Hello,

This is my contribution to Citizen's Discussion at Tuesday's City Council meeting:

Good morning,

In the land swap, the city traded Strawberry Fields for the land owned by the Cog Railway which needed much TLC.

The city acquiring that land should have been a blessing. The city was in the process of acquiring millions of dollars in grants to do major repairs to the Manitou Incline. One would have expected that the city would treat the Barr Trail with the same respect. But the repairs on the Incline have been finished for several years and no meaningful work is being done on the Barr Trail.

During the public comment process, the city failed to inform the public that the city of Manitou Springs was spending $40,000 a year on the section of the Barr Trail that is on that land.

That would have been a red flag.

At the time of the public comment process, the annual $40,000 of repairs had been going on for three years. This means that the land that was appraised at $1.3 million had recently seen $120,000 in repairs.

The public would have asked exactly how many more years that land would have needed $40,000 spent on it.

Today we can assume that somewhere around $460,000 has been spent on that land since 2013.

That is about one-third of its appraised value and some experts in our trails community feel that the trail is still beyond repair.

Relevant financial information.

I am convinced that the alternate route down from the Incline is on hold because the city is not able to find a route for the trail that will pass a NEPA process.

I also expect that it will not be possible to find a reroute for the first two miles of the Barr Trail that will pass a NEPA process.

The steep terrain, soil type and other issues make new trails in that area undesirable to the Forest Service.

The public needs to understand these issues.

If a reroute of the Barr Trail is a “long term - if ever” type of project the city must do major work on the existing trail now.

The city chose to become the stewards of the first two miles of the Barr Trail.

The condition of that trail today is embarrassing.

I have demonstrated two problems here.

One is that the city failed to tell the public that the land we wanted to acquire from the Cog Railway needed at least hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of work.

The other is that the city is grossly negligent in its maintenance of the section of the Barr Trail that we now own.

Why did the city acquire millions of dollars to do repairs on the Manitou Incline and refuse to even have a drainage study done for the Barr Trail?

The public has a right to know about all of the issues that I have discussed today.

Thank you, Carl Strow