City Hosts Visioning Session for Twin Buttes

Roughly forty people turned out for a City hosted Visioning Session on Twin Buttes Reservoir Thursday evening.  Representatives from the outdoor community included fishermen, hunters, windsurfers, kayakers, off-road riders (ATV and full sized vehicles), runners, trail cyclists, disc golfers, archers and more. 

Lauren Shrum from Texas Outdoors Consulting ably facilitated the session.  Everyone had a chance to contribute their ideas to a master list, which the group later prioritized.  Some of the ideas were in direct contrast to one another.  Examples include:

• keep everything wide open vs. restricting access
• keep the property primitive vs. developing nice camping slots with hookups.  

The group didn't eliminate conflicting ideas, but everyone got to vote their priorities. 

I used my eight votes on:

1) Vehicle access to large areas of the lake shore (both North and South Pools for windsurfing)

2) Regular trash cleanup in high use areas

3) Access to well maintained public restrooms

4) Visible and regular police presence

The Visioning Workshop regarded "the future of the Twin Buttes Recreation Area as part of the master planning process." It remains to be seen if this is a ground up effort or top down directive, like the recent installation of pipe railing.  Never the less, I'm grateful to Carl White, Anthony Wilson and Lauren Shrum for the chance to be heard. Many thanks to Alvin, Joan and Kristin for adding their voice on behalf of windsurfers.  The meeting was worth the time.

Update 2-24-12:  Bill Cullins authored a piece in the Standard Times on this issue.  It's worth the read.