Two Directors, Two Eras: Stewards of the Land Reflect on Leadership, Legacy, and Care for Our Shared Landscape Transcript


[Tina Nielsen]: Situated at the junction of the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains, Boulder County is endowed with exceptional biodiversity. While the western part of the county is much of it under the federal and state public agencies, the lands along the front range of the foothills and between the communities and ag lands is preserved to a great extent by our local open space agencies. As a result, we are blessed with so many ways to enjoy nature through hiking and biking, fishing, birding, picnicking. Our open spaces provide trails and other amazing amenities for world-class recreation. You know, it's easy to take all of this for granted. 

Have you ever wondered how we got here today? We are lucky today to have two distinguished guests and longtime public servants, Ron Stewart, former Parks and Open Space director, and Therese Glowacki. We're going to talk with both of them about two different eras of our program over the last 50 years. 

My name is Tina Nielsen. I'm your host today. And welcome to both of you, Ron and Therese.

[Ron Stewart and Therese Glowacki]: Thank you. Thank you, Tina.

[Tina]: So, Ron, let's start with you. It's fitting to have you here today with us as we've been celebrating our 50th anniversary this year, 2025. Our program was officially started on January 1st of 1975. You are a local. You grew up in Longmont and you have quite a history with the county and the open space program. You served on the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee, we call it POSAC, way back starting in 1976, I think, right after we became a department. Can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved and what brought you where you were with the county?

[Ron]: Well, I think I was always interested in politics and public issues from the time I was a teenager. I would hate to say it was any sooner than that. Local issues interested me as well as national ones. I grew up at a time when John Kennedy was president, and he asked us to think about what we could do for our country. And I guess to some extent, my interest in politics and in local government came from that. So I felt like I've had the opportunity to be involved in something I love, which is public policy. And a lot of that has been in the environmental open space area.

[Tina]: I know you went to CU, and I think you graduated with a degree in political science. Then you got involved pretty quickly with public office. When did you decide to run for office?

[Ron]: I don't think you decide to run for public office as much as you wait for an opportunity to run for public office because there has to be a vacant seat before you can run. The first vacant seat that was there after my involvement with the Democratic Party and others was the Colorado State Senate, which I ran for in 1976 and again in 1980.

[Tina]: Wow. And so you mentioned the Boulder County Democratic Party. I think you were the youngest chairman ever of Boulder Dems at the age of 22. Is that

[Ron]: Right? It was 21. It was 21. And yeah, I think I was the youngest at the time. There may have been others who were that age now, but I was at that time the youngest.

[Tina]: So you were elected to the state legislature and at the same time you were also on the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee. Tell us a little bit about those early years on POSAC, the advisory committee. The

[Ron]: Early years of POSAC I thought were fascinating because open space really didn't have much of a staff. I think there were one or two people on county staff who worked on open space. And so the people who were on post-hack really had to carry the water for the program. And if there were things that needed to be done, it wasn't like you could say, well, Therese as director, or well, Ron as director, could you look into this? You really had to do it yourself. And you had to be motivated to get the word out to the public, not all of the public knowing what open space was all about. So Those early years really were very much a hands-on, put-your-shoulder-to-the-wheel kind of time for POSAC.

[Tina]: Can you just tell us a little bit about where the whole idea of open space came from anyway? I mean, how did that get on the map?

[Ron]: Well, I think it came from several places. The city of Boulder had an open space program before the county's program was developed. Jefferson County had been the first county in Colorado to create an open space program. But I think it also came from an interest on the part of citizens throughout Boulder County to not grow and develop like many counties had grown and developed, to not have the kind of sprawl that we see all around us, really, to have something different, something that was uniquely Boulder County kind of thing. And open space was a part of that.

[Tina]: Back in those days, communities hadn't run together yet in Boulder County. 

[Ron]: They Hadn't. There was lots of open land, and actually that was one of the issues for the early open space program was that people would say, well, why do we need open space? We have all of this open land. Why would we need to have open space? But there's a big difference between open land that isn't protected perpetually and open space that is protected.

[Tina]: Something happened in there somewhere. People started understanding that protecting the land was important. And I know the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan was also being created around the same time, mid to late 70s. Can you tell us a little bit about the role of the comp plan?

[Ron]: The big year was 1978. It's the year the comp plan was adopted in the county. I think actually it's the single most important enactment that was made by the county in its history. And what it did was to outline that kind of different vision for Boulder County, where cities wouldn't grow together, where urban development would occur in and around cities, there would be an effort made to try to preserve rural Boulder County. So there were many people who were very excited about that idea. I mean, they thought we were kind of on the cutting edge of what land use planning could be. No one in Colorado had done anything like this. I don't think really many people nationally had done anything like this. So there was a lot of enthusiasm about the idea, but there was a lot of angst about the idea on the part of landowners, some cities, people who weren't as in favor of public ownership of land.

[Tina]: And the comp plan has outlines of philosophy of development, which says that growth should be channeled to the municipalities and that the ag lands between cities should be protected as ag lands and that environmental and natural resource values should be a high priority in making land use decisions. And so all those things became institutionalized in terms of our land use regulations and so on, because the comp plan itself is a policy, not a regulation, right?

[Ron]: It's a vision statement, really, more than anything. And that vision statement included an open space element, which POSAC helped develop. And it talked about what open space was. Open space wasn't to be an active recreation field like a soccer field or a baseball field. It wasn't supposed to be a lot of things that maybe some people might have liked. It was supposed to be just land intentionally left free from development. That's the definition of open space. It's a very different kind of open space than some communities might have chosen.
[Tina]: And so was this vision contentious?

[Ron]: It was very contentious. 1978 was not a year of great harmony in Boulder County because the comp plan had been adopted. There was a lot of concern on the part of rural landowners. There was a lot of concern on the part of people who just didn't know exactly what was going on. So it was a very contentious matter, the comp plan itself, as well as the idea of open space.

[Tina]: The POSAC members, the advisory committee members, were actively engaging with community members to explain the vision and get people on board with it.

[Ron]: Yes, there were some great people on POSAC to be advocates for that.

[Tina]: Right. I think some of the people that were on it included Ruth Wright. And Joanne Dufty, Carolyn Holmberg, Dickie Lee, Hollinghorst, Ann U. White. Of course, Ann U. White and her husband Gilbert, famous geographer at CU, donated one of the last remaining undeveloped riparian areas in Boulder County, and it's now a beloved open space area.

[Ron]: With a very nice trail in it. Yeah,

[Tina]: Very nice. Ruth and Ken Wright were active in many endeavors and ways. I think they were one of the first people who donated to the Open Space Fund before there was ever a tax. Joanne Dufty went on to be our first regional trails planner. So, yeah, you served with some luminaries. Dickie Lee Hollinghorst also went on to a very distinguished career, both with the county and then as an elected official. 

Correct. Yeah. Yeah. So we have a vision, and now we're trying to figure out how to implement it. We talked about the comp plan and that the land use processes were a very important part of that implementation. But we also wanted to start acquiring land. And so tell us a little bit about the very arduous journey we had to get to a point where we had a funding source of our own tax.

[Ron]: Right, because whenever the comp plan was adopted, there really wasn't any money for open space to be buying open space other than money that might have come through the Colorado lottery. But that was a very minor amount of money. So anything that was done at the beginning had to be done very creatively and also using regulation as well as acquisition opportunities. There were things like cluster development that were allowed in the county that allowed a slightly greater density on lands if a conservation easement was granted on most of the land to keep that land forever undeveloped. There were other land use processes that were used to try to keep land open and available, but there really wasn't much at the beginning, and there wasn't much for quite a while until 1993, as you'll get into later.

[Tina]: I heard this term, rolling options, that we use rolling options in the early days. Can you explain what that is?

[Ron]: Yeah. The county, right after 1978, then started adoption of the comprehensive plan, started buying open space. And there were places like Walker Ranch and Rock Creek Farm, large parcels. They were too expensive to be purchased in any given year by a county. So what the county would do would be to agree with the landowner that the land would be purchased over the course of maybe four or five six seven years so you'd pay for one seventh of the property one year and the next seventh the next year so that's what a rolling option really is it's the the ability to buy an entire parcel but on a schedule of payment that doesn't make you pay for all of it right up front And that was used with Walker. It was used with Betasso Preserve. It was used with Rock Creek Farms. And the early purchases probably wouldn't have been made if it weren't for those kind of mechanisms.

[Tina]: We had to get really creative since we didn't have a dedicated funding source. So tell us a little bit about the efforts that we went through to get that dedicated funding source, because I think it took us three tries before we finally succeeded.

[Ron]: Yeah, it's a long story. From the first attempt to get sales tax passed, which was unsuccessful, to the third, which was successful, there was an intervening 15 years, which is really a long time. So it 1978 the first time the issue went on the ballot there was a lot of that kind of sentiment in the county that well we have a lot of open land why do we need open space why do we need to tax ourselves to buy open space and there were farmers there were anti-tax people there were people who just didn't believe as much in government ownership of land all of whom were opposed to it and it ended up garnering maybe 41 or 42 percent of the vote but not enough to be a majority So that time it failed, and then there was another try in 1988. That time it got much closer, about, I think, 47% voters in the county voted for it, but it still failed. So it wasn't until 1993 we were actually able to pass a tax.

[Tina]: There was a lot of debate about what the appropriate role of government would be in land conservation in those intervening years. And, of course, I imagine that the City of Boulder residents were supportive, but some of the other parts of the county hadn't seen the value of

[Ron]: That. In all of the elections, support for the issue would have been greater in the City of Boulder than it was in the rest of the county. But in the first two elections, particularly the first election, it was decidedly supported. Different in the eastern part of the county. Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville, Superior, Erie, all of those places were very skeptical of the idea of open space. Boulder always being supportive.

[Tina]: And so what happened that changed people's minds? Well,

[Ron]: I think a big thing that happened was that development started happening very quickly. And decade between 1970 and 1980, we had very rapid growth all across the county. We had particularly along the turnpike as you go from Boulder to Broomfield, there was development popping up all over the place. And so it was kind of right in front of people's faces that something different was happening and something needed to be done or we were going to lose really our opportunity to do what needed to be done. So by 1993, that sentiment had expanded. People were finding that just because land was open, it wasn't open space. We were able to pass the tax.

[Tina]: In the meantime, you were elected as a county commissioner in Boulder County in 1984. So what were the politics of the Board of County Commissioners?

[Ron]: Open space was a big issue in the politics of the county in all of those years. You wouldn't get by running for county commissioner without spending a lot of time focusing on whether you were either for or against open space and why. We had the very good fortune, I think, throughout that time, basically electing people as county commissioner who were in favor of open space, or at least who weren't willing to go out and say that they were opposed to it because they knew there was a growing sentiment within the county for it. There were a lot of people in the county who really looked at county commissioner races based on that open space issue. So, and as I said, we've had the really good fortune of having boards of county commissioners all along who supported open space. Which is the only reason why boards of commissioners voted to buy things like Rock Creek Farm and Walker Ranch and Betasso, the early purchases. If the commissioners hadn't been supportive, none of that would have happened.

[Tina]: I'm curious because we're talking about two eras with two different directors here. Do you think that the climate then is different politically from the climate we have today?

[Ron]: Totally. I think that open space isn't a contentious issue now. I mean, you look at the percentages that the county open space tax extensions received the last two times in the 70% in favor margin. That's kind of unheard of these days, given the state of politics in America today. To have something be that one-sided. So I don't think it's really contentious anymore, the idea of open space or managing it and being a good steward of it and buying more of it. I don't think that's contentious. It certainly was for the first 15 or 20 years of the program.

[Tina]: You've talked about some of our foothills property acquisitions, Betasso and Walker in particular, and Rock Creek Farm you mentioned. I think that was our first agricultural property. Is it usual for a local open space program to focus on agriculture?

[Ron]: Yeah. No. A lot of the open space programs in the state don't focus on that. They focus more on maybe mountain properties or properties that have trail connection kind of possibilities. But the comp plan was always so strong about protecting agriculture, not only protecting the land but protecting the agricultural way of life in Boulder County. Our program is far different than many others. And the other thing that buying agricultural lands accomplishes is that it helps create buffers between communities. It isn't just that it's agricultural land, it's also that it's an urban shaping buffer, helping to decide where one community stops, rural lands begin, and then before you have another community.

[Tina]: How hard was it to build trust in the farming community to convince them to kind of get on board with this vision?

[Ron]: I think at the beginning, it was pretty hard, not easy at all. I think we can thank a few farm families in Boulder County who were instrumental in helping us change that sentiment. One of them being the Stromquist Henry families who are south of Longmont. The Stromquist sold the county one of the first conservation easements that we purchased. Conservation easement really means that you have taken away from the owner of the land the ability to develop the land. So you have ensured that it is going to be preserved into the future. So the Stromquist family did that. The Van Tine family, who are down on 287 between Long Island and Lafayette, were another one of the families. And as a few farm families started getting on board that way, then it was much easier for others to think, oh, well, maybe this isn't a bad idea. Maybe this is really the way that we can preserve agriculture as a part of Boulder County's culture for years to come.

[Tina]: It's appropriate to mention Carolyn Holmberg at this point. And when I first started working with the county, I was hired to be her assistant. And I know that one of her many legacies is her ability to create those trusting relationships with the farming community, right?

[Ron]: Carolyn was a superstar in that regard. She was a very gracious person. She and her brother own a farm in Missouri, which is where she was born. And so I think she had a lot of appreciation for people who were in the agricultural business and also who owned agricultural land. So she was kind of able to speak their own language. I think they really trusted her and were willing to do things they might not have done otherwise because they did trust her. They felt like her word was her bond, so...

[Tina]: Yeah, well, she was an amazing person. And I know when she passed away in an untimely way, one of the things we did to honor her was to rededicate Rock Creek Farm as the Carolyn Holmberg Preserve, which is very fitting since it was our first agricultural property. So now we're arriving to 1993. And finally, on the third try, our open space tax passed. County residents voted in favor of the countywide sales tax. So that really kicked off a new era of acquisition. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[Ron]: Not only did the tax pass, but we had put on the ballot that year offering bonds or selling bonds that would use the revenue from the open space tax as repayment. And so I believe it was like $35 million or something like that in bonds that could be issued. And we quickly proceeded to issue the bonds, although we couldn't do it as quickly as we had hoped because Colorado had passed a constitutional amendment called the Taxpayers Bill of Rights. Tabor, the Bruce Amendment, and there were some who argued that Boulder County and others who may have gone to the ballot and both asked for a tax and asked for bond issue at the same time, that that was inappropriate, that it should have been two separate ballot issues rather than one. We might have had the ability to have $35 million, but we couldn't get the money until the courts ruled on whether or not the way we did it was appropriate. They ultimately did that, and we were able to spend that money. We spent it as quickly as we could, and we went back to the voters as often after that as we needed to go. When we would deplete our resources, we'd go back and ask for more. That was always successful.

[Tina]: I want to pause for a minute about that lawsuit because I think there's an interesting story there. We had our eyes on some really iconic properties along the North Foothills open space, the Hall Ranch and the Heil Valley Ranch, which are very beloved parks now, but they were privately owned ranches back in those days. So what happened when we couldn't get those deals going?

[Ron]: Well, and both of those ranches were priorities, partly because of where they were and what the biodiversity they had, but also because they were enormous. The Heil Holding was 5,000 acres. Hall Ranch was 3,200 acres. These were big parcels. And it wasn't as if the Heils or the Halls were going to sit around and wait because they had other people knocking at their door as well. In the case of Heil, it's very interesting because the contract to purchase Heil wasn't actually made with the county itself. There was a private individual who his name was Greg Hemming. He had a contract to purchase Heil, and his intention was to do a transferable development rights thing where he would have taken the density that would have been allowed on Heil, which was about 150 homes, and moved it somewhere adjacent to the city of Boulder. Well, that idea didn't fly with the city of Boulder, so he was sitting there with a contract to purchase something that he didn't have an appropriate use for. So he came to the county, said that he was willing to assign his contract to buy Heil. We were very interested, but we didn't have the money because of the lawsuit I mentioned before. So what ultimately was done was that the Nature Conservancy came in and he had also done his own kind of rolling option on Heil, where he only had to buy part of it the first year and the rest of it later. And the Nature Conservancy agreed to step in and do that first year payment with the idea that we would repay them when the lawsuit was settled. And that's exactly what happens. The Halls, on the other hand, were engaged in negotiation with several entities, including the Sisters of Walburga, who used to be on South Boulder Road. And they were looking for a new home, a convent. The Hall Ranch might have been a possibility for them. Ultimately, we were able to reach agreement with the halls, and in that case, the Trust for Public Land put up the initial money, which was then paid back by the county once the lawsuit was settled.

[Tina]: So we got that over 8,000 acres of land, and we spent almost half of that initial bond to do that. I think when I look back at the acquisition files, I know about $16 million.

[Ron]: It was a lot of, a big portion of the early money went to those two.

[Tina]: But what a fantastic deal for the residents of our county. And

[Ron]: I've thought since then how extraordinary the timing was because if it had been 1995 that the election had passed, probably both of those ranches would have been sold for development. So it was really extraordinary timing.

[Tina]: I'm sure you have many stories and memories about some of those early acquisitions. Do you have one or two more that you want to share with our audience today?

[Ron]: As I've looked at the various acquisitions that have been made over the years, and there are more than 1,000, I don't know how many now, 1,500, 2,000, whatever. I felt like at the beginning we were really faced with an awful lot of what I would call conservation-minded sellers, people who really did not at all want their land to become anything other than open land for the future. Hal Hall, who was the father of the three Hall children who sold Hall Ranch to us, told his children that he was totally in favor of doing something with open space, that he didn't assemble all of that land to just have a bunch of houses on it. And there were a lot of farmers, ranchers around Boulder County who had that kind of conservation ethic. Ernie Batasso certainly would be one of those. And I know one of your earlier podcasts, you talked a lot about that. Today, we have the Batasso Preserve because of his interest in preserving his land. 

Shorty Lohr. A farmer who lived north of Longmont on Highway 66 and where Agricultural Heritage Center is now was another one of those conservation-oriented buyers. And what he did, insisted on negotiating a fair price, but then he put about a fourth of that fair price into an account to build, to be used for a center that would serve the young people of the Sanford Valley, which the Agricultural Heritage Center does, as well as serving a lot of other people.

[Tina]: The money he put aside, the county ultimately used that to develop the Agricultural Heritage Center, which is today a beloved museum on our

[Ron]: Properties. And then there was also a woman whose name was Dorothy Trevartin. She owned a property up by Allen's Park that we have a conservation easement on, and it's not a property that a lot of people have been to, but it's also a very large property, I think 1,500 acres or so. And for many years, it was a dairy, and it had a beautiful barn on it. But, of course, over the years, beautiful barns that were built built at the end of the 1800s have a lot of neglect and need something done to them. And when she was paid her first payment by the county on a rolling option for the conservation easement, she used the money to restore the barn. She didn't use the money of her personal purposes. She wanted to restore that barn. So that's the kind of cellar that I would consider to be in that conservation-oriented cellar category. 

We also had a lot of sellers who I would call were estate planning sellers. They were people who owned particularly agricultural land or other kinds of land. They may have had three or four kids. We're thinking about, well, how am I going to divide this asset between them and my estate? It's so much easier to divide money than it is to divide acres of land.

[Tina]: Well, and particularly if nobody wants to continue the farming.

[Ron]: The farming, that's right. So we had a lot of people who I think were drawn to the open space program because of that. And there were, frankly, a lot of widows of farmers who, many of whom had moved to town, you know, had no heirs who wanted to continue farming. So they also sold. And then we also had some that were in what I would call the I'm never selling to open space category, who one day in the office, you'd have a phone call. Receptionists downstairs would say, we have someone down here who would like to talk to you about a land sale. And it would be one of those I'm never selling to open space kind of people. 

One of the things that also during the years helped enormously as we moved into a more mature phase of the acquisition program, one of the things that really helped was that most cities in Boulder County, almost all the cities in Boulder County, developed open space programs of their own. And they wanted the county to be a partner in helping them achieve their open space goals. So with all of the communities in Boulder County, we developed what are called intergovernmental agreements, laid out a map of where development would occur within a city, as well as the areas where development would not occur and the land would remain undeveloped. Those intergovernmental agreements I think were of great assistance to our program in terms of helping us set priorities later on in the program for what we'd like to purchase, as well as being sure that what we wanted to purchase was something that others agreed should be purchased.

[Tina]: I do remember a day when there would be annexation wars, and so the governmental agreements, the IGAs kind of helped put that to bed, right? Because one potential developer couldn't play one community off against the other while the IGA was in place. That's correct. That gets us through to a point in time where, Therese, you were getting involved. So I'd like to turn to you now and just hear a little bit about how you got your start and what brought you to Boulder County, because unlike Ron, you did not grow up here. So tell us just a little bit about how you got here and your interest in the environment and land conservation.

[Therese]: Well, like so many Coloradans, I was not born here. I grew up in Iowa and went on summer vacations to state parks and hiked and had all kinds of fun out in the outdoors. And so when I went to college, I started studying biology. And one of the topics that I had to do research on was the Endangered Species Act. And it was shocking. It was like, wow, we're going to be losing species on this planet because of things that we're doing. So that really sparked my interest in conservation. And then I, too, just like Ron talked about being inspired by John F. Kennedy. Well, John F. Kennedy started the Peace Corps back in 1961. When I was finished with college, I joined the Peace Corps and I went over to Senegal, West Africa, and I worked on a program called Peace. Agroforestry. And that was working with small communities trying to combat desertification by planting trees and preserving habitat. So that really gave me my hands-on experience. And then I got a forestry degree and went back and worked with Peace Corps again in Madagascar. And in that program, we had wildlife biologists and we were starting a new park program in Madagascar. I worked with environmental educators and I worked with foresters. And after I finished that work, I came back to Boulder County. We moved here actually for my husband's job. I had small children at the time. And I said, okay, time for me to start looking for another job. And I look at the newspaper and there is a job that says wildlife protection, restoration, environmental education for Boulder County. And I said, oh my gosh, that's my dream job. So I applied for the job and I got it and started my career with Boulder County Parks and Open Space.

[Tina]: What year was that? Around 1999. Okay. So we had been through the 90s and we had been engaged in buy, buy, buy. And we were starting to get into our build, build, build, you know, building out the infrastructure and the amenities on these wonderful properties. That we ended up with. So, Therese, your first job was as resource division manager, and you worked with a lot of those people who did the stewardship work. And so stewardship became a really big focus of our department. I know there's one story in particular that I'm reminded of because you had this great idea to look into building a biomass facility. Can you tell us about that?

[Therese]: Well, like you said, as the division manager for resource management, I like to say I supervise the ologist. So we had the plant ecologist, the wildlife biologist, the foresters. In the forestry world, we were thinning forest for forest health and burning the wood in slash piles out in the middle of Heil Valley Ranch. And I went to a small meeting with the U.S. Forest Service and a couple of other partner agencies up in Nederland. Little tiny town outside of Boulder. And they talked about using this wood, using this, what they called it, waste wood for heating buildings. And the technology had been used in Vermont and New Hampshire. We were just at the point of where we were going to build a new open space and transportation complex. We had just bought the land outside of Longmont to house all of our open space staff. I asked the facility staff, hey, can you go back and take a look in Vermont and see if this could really work here? And they came back after visiting those biomass heating plants, including in places like Mount Pillier, Vermont, where it heats the whole downtown. And they said, this isn't rocket science. We can do it in the building. So we established a heating system that has now been operating for 20 years. And what it does is our foresters go out. They thin the forest for forest health. They take the wood. They bring it down to our site, we chip it up, and then it goes into a heating system much like wood stove you would have in your house. And the wood stove heats the hot water and it circulates around a complex of five buildings, almost 100,000 square feet of land. Was supposed to pay itself off in 20 years. And I think we passed that 20 year mark and we are still burning biomass today. So a wonderful use of something that was really going up in smoke.

[Tina]: And it was waste wood because it didn't really have economic value in terms of making products out of it. It was not the right size or the right hardness and so on.

[Therese]: And there isn't a forest industry here in Colorado. You find the forest industries in Oregon or in the southeast, but there's no sawmills. And it is, like you said, small waste wood. So it's a great way. And after we established ours here, a few other entities said that is a great idea because they were also doing forest. The state, the CSU Extension Office up in Fort Collins established one. And at a national level, the National Renewable Energy Lab down in Golden. Also established a biomass heating and then we eventually expanded here in Boulder County and our jail is also heated with biomass.

[Tina]: At the local government level it's just great that you can have an idea and you can see it come to fruition and get implemented. I love that story. Ron talked about the pivotal role of the comprehensive plan in setting the vision and the priorities and We have a couple of recent examples of acquisitions that were actually identified within that 1978 plan and the map that went with it. You want to talk a little bit about those examples?

[Therese]: Yeah, and I do have to say that the vision that you and the original POZAC members had and the early comprehensive plan, it really did identify areas that might be important biologically with high biodiversity or important because they stand out on the landscape. And one of those is Haystack Mountain. It has been on our list for longer than I've been here. What happened is the golf course closed and the golf course was at the base of Haystack and the flat area was sold for development. And the mountain, the peak that we all see as we drive around Boulder County, was up for sale. And our very talented acquisition staff were talking to the landowner and made offers. As is often the case, they thought the land was worth a lot more than we were willing to pay. And in this case, they were asking for double the price that what we thought it was worth. So we waited and waited and couldn't come together on an agreement. And the next thing we know, they said, well, we are ready to sell this property. And so we're putting it up for auction. So we scrambled to figure out how do we buy open space in an auction. Then come to find out it's not an auction down the block. It is an auction happening online. In Hong Kong and we had to gather together as a few staff sitting in our office at seven o'clock at night the auction was happening at nine o'clock in the morning Hong Kong time we had a zoom meeting going and we have what we call a bidding buddy so someone was on the phone in the room so that we could increase our bid if we needed it was definitely nerve-wracking we weren't the only property that was going up for auction but in the end we were the winning bid and we got haystack mountain They had asked 12, we offered 4.9. They said, okay, nine. We said six. They said no. And then we bought it for 6 million. So, wow. Once we have a property like that, we've been working with the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes of Oklahoma who were here 150 years ago. And they tell us stories of how their grandparents have stories about camping at the base of Haystack. And we had one of our colleagues come back and he said, can I go? up walking on Haystack. So we organized a field trip and we went out and he said, you know, this is the first time an Arapaho has probably stood on Haystack Mountain in 150 years. So you just know that that vision of protecting land in perpetuity has more value than just to those of us that live here today. It's for those that have been here before and that will come after. You know, there's another thing that Ron brought up when he talked about the rolling options. This year is kind of remarkable. Not only is it our 50th anniversary, but two very important rolling options have come up. And one is the CMEX Mine Pit, which is near... Ron Stewart Preserve at Rabbit Mountain. So this is to the west of 53rd Street up there, and it's a big mine pit. They were harvesting limestone to create cement. And we said, when you're done mining, we want it. And again, that just speaks to the visionary role, Ron, that you played, saying, we know you're going to mine this land, but when you're done, this could be a huge open space asset. Particularly because it fills in an area surrounded by open space. So that has come up and the 25 years we've been paying on it came due in 2025. Now CMEX is filling in the hole and they're trying to restore it and they're not quite ready, but we are really, really close. And that acquisition will actually happen in the early part of 2026. So again, it is, it's just such a long-term vision and it's just wonderful to see it finally coming. The second one that fits in that same category is just south of Pella along the St. Vrain Creek. It is the Golden Freedstrom property. So if you love Pella ponds, we are going to purchase the area just south of there after paying an option to buy it for 25 years. So again, expanding Pella ponds, one of our beloved open spaces.

[Tina]: Just as we start to wrap up this conversation of two directors, two eras, Ron, you retired back in, I think, 2018, 2017?

[Ron]: I Never remember. But around there, yeah.

[Tina]: And Terese, you are now on the precipice of retirement. I think it would be fitting for both of you to reflect on what this legacy is and what you hope for for the future. I know, Terese, you have worked hard on lots of stewardship and restoration projects and so on. Can you tell us a little bit about what you see coming down the road for us?

[Therese]: Oh, certainly. No, there's so, so much to do. And even though our acquisition list might have shrunk since, you know, since the early days, we have so much restoration work to do. We have a wonderful history of being able, as you mentioned, being nimble as a county to be able to go in and do restoration. So, we've restored small stretches of creeks. We've restored forests through forest thinning. We've had a couple of big events that have changed our ecosystem here in the Front Range, including the 2013 flood. And with that flood, we were able to restore five miles of the St. Vrain River between Longmont and Lyons. And that stretch of creek, it now has meanders in it. We've expanded the floodplain. It has amazing biodiversity. So that is an example of larger scale restoration. 

Well, we're trying to do the same thing with Boulder Creek. And the city of Boulder has been instrumental in their open space lands, which have at least five or six miles of Boulder Creek. We have another five miles further to the east. And they've done creek restoration and putting meanders back and creating wetlands. Well, we've done small stretches. And now we have a plan to do even larger stretches. And that is on the property we call Prairie Run. On that area, we are working with multiple partners, including Mile High Flood Control District and the town of Erie. And we're going to do amazing creek restoration, wetland creation. We have drywall. Trails going in will connect them with the town of Erie trails. So people in their backyard will be able to go out and see restoration projects that flourish with biodiversity. If you stand on the East County line and look back towards the mountains, you can be very proud to know that open space will have preserved the whole Boulder Valley.

[Tina]: And Ron, how about you? What would you say we are looking forward to and what we should be vigilant about? I

[Ron]: Think we should be eternally vigilant in protecting open space. And I hope that generations of Boulder County residents in the future will be vigilant about it. And I think one of the things that helps increase the chance of that is it. There's so many volunteer programs. We have so many people, Boulder County residents, who are involved in the protection and stewardship of open space. I think over the long term, that's going to help. And I would also say that there are still properties out there that need to be purchased. And part of the reason for that isn't that they were not a high priority to begin with. They were. When we buy a property, it's not based just on our desire to have it. It's based on the willingness of the seller to sell it. Families come at different times to a conclusion about whether or not they want to sell their land. And when they come to the conclusion that now is the time, I just hope that in the future we'll have the resources to buy those still important lands.

[Tina]: Very well said. As we close out this episode for today, I want to thank both of you for all of the effort and time and passion and work that you put into this. Of course, it takes a host of many, many people, hundreds and hundreds of people. A village. A village, that's right. But it also takes the vision and the leadership that both of you have been so instrumental in providing. So thank you so very much on behalf of the people, the plants, the animals who call Boulder County home and all the visitors who come here for the world-class views and recreation opportunities that we offer. So thank you so much. 

Thank you so much for joining us and listening to our podcast episode today. We want to give special thanks to Longmont Public Media for hosting us. And please follow us on social media and YouTube and wherever you listen to your podcasts.