On April 6, the Snyderville Basin Special Recreation District Board voted to remove one of its own members, Dawn Bowes.
Bowes said she disagrees with how she was characterized in a previous article about the board’s move. During her orientation several weeks ago, Bowes said she found discrepancies between the board’s mandate and its plans that she claims created ethical and legal issues. When she raised these, they were ignored.
Last week, board chairwoman Tracey Douthett said Bowes was too intense in her defense of the equestrian community’s interests and was antagonistic towards the board’s staff on the issue of a new trail planned for the Highland Estates area.
Bowes said that is because the new trail, work for which is scheduled to begin in August, is not what the residents voted for.
The recreation board has raised tens of millions of dollars through bonds during the past decade, yet it receives virtually no oversight from the county council, Bowes said. Like other boards, the Basin Recreation Board is appointed by the council to do the important planning work and then allows the council to make the final decisions.
But due to the lack of oversight, Bowes says the recreation board and its staff more power than virtually any other board in the county government, she said.
Prior to being sworn in, Bowes said she identified some gross mismanagement of its budget and brought it to the executive director’s attention. If this was not appropriate behavior for a board member, Bowes said that would have been the best time to protest her appointment.
Since her concerns are not being heard, she admits she has become increasingly persistent.
“Their only response is they didn’t like the way I was asking the question,” she said.
One of Bowes’ primary concerns is the plan to pave the new trail in Highland Estates. It will be what the board’s master plan refers to as “hard surface.”
A 2006 telephone survey of 400 Basin residents revealed that 75 percent of respondents preferred natural surface to hard-surface trails. Only 11 percent preferred hard surface. Over 80 percent of respondents said they preferred the trails be used for “non-motorized” recreation nearly anything but bicycles.
Douthett also said last week that the Highland Estates trail needed to be hard surface because it will be a “transportation trail.”
The board’s master plan, however, specifies “transportation trails” to have four feet of natural surface adjacent to the hard surface. There is not space for that four-foot shoulder in that area, Douthett said.
The master plan also calls for natural surface trails to be slowly converted to hard-surface trails as the Basin’s population grows.
In addition to the plan being contrary to the public’s wishes as expressed in the 2006 survey, many residents have expressed confusion about the new trail being hard surface, Bowes said.
The bond information sent out prior to the election never specified that the money would be used for a hard-surface trail. Some neighbors have told her they would never have voted for it if they’d understood that.
Furthermore, according to the plan, hard-surface trails cost about 15 times more to build and about 20 times more to replace.
The finished price tag of the Highland Estates trail will be roughly five times more than a natural-surface trail, Bowes estimates.
“It’s almost fraudulent to raise those tax dollars, not tell (the public) what they’ll do with it, and then do the most expensive option,” she said.
Bowes also considers the expense irresponsible in the current economy.
“It’s not frugal and did not represent what the people were looking forward to,” she said.
Lastly, Bowes said she sees no harm in looking out for the equestrian community. It was clear to everyone that was where her personal interests were when she was appointed. And despite the master plan calling for the creation of trail features to accommodate equestrian users, previous boards never built any, making them inaccessible to horse riders. Now the board is planning to build 53 miles of new hard-surface trails at a cost of $11.1 million that riders cannot use.