Editor,
My wife and I were invited by Bill Featherstone to be on the ad hoc downhill bike trail committee, an advisory committee to Parks and Recreation. In this invitation we were thanked for being objective and encouraged to offer feedback. Each email we received encouraged us to make comments “to ensure that the downhill project progresses in a responsible way that will allow the end result to be as good as it can be.”
That was before we went on our first Committee hike, before our first sit-down where our questions, feedback and recommendations were met with heated push-back, ultimately ignored. And before our second hike in “flagged” areas.
Why were we invited? Did they need some active “environmentalists” to give it a good spin for the community? What we discovered shocked us both. There was no plan. No map. Only a quickly assembled conceptual version. We watched people in charge try to backtrack and tell us there was a plan.
During the first hike many questions echoed in the woods, “Where is this trail going? What does this flag mean? Can you save that bluff?”
We heard the same answer each time: “We don’t know yet, that’s what you are here for.” I repeat, no one had the answers. Instead we heard, “There may be a ‘fly-over here;’ we may have to close Miner’s Rock Trail here,” etc. Several of us had the same question, “what is going on?”
We were tasked to hike the “flagged” routes and urged to make our “feelings” and recommendations for improvement known. One of my wife’s somewhat emotional reactions was when we saw how close the bulldozers were to gorgeous bluffs. Her suggestions to save the beautiful stone outcroppings were never heard. One new trail goes through them and no doubt visitors will proclaim it, “Amazing.”
It seems we have different attitudes about preserving our park.
It is clear there was no plan and no final map, yet the crews were busy carving trials: bulldozing into hillsides, shaping dramatic berms, building a mountain biker paradise, following the rugged “natural” terrain and working at break-neck speed. This project is being rushed through and supported with taxpayer funds because the trail builder was in town and we had to do it now. Really?
If the Lake Leatherwood project is the jewel in the crown that everyone says it is, surely we could have negotiated in a manner that allowed public input and proper notification.
Mike Shah