Please contact the City of Walnut Creek City Council and share your objections to this plan.  Letter below was sent to council members.  Please check out the PROS meeting from August 14th:  https://walnutcreek.granicus.com/player/clip/4813?view_id=12&redirect=true&h=ce3166edd590c32cfaba1c2a86a8ca30

Dear City Council Members,
I hope you will all take the opportunity to watch the PROS meeting from Monday night.  To say it was a travesty would be putting it mildly.  Community members came to the meeting to be able to discuss the proposed Flow trail in Lime Ridge and the change in use of the Timberleaf trail.  To date, the community has been completely disenfranchised from the process.  It is alarming that the city staff is pushing forward to build a Flow trail when there is very little community support and a whole lot of people are pushing back against it.  Over 1870 people have signed the petition against the development of Flow trails and single-track trails in Lime Ridge.

Monday night Mr. Vickers claimed that the PROS Commission and City Council approval is not needed to construct a Flow trail in Lime Ridge. He said that the committee recommendations were accepted, meaning the trails committee, and therefore no further actions by PROS or City council were required.  I would like to point out that the recommendations he is referring to specifically says " explore the possibility of a new multi-use flow trails in Lime Ridge".  This recommendation is to "explore", not build a Flow trail.  No community entity, no commission, and no council has approved the idea to build a Flow trail  So how is it possible that Mr. Vickers is moving forward with construction? The very recommendation was misleading in itself as a Flow trail is not a "multi-use trail" at all.  It is a narrow bike-specific trail. 

How does any one person on City staff have the unilateral authority to build a trail that would violate the Lime Ridge Master Plan and violate city municipal codes without any oversite whatsoever?  If in fact, our city has given unilateral authority to city staff to create policy and override city ordinances, perhaps that should be changed!  

To see Mr. Vickers stand up and talk for over 30 minutes sharing what amounts to his thoughts and opinions, information not verified by any experts, was disheartening.  Minimizing and ignoring the very real concerns of citizens was frustrating. 

 He and Corri chose to purposefully avoid addressing the clear fact that the damage that they have had to work to remedy and restore has all been caused by bikers. 
 He chose to not mention that the cattle grazing which has gone on for decades to reduce fire risk will stop if this Flow trail is built. 
 He provided no information about what other communities are doing, who else is building flow trails?  He avoided this because no other communities are building flow trails.  Other communities have said no to flow trails due to numerous issues ranging from environmental concerns to liability issues.  
He provided no reference for what the increase in bikers might be if this Flow trail is built, and no estimate of how this would impact Lime Ridge.
He chose to keep all contact with the community limited to noninteractive PROS meetings, he refused to meet with the community in any interactive setting.
He chose to not address the liability issues this trail would create.
He chose to not address the Timberleaf trail access point and the change of use which was done without proper notice to the community.
He provided no details on the funding of the flow trail construction and indicated that it would be built by "volunteers"? This too is deeply concerning.

In each PROS meeting Mr. Vickers has spoken, unchallenged.  Each community member has been limited to 2 minutes to raise concerns or questions.  Mr. Vickers refuses to answer the community's real concerns. How does this allow any real public input?  How is this inclusive?

Is this really the way our city works?  Where staff members have unilateral authority over our City-owned lands?  This does not seem like the way a city that places its citizens at the top of its organizational chart should work.  Why if everything is above board and this is in the best interest of our community and the Open Space has city staff resisted bringing this conversation out in the open? 

Why is it the city staff's position to be adversarial?  Our community has asked for a seat at the table and has asked to be included in the conversation, and each time we are rebuffed.  We have asked for meetings with city staff, PROS commissioners, and city council members, and at Mr. Vickers's behest, those requests have been denied.  This again does not feel like a city that cares about the interests of the community. (This is documented in emails)

At the meeting, the WCOSF and the equestrian organizations withdrew their support for the trails committee recommendations.  This should give you pause.  The very people Mr. Vickers has touted as supporting his trails report have come out publically against his plan.  

Mr. Vickers now stands alone with only the mountain biking lobby supporting him.  A group that represents only a fraction of the citizens of Walnut Creek.  In fact, the bulk of bikers that spoke at the meeting do not even live in our city.  The majority that wrote in do not live in our city.  Therefore if this is such a significant issue for local bikers, where were they?

Many of the bikers that spoke or called in spoke about bike clubs, bike camps, and needing a place to train.  They spoke of large groups coming to our hills to ride this new "flow trail", a mountain biking attraction.  This would clearly significantly increase the number of bikers on our hills, yet Mr. Vickers does not address that.  People coming from far and wide to ride on our hills and as stated in the meeting those riders will not stay on the Flow trail, they will go off trail and ride elsewhere thus causing more issues throughout Lime Ridge. Why would anyone in our city want that? Why would we further endanger our Open Spaces?

More concerning is that Mr. Vickers is not addressing enforcement in our Open Spaces. To be clear there is no enforcement now!  The number one issue coming out of the trials committee was the need for enforcement in our Open Spaces.  Renegade mountain biking has led to the destruction of habitats, the creation of illegal trails, and significant user conflict.  Other user groups are being driven out due to the safety concerns of being run down by bikers on trails where they are prohibited.  Equestrians are especially impacted by their horses being frightened by bikers on trails where they are not authorized.  So rather than address the lack of enforcement, Mr. Vickers is choosing to exacerbate the issue by attracting even more bikers to our hills.  

What about all the other user groups?  Where are their needs being addressed in Mr. Vickers's proposal?  To be clear they are not.  He is not only looking to build a flow trail, but he is also planning to change single-track hiking trails to multi-use trails which are approved for bikes.  He is apparently planning to do this, as well as make some "social trails" (meaning illegally cut trails) approved/legal without any environmental oversite whatsoever.   All of these changes should require a full CEQA process.  Mr. Vickers's observational "trail evaluations" form does not meet the standard for determining environmental impact.  And where are the interests of the majority of users hikers/walkers being considered in all of this?  The answer is they are not, only the mountain biker's interests are being considered.

I ask that the city council intervene in this process immediately.  This entire project needs to go back to square one.  This process needs to be conducted in full view of the public, with input from the community and all stakeholders.  Special interest groups have no place in decisions that impact our entire community,  This process should be stopped because it is not right.  It should not require further escalation in order to do the right thing.  I hope the city council will take their responsibility seriously as stewards of the Open Space.  It is up to our city leaders to protect our Open Spaces and protect our citizens.  It is the job of the city council to represent the interests of the citizens of Walnut Creek and to stand up against special interest groups.  With that in mind, I ask you to stop this travesty today.

I have also attached, for your review, the story of our Open Space as a reminder of the history of how the citizens of Walnut Creek fought for the protection of our Open Spaces.  My fervent hope is that another fight is not needed in order for our city to do the right thing and Protect our Open Spaces.