To: Board of County Commissioners
Through: Shannon Carter, Director, Open Spaces
Prepared By:
prepared
Michele Frishman, Grants and Acquisitions Manager, Open Spaces
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presenter
Presenter: Michele Frishman, Grants and Acquisitions Manager, Open Spaces
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Subject:
title
2:00 PM *Pilot Grant Program for High Line Canal Projects
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Purpose and Request:
recommended action
Open Spaces staff will request BOCC approval to allocate $1 million from the Open Spaces Grants Fund for a pilot grant program in 2024 to support stewardship projects along the High Line Canal corridor.
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Background and Discussion: The County is working with Denver Water, the High Line Canal Conservancy, and the other counties in which the High Line Canal is located to take ownership of portions of the 71-mile canal corridor in early 2024. The timing of this acquisition will coincide with our regular open space grant cycle, for which staff has determined that projects on County-owned portions of the property will no longer be eligible. Therefore, staff would like to offer a separate, pilot grant program to eligible grantees beginning in 2024 that would fund High Line Canal improvement projects.
The parties involved in the canal acquisition, as well as the municipalities and recreation districts that care for the canal property, recognize the need to improve the condition of the canal in the coming years. Therefore, staff recommends focusing the 2024 pilot grant program on stewardship and environmental restoration work. This may include tree pruning, hazard tree and invasive species removals, tree and shrub planting, seeding for native plants and wildflowers, and trail resurfacing and replacement projects. Similar to regular open space grants, these pilot grants would not support maintenance work.
Staff would develop a new, streamlined grant application for these grants. Furthermore, because this would be a new opportunity that our grantees could not have anticipated ...
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