Meeting Minutes and News
June 16, 2003
Guest speaker:
Ron Benson Douglas County Parks and Trail Director
provided us with a very informative talk on the following topics:
- Many new and future trails are planned in Douglas
County. This includes the Front Range Trail that will stretch from Ft. Collins
to Trinidad. A nine mile section in Douglas County just had the grand
opening on 6/7/03 at Greenland Open Space. This crushed gravel trail
connects with the Front Range Trail at Palmer Lake that goes into Colorado
Springs.
- Douglas County is presently revising the park
trails and open space master plan and encouraged us to submit any opinions
that people have concerning cycling. There will be 4 open houses that we
can review and give cyclist’s feedback to the county, Ron
will forward the dates to our group. In the master plan 4-foot shoulders
on roads are advised. However, on some roads 4-foot shoulders are not
considered cost effective due to existing narrow bridges and private
property boundaries. In some of these instances the county may install
crushed gravel trails instead.
- Ron strongly encourages bike advocates to attend town
meetings, park and trail meetings and to write letters to commissioners to
promote bicycling in Douglas County.
Club
business:
- It was agreed that we have accomplished our goals
of developing an open and positive rapport with county engineers and
planners; developing and distributing our group’s fliers to bike shops and
some rec. centers in Douglas County; established email communications and
are learning about county programs.
- Our website is still in the works, but soon will
be up and running.
- Upcoming Town Meetings are June
19 at Mountain Vista High School, Highlands Ranch and June 26 at the
Jackson 105 Fire Station, Sedalia for the Sedalia-Castle Rock-Larkspur
area. Please attend if possible and bring friends. Please be sure to
sign in at these meetings and write ‘bicycling’ under comments. Also try
to stay a few minutes after the meeting to talk to the commissioners, engineers,
sheriff’s dept..
- Our club’s non-profit status should come through
in the next couple of weeks. At that time we will be able to open a
checking account.
- We gained several new members from the Elephant
Rock ride! Presently we have about 50 members – not bad.
- Larry and Shirley handed out
brochures at Parker Trail Day and indicated that they met several
interested individuals. Brochures were left at the Town Hall and Parker
employees and elected officials were very interested in our group.
- We have approximately $240.00 in dues paid.
Next meeting preliminary agenda:
- Update action plans.
- Gather recommended or favorite rides by members
that could be published on website
- Guest Speaker Larry Corcoran – Douglas
County Traffic Engineer.
- New location for our nest meeting is: Red Rocks
Credit Union, 200 W. Plaza Drive, Highlands Ranch on 7/21/03 at 7:00pm.