Fort Collins Now
February 2009
It’s time to revisit the open space program.
The citizens of Fort Collins passed the “Open Space Yes” ballot measure in 2002, raising sales taxes to purchase and maintain open space through the Natural Areas Program.
Today, the Natural Areas Program manages 43 sites totaling 29,366 acres of open space. (For a handy frame of reference, the City of Fort Collins itself is only 30,144 acres. We’ve essentially purchased an entire extra city’s worth of open space over the past few years.)
These purchases are scheduled to continue until 2030.
Enough is enough. It’s time to tackle one of the “sacred cows” of Fort Collins politics head-on. It’s time to make a few common sense changes to our open space program.
Let’s look at the 2007 annual report for the Natural Areas Program (the most recent available) as a frame of reference. In 2007, the city acquired an additional 1,361 acres of land at a cost of just under $5.7 million. That’s out of 2007 annual revenues for the Natural Areas Program of just under $11.5 million. The balance is spent on programs, public improvements, resource management and facility operations.
In other words, the Natural Areas Program had enough money to maintain the trails, run naturalist and education programs, operate the facilities and manage the natural resources on our 29,366 acres of open space… and then had an extra $5.7 million left over to buy up more land.
.
Here is what needs to be done.
First, place a moratorium on all new open space purchases.
Second, set aside enough money from the Natural Areas Program budget to cover the upkeep and maintenance on our existing 29,366 acres.
Finally, take the money that otherwise would have been used to purchase new land and use it to fund the operations and management of another type of “open space”, our neighborhood and community parks.
When you start to do the math, the numbers are eye-opening.
Using the 2007 Natural Areas Program numbers as a benchmark, that $5.7 million that we would have saved by not purchasing new open space would have been able to fund the entire 2009 operations and maintenance budget for our six community parks. That includes 504 acres, 15 softball/baseball diamonds, 15 basketball courts, 22 sports fields, 31 tennis courts, three skate parks, 15 restrooms, nine playgrounds, 19 shelters and two dog parks.
That’s not all. We’d still have enough money left over to fund the operations and maintenance for our 24 neighborhood parks. That includes 328 additional acres, 28 additional softball/baseball diamonds, 19 additional basketball courts, 32 additional sports fields, 18 additional tennis courts, two additional skate parks, 24 additional restrooms, 30 additional playgrounds and 26 additional shelters.
But wait, there’s more. With the money we’d save by simply not purchasing additional land, we could perform all of the maintenance (repairs, mowing, snow removal) on the Spring Creek Trail, the Poudre Trail, the Fossil Creek Trail, the Power Trail, the Rendezvous Trail, the Redwood Trail and the trail connectors to parks and neighborhoods.
We could do all of that by simply not purchasing any new open space. Not a single square inch of land that is currently open space would be touched. Not a single program would be cut from the Natural Areas budget. The trails and parking areas in our open space would continue to be maintained. The educational programs would continue.
We’d just stop purchasing new land.
Of course, the “Open Space Yes” program was passed by the voters at the ballot, so it would take another citizen initiative to modify it. But isn’t it time we started talking about this? Isn’t it time we started to face the realities of a program that’s growing faster than we can afford?
Isn’t it time someone stepped up to challenge the status quo in Fort Collins?
