Lake county to develop parks and trails master plan

LAKE COUNTY — The Lake County Parks Board is developing a countywide parks and trails plan and it’s looking to the community to help guide the development and maintenance of its parks and trails over the next several years. Do you want more and better trails? Lake or river access? How about playgrounds and playing fields? How should we fund parks and trails?

“What we’re trying to do is understand what the public’s priorities are for different types of facilities,” said Dave DeGrandpre, a consultant hired by the county commissioners to lead the effort. “What’s needed more: lake accesses, playing fields, trails, fishing access sites? What are the priorities that people have? It’s the first step in gathering public input.”

County employees are going around to the various sites and evaluating the properties to make recommendations based on a site’s location, access and amenities that it already has in place. Beyond that, the plan will recommend focus areas for future trail systems linking facilities to neighborhoods and parks.

“The county has lots of parcels of land and only a couple of them have been developed into parks,” DeGrandpre said. “One of the components of this project is to take an inventory into what Lake County has and decide lands that would be eligible for conversion to parks, and surplus land that may be eligible for sale.”

While there’s no specific agenda at this point, the goal is to come up with specific projects that can be implemented within the next 15 years. DeGrandpre hopes the first round of public input can be conducted within the next couple of weeks. By the time the end of May rolls around, he hopes to have all the information he needs to write a draft plan and be on track to share that draft plan with the public by September.

“It’s part vision, but we will also be more specific and pointed about projects too,” DeGrandpre said. “This has to be a cooperative effort. To build trails is a very expensive undertaking and there is limited funding to do it, so it is really going to take a collaborative effort to make a difference.”

To contribute to the effort by filling out a short online survey, visit http://www.lakecounty-mt.org/planning/parks.html or go to Lake County’s homepage and click on the parks and trails survey banner.