Exciting news! Erie, BoCo and Lafayette move forward on open space acquisition

All of your hard work is making a huge difference! In the last week, there has been major movement toward a joint purchase of the land at 119^th and Baseline for open space.

Here’s what’s happening, along with another opportunity to tell the Lafayette City Council what you think.

What Erie and Boulder County are doing. At the Aug. 26 Erie Town Council meeting, there was an agenda item titled “119th & Baseline Land Acquisition—Coordination with Lafayette and Boulder County.” (You can watch the discussion here, starting at 3:44.)

Erie Mayor Andrew Moore, who released a statement two months ago pledging his support for purchasing this land as open space, kicked off the discussion with another strong show of support.

“I really do look at this as a 100-year opportunity, and if we miss it, with a gas station going on that corner, we’ve missed it forever,” he says.

Moore said Boulder County staff had told him Erie staff wasn’t on board with an acquisition of the land at 119^thand Baseline for open space, and asked the Erie staff members at the meeting if this was true.

“We’ve told them that if there’s a joint acquisition, we would like to participate in that,” Town Manager Malcolm Fleming said.

Erie Director of Parks & Recreation Luke Bolinger said during the week of Aug. 17, he talked with both Boulder County and Lafayette staff about working together to buy the land as open space.

“Boulder County staff and city of Lafayette staff are all on the same page that if this is something that our collective councils and commission want us to pursue, we’re happy to really start pushing that,” he said.

Mayor Moore responded: “I, and if the council doesn’t disagree, at least want you to pursue this to the point of: ‘Is it feasible?’” Later in the discussion, council members said they support this.

Bolinger said Erie’s Open Space & Trails Advisory Board and the Lafayette Open Space Advisory Board are scheduled to have a joint meeting in October, “where they will likely discuss this acquisition.”

He also said that Boulder County, which has an open space team, could lead an acquisition initiative, but because Lafayette is in the pre-annexation process for the land, “the initial ‘we want to make this a joint acquisition’ would come from Lafayette.” 

Which leads us to …

What Lafayette is doing. The Sept. 2 Lafayette City Council agenda contains the following item:

“Adjourn to Executive Session

N. Pursuant to subsection (4)(b) of Colorado Revised Statutes section 24-6-402 for the purpose of conferring with the City Attorney to receive legal advice on specific legal questions concerning statutory annexation procedures, the City’s obligations under pre-annexation and annexation agreements, and due process requirements for related quasi-judicial proceedings involving pending annexation applications.”

While this doesn’t refer specifically to the land at 119^th and Baseline, Lafayette currently only has two pending pre-annexation or annexation agreements: for this parcel and for the Tebo/Kensington parcel at Arapahoe and 287. Considering the timing, we think it’s likely this executive session deals with the 119^th and Baseline parcel.

What you can do. Colorado law allows executive sessions for discussion of legal matters. While executive sessions aren’t open to the public, that doesn’t mean council can’t hear from the public about the topic being discussed. In fact, the more information councilors have from the public, the more discussion items they can raise during the executive session.

So email, call or text your councilors about your support for initiating the process to acquire the land at 119^th and Baseline as open space. (Especially the two councilors running for election in November—Saul Tapia Vega and Crystal Gallegos.) Comments received before 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2, will be included in the agenda packet for that night’s meeting.

You can also let the Erie Town Council and Boulder County Board of County Commissioners know you support their work to preserve this land as open space. It will take all of us pulling together to achieve our vision!

And if you haven’t already, please sign our petition and make a comment. We plan to send the latest list of signatures to the council on Tuesday so they know how much support there is for our communities to work together to acquire this land as open space. We’re currently at more than 1,100 signatures!

Thank you, as always, for your commitment to preserving Lafayette’s eastern gateway as open space. Your voice really does matter!

The Preserve Lafayette team