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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 14, 2005 17 miles of consistency Local governments hope to bring a unified approach to the greenway By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings As the Bear Creek Greenway exits Lynn Newbry Park in Talent, the pavement becomes bumpy and rough. The new intergovernmental management plan would create uniform, consistent maintenance of the trail along its 16.75-mile length. Photos by Jennifer Squires | Ashland Daily Tidings On the Bear Creek Greenway near Lynn Newbry Park in Talent, neon orange spray paint warns bikers, runners, horseback riders and walkers there may be “Bumps Ahead.” Four miles south, when the trail dips under Valley View Road near Ashland, the pavement has smoothed out — and the diamond-shaped yellow signs predicting a “Rough Road” near Talent are not necessary. A new greenway management plan will look at the greenway and its users as a unit, pooling resources to maintain the trail at the same level across its two-section, 16.75-mile course through the Valley that will be complete by of July 1. “It will manifest in the consistency,” said Karen Bolda at the Rogue Valley Council of Governments Water Resources Department. “The noticeable change will be more consistency on the trail.” RVCOG and the Bear Creek Greenway Advisory Committee will host a public meeting today from 4 to 6 p.m. to review a draft of the Bear Creek Greenway Maintenance, Operations and Management Plan. The meeting will be held in the Carpenter Room of the Medford Library, 205 S. Central St., and presentations of the plan will be given at 4:15 p.m. and 5:15 p.m. The plan must be completed by June 30. ”[The meeting] will be very open, an opportunity to ask any questions, to give last-minute ideas,” Bolda said. “It’s really the idea to look at it as a whole.” How it works Minimizing the vandalism along the Bear Creek Greenway through law enforcement and volunteer bike patrols is a central element of the management plan. The draft plan incorporates public input with information from greenway staff, environmental organizations, police, fire and emergency personnel and representatives from each of the jurisdictions that the greenway passes through. The plan will disregard the patchwork of city and county jurisdictions across the paved trail to address needs such as public safety, path maintenance, fire protection, vandalism reduction, vegetation and natural resource management, parking, signs and future improvements. “The thing we need to focus on right now is the coordination between the agencies,” said Bear Creek Greenway Coordinator Karen Smith. “The immediate thing that needs to be done from a management point of view is the vegetation control because of fire season.” The process to create the maintenance plan began in October and was funded by a $27,500 grant from the Metropolitan Planning Organization. After the plan is finished, officials from Jackson County and RVCOG will come up with three strategies to implement the management and maintenance methods outlined in the document, as well as coordinate funding and the use of volunteers. Ultimately, city councilors and county commissioners will have to endorse the joint agreement between agencies, leading to an intergovernmental agreement among the five cities along the greenway — Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, Medford and Central Point — as well as Jackson County. What people want to see A bumble bee alights on a California poppy between Ashland and Talent on the greenway. The new management plan would prune bushes back 10 feet on either side of the path for safety. Removing hazardous trees, adding mileage markers to the trail, establishing bike patrols for public safety and installing trash cans at trailheads were listed as the most important trail enhancements by the people who attended an April 14 open house focused on collecting public input about the plan. Mile markers will be one of the first enhancements greenway users see. The mileage count will begin with zero at Emigrant Lake and end with mile 19.5 at the Barnett Road intersection in Medford, according to Bolda. The markers will give trail users a better idea of where they are on the path, which can be key when emergency personnel are needed. People can give 9-1-1 operators a specific location, instead of a general area between two cities. “Safety has been a big one for the public,” Bolda said. “Creating a bike patrol was really popular and will be a big part of it.” Individual agencies do patrol within their jurisdictions; however, their presence is not consistent on a day-to-day basis or along the full length of the trail. Sharing sworn officers to add bike patrols, which may also utilize volunteers, and the possible establishment of volunteer golf-cart patrols will give trail users someone to go to for safety concerns, directions or medical needs. Eventually, all trail signs will match, the brush to the sides of the path will trimmed 10 feet back all along the trail and lighting may be added to key areas, such as parking lots at trailheads. Lighting the entire path will not be considered, and major additions such as information kiosks and bathrooms will have to be considered down the line when more funding is available. “This would allow [maintenance] to really be proactive and also to put money where it’s needed on the trail,” Bolda said. “The high priority is to get it all up to par, to the places repaired that need to be repaired and to get it consistent.” Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. 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