Steamboat Springs approves $1.6M for trail amid debate over who should benefit most from publicly funded recreation

The steady stream of residents testifying before the Steamboat Springs City Council late Tuesday night all spoke of their appreciation for trails. But there was friction over where those trails should be built and whether publicly funded recreation should be designed for locals or visitors. 

It’s a contentious narrative playing out across the Western Slope as residents of busy mountain towns push elected leaders to focus more on the local quality of life and less on the visitor experience. That’s a bold move in communities built by tourist dollars. And it’s a sign of the changing tides in tourism-based economies. 

“A lot has changed in the last 10 years. We have had COVID and huge crowds in the summer and we are saying we want tax dollars spent locally,” said Larry Desjardin, whose Keep Routt Wild group is fighting a plan for new trails on Forest Service-managed land atop Rabbit Ears Pass near Steamboat Springs. “People are asking why we are funding these trails to attract tourists when we are already overcrowded and a growing number of short-term rentals has us facing a housing crisis.”

In 2013, Steamboat Springs voters overwhelmingly approved a plan to direct lodging taxes toward trails. As that funding plan expires next year, the city has developed a vast network of trails ranging from paved sidewalks to rocky singletrack, bolstering the city’s appeal for both locals and visitors.  

The 2A ballot measure approved by more than 70% of Steamboat Springs voters was meant to expand the intent of the city’s 1986 accommodations tax ballot measure that promoted tourism, the economic health of the city and bolstered Steamboat Springs “as a premier destination resort.” 

A trails committee started meeting in 2014 and began ranking 46 possible trails projects inside and outside the city proposed by the trails alliance that backed the 2A proposal. 

The committee last year reevaluated the way it ranked trail projects. That overhaul added new goals, like “bang for the buck” and improved connectivity and diversity of trails, to the ranking of possible trail projects that could be funded with local lodging tax collections.

In the past decade, the tax dollars have supported several trail and sidewalk projects inside the city as well as singletrack trails on public land on Emerald Mountain adjacent to the city and nearby Buff Pass. At the council meeting Tuesday, the committee gave the council its final recommendation of 23 potential projects before the 2A lodging tax expires. 

The committee asked that most of the final allocation — $1.6 million from more than $2 million left in the trails fund — be directed to the Forest Service to support building 13 new trails in a region known as Mad Rabbit, because the trails connect Rabbit Ears Pass south of Steamboat Springs with the Mad Creek drainage north of the city. After nearly three hours of comment and debate, the council agreed with the committee, voting 5-2 on Tuesday to approve funding for trails in the Mad Rabbit region.

The vote ended almost six years of angst surrounding the Forest Service’s plan for trails connecting Rabbit Ears Pass with Mad Creek. The agency is finalizing a decision on a multiyear environmental review of the controversial Mad Rabbit Trails Project, which would expand trails around the Continental Divide Trail on Rabbit Ears Pass. 

David High, a member of the trails committee, said his group weighed spending 2A trails funds on pathways inside the city — versus trails on public lands farther from downtown — and had to consider longstanding goals that included promoting the tourism economy and getting the best return for investment. For example, High said, the committee studied spending nearly all the remaining dollars in the trail fund on a 1-mile extension of the city’s downtown Yampa River Core Trail versus more singletrack on public lands around the city. 

“We simply asked ourselves, how would the voters respond to that?” High told the council Tuesday night. “And it was unanimous that it would be irresponsible for us to have spent the money on that section of trail as opposed to looking at all the other opportunities that we had.”

High said the committee ranked the trails in the Mad Rabbit project higher than other proposals for trail extensions closer to downtown. A large group of residents led by Keep Routt Wild is advocating for more urban trail development that would connect unfinished sections within the city.

The council received hundreds of emails from locals on this final spending plan to bolster federal funding of the Mad Rabbit trails project, which would develop nearly 50 miles of new motorized and non-motorized trails while closing an estimated 36 miles of existing illegal trails in the region.

Craig Frithsen with the Routt County Riders trail advocacy group urged the council to approve the funding, saying the Mad Rabbit trails project “required thousands of hours of effort” by local and federal officials and residents.  

“By doing so you will not only be funding a well-planned and much-needed trails projects, you also will acknowledge and validate the tremendous community effort it has taken to move this project through the appropriate public process,” Frithsen said. 

Many of the council members said that no other issue has harvested so many comments from Steamboat Springs residents. 

Lorraine Martin, the director of Routt County Riders, said “people are so against change in any form that these chambers are often a place to watch months and years of the work of public servants be picked apart, torn down, reduced down or eliminated entirely.”

“To approve these funds for trails-based outdoor access when so many of our friends and neighbors are going into the woods to relieve the daily stress and pain of their very existence is the least you can do to say ‘I see you,’” Martin said. “We really hope you will do the right thing.”

Councilman Steve Muntean said he has received 300 emails from constituents on the funding plan and 60% supported the Mad Rabbit plan.

“I don’t see how I can go against a majority of the people as well as the science and experts,” Muntean said, noting the many local and regional trail advocacy groups and Forest Service supporting the Mad Rabbit trails network.

Councilwoman Joella West said the volunteers on the trails committee spent a decade coming up with recommendations anchored in the 2013 2A ballot language that voters approved.

“I’m sorry that we are still dealing with tourism but we are,” West said. “That is the ballot language we have. That doesn’t mean we have to go out and advertise all of these trails to tourists but we have to observe the ballot language.”