> 01:59:19,276
that's comprehensive of the entire area. But it's what came

1734
01:59:19,276 --> 01:59:22,236
in from that study on parks and open space land

1735
01:59:22,236 --> 01:59:24,196
we're hoping to put together a presentation and bring that

1736
01:59:24,196 --> 01:59:28,562
to you in the next couple post act. Meetings. And

1737
01:59:28,562 --> 01:59:30,362
then just a reminder that you all have the retreat.

1738
01:59:30,362 --> 01:59:33,442
Coming up on February 1, the public part of that

1739
01:59:33,442 --> 01:59:36,122
starts at 1015, and then you all will be there

1740
01:59:36,122 --> 01:59:37,682
a little bit earlier. I think the agenda has been

1741
01:59:37,682 --> 01:59:42,308
sent to you. And then, yeah, just in response to

1742
01:59:42,308 --> 01:59:45,588
the feedback about the fairgrounds, just a reminder that Joe

1743
01:59:45,588 --> 01:59:47,828
was here Jalafala last time. And if you look back

1744
01:59:47,828 --> 01:59:49,788
at the notes there, there. Are some answers to some

1745
01:59:49,788 --> 01:59:52,428
of the questions that were brought up, so I don't

1746
01:59:52,428 --> 01:59:54,268
want to reiterate those, but I will bring that up

1747
01:59:54,268 --> 01:59:56,228
with Teresa and Joe and we'll see if we can

1748
01:59:56,228 --> 01:59:59,998
figure out some way to continue that discussion. Awesome. Thank

1749
01:59:59,998 --> 02:00:04,753
you. Great. Thank you very much. Anything else from Posek?

1750
02:00:07,644 --> 02:00:09,284
Sorry. I know where you want to go. Are we

1751
02:00:09,284 --> 02:00:17,476
sharing any firefighters or anything with California? Sorry, guys. It

1752
02:00:17,476 --> 02:00:20,236
depends if you eat parks and open space or fire

1753
02:00:20,236 --> 02:00:26,381
departments around. Bolton county. Like Wildland. Yeah. So, Stefan Reinhard,

1754
02:00:26,381 --> 02:00:30,816
resource management division manager. So the sheriff's office has a

1755
02:00:30,816 --> 02:00:34,616
fire crew, and it's a county cooperative, and. So they

1756
02:00:34,616 --> 02:00:39,552
have sent a couple of engines and we're there. But

1757
02:00:39,552 --> 02:00:44,083
no park staff. Some of the fire departments have sent

1758
02:00:44,083 --> 02:00:50,622
staff in and. Thanks, Stefan. Sorry. Good question. That's a

1759
02:00:50,622 --> 02:00:53,302
good question. All right, thank you all. We're done.