{"id":1314,"date":"2017-11-29T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2017-11-29T16:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bouldercountyopenspace.org\/i\/?p=1314"},"modified":"2017-11-29T09:00:24","modified_gmt":"2017-11-29T16:00:24","slug":"open-space-element","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bouldercountyopenspace.org\/i\/news\/open-space-element\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Space Element – Renewed and Redesigned"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Boulder County Comprehensive Plan (BCCP) lays out plans to achieve the vision for the county\u2019s physical form: channel growth to municipalities, protect agricultural lands, and give high priority to preserving our environmental and natural resources in land use decisions. To flesh out this vision, goals and policies are set forth in the Comprehensive Plan Elements. In addition to the Open Space Element (OSE), the other elements that directly affect open space management are: Agriculture, Environmental Resources, Cultural Resources, and the Trails Plan.<\/p>\n

When the Comprehensive Plan was adopted in 1978, the county\u2019s Open Space Department was just three years old and the county\u2019s first successful open space tax was still 15 years off. The concept of publicly-owned and managed open space was fairly new, so naturally, the OSE had a heavy emphasis on acquisition methods and tools as well as the other programs in the department at that time. There was an update in 1996, but much has changed in the county and the open space program in the last 20 years.<\/p>\n

Update with Goals in Mind<\/h2>\n

A team of staff from the Parks and Open Space and Land Use Departments began working on the OSE Update in 2015. Consistent with the goals of other recent BCCP element updates, the staff goals for the OSE update were to:<\/p>\n