Help Shape the Future of Trails in Montgomery County!

March 30, 2010–Your input will help shape the future of trails, parks and recreation in Montgomery County!

The Montgomery County Department of Parks and the Montgomery County Department of Recreation invite you to participate in a focus group on trail use needs to help us effectively plan for the next 20 years. Any interested person has the opportunity to provide input into “Vision 2030”, which is a new Strategic Plan for Parks and Recreation in Montgomery County. The intent of this plan is to identify how to most effectively meet the needs of a changing community over the next 20 years in regards to parks, recreation, cultural heritage, natural spaces and trails. In order to identify these needs, we are asking for your help.

As a component of the planning process, we are conducting a series of focus groups meetings with community leaders and residents. Because we value your opinion about trail, equestrian, and bike path facilities and issues, we wanted to personally invite you to the focus group meeting.

This focus group meeting for users of both natural surface trails and hard surface trails (also known as hiker-biker trails) will be held on Tuesday April 27, 2010 from 7-8:30 p.m., in the Lounge Meeting Room of the Parkside Headquarters Building at 9500 Brunett Avenue in Silver Spring MD 20901 (see directions below). All trail users are invited to participate including walkers, runners, hikers, cyclists, mountain bikers and equestrians.

The meeting will be facilitated Jim Klein of Lardner/Klein Landscape Architects, a team member from the consulting team led by GreenPlay that is developing the plan for the County. At this meeting you will be given an opportunity to provide input on the future needs for natural and hard surface trails,  parks, and recreation in Montgomery County, including discussing strengths, opportunities for improvement, key issues, potential partnerships, etc.

Please reply to this email  Vision2030@montgomeryparks.org if you would like to attend. For additional information on Vision 2030, please visit our Web site www.VisionMontgomery2030.org. For other questions please contact Tanya Schmieler 301-650-4392.

Directions to Parkside: From Colesville Rd (Rt. 29), turn west onto Sligo Creek Parkway, and then bear right onto Brunett Avenue. Take the first driveway on left and the Park Headquarters Building is at the top of the hill on the left.  The meeting room is all the way down the hall on the right.