Johnson County conservation projects queuing up for new bond

IOWA CITY — Johnson County voters handily approved a $30 million conservation bond last November that will be used to protect water quality, preserve natural areas and improve public access to parks and trails in the county over the next 20 years.

Over 77 percent of voters in the county approved the measure, which needed 60 percent approval to pass. This was the second time that Johnson County voters approved a conservation bond — in 2008, voters approved a $20 million bond. The bonds are paid off through property taxes.

Johnson County Conservation Interim Director Brad Freidhof sat down with The Gazette to talk about what opportunities are available now that the bond has passed. This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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Q: Now that the bond has passed, what’s next?

A: The great thing about the this new bond is we are already building off the 2008 bond, which was the first conservation bond for a county that had been completed in the state of Iowa. At that time, we didn't have any examples of projects that would we be doing. This time, we've already got momentum. People see projects that we've done, and we're continuing on with those. Now it gets to the point where there's a lot of opportunities, and so the Conservation Board has to be more selective in what they want to continue forward and what doesn't meet the criteria of what they're trying to accomplish with the board or with the bond.

Q: Would you mind walking me through the process of how a project gets comes together?

A: A lot of this happens organically. We're not out there looking at specific parcels of land, but we do look for corridors or land that we would prioritize. For example, if you have land along the Cedar or the Iowa River that floods often, and you want to get out of it, that is exactly the type of land that the Johnson County Conservation Board is looking for, because we want to restore the ecological elements of that land, to provide those green services that we take for granted. We want the natural systems out there that provide those services intact while still allowing economic growth, agricultural production, all those other things that need to happen on the landscape.

For us, it's landowners that a lot of times will come to us with a conservation legacy in mind. Land has been in their family for generations, usually associated with smaller agricultural practices back in the day, and this remnant of land, 80, 120 acres, whatever it is that they would like to see kept in conservation practices in perpetuity, and that's the opportunity that we have. Then we look to the landowners for them to determine what their financial opportunities are. Do they want to donate this? Do they want to sell this? Do they want to put a conservation easement on it? We've had both donations, we've had sales, we’ve had bargain sales. Once we get those intentions ironed out, then we start through the process of having the land surveyed and appraised. The landowner will talk to their attorneys to determine what type of financial implications this will have on them. We’ve seen opportunities, where it's a consistent flood buyout, and the farmer is tired of battling it, and they come to us because we can restore the wetlands and the wildlife habitat in those areas. In my opinion, it's a win all the way around.

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Q: How does the county decide what projects to move forward with?

A: When the county is looking for parcels, they do have a prioritization that they use for some of our lands, because not every parcel of land is treated equally. If somebody has a 5-acre little parcel of land that's got marginal woodland habitat on it, it's not adjacent to anything else, the county Conservation Board may look at that and go, “This doesn't meet any of our prioritization.” It requires a lot of time for staff to come out in management because it isn't associated, so we've got a lot of transportation time, movement time. Usually the larger, unique, rare environments are what we're looking for, parcels that are tied to other federal, state or county conservation areas. For trails, we're looking at linkages between our communities. It's also balancing development with just protection of natural areas. For some of those areas, it's going in and doing absolutely nothing different from what the private landowner did, and that all that may be is management. Right? People say, “When are you going to turn this into a campground?” Never, right? We've got a lot of campgrounds throughout Johnson County, but we have very few forest communities that are as high of quality as this. We need to protect this, because wildlife utilizes it.

Q: The bond is over the course of 20 years. How do you plan for that length of time?

A: We do a lot of planning with our phenomenal finance department. We work very closely with them to tax the residents of Johnson County at an equal rate over that time period. Now there are going to be some years that we're really drawing from that fund, for example, years that were in construction phase, we go through that money quickly. There are other periods of time where we might not draw us as heavily for or from it, because we're in a planning phase, but there's still a lot of work going on in the background. Even though we try to keep the taxation rate and try to keep the amount of money, it ebbs and flows. It's not going to get gigantic. We don't want to tax the public for money that's just sitting in the bank. We want it to be taxed and used. This isn't my 401(k); it is meant to provide for the residents of Johnson County things that they want and that's what we're trying to do.

Q: Are there any upcoming projects that you can share at this time?

A: We still have a few remaining funds from the 2008 bond. The public will see the development of the Clear Creek Trail extension from Half Moon Avenue out to F.W. Kent Park this summer. That will include a lot of work along Half Moon Avenue and then a tunnel underneath Highway 6 near Kent Park. We'll also be trying to do some work on the shower house at F.W. Kent Park that's been under construction for a few years. We are working on some land projects with private landowners. I can't share those locations, but a couple of them are in the Iowa River corridor, so that's exciting. They do adjoin additional conservation lands, whether that's state, federal or county. And then we're working, you know, we're going to continue to work on our trail dream.

Q: What’s the trail dream?

A: I hear a lot about the Raccoon River Trail and the High Trestle trail over there in Polk County and Central Iowa. I want to be the Eastern Iowa destination. I'm calling it the travel triangle that goes from Cedar Rapids down through Ely (and) Solon and eventually gets to West Branch. Then a trail that goes from West Branch into Iowa City that continues through Coralville, Tiffin and comes out here to Kent Park. I eventually want to get that to the Amana Colonies. I would love to see another leg of that trail that goes from the Amana Colonies back up to Cedar Rapids. That's the destination triangle, and inside that triangle, today's population, residents, visitors, they want active destinations. They might want to bike a half a day, and then we're going to go eat out at the Amana Colonies, or we're going to go have go out to their beer festival they have out there. Or we want to ride over and visit Main Street in West Branch. And then we're going to come back Iowa City, and we're going to catch a Hawkeye women's basketball game. I want to bring people here from around the world, across the country, that can connect with our cultural, our nightlife, our outdoors, and experience Iowa, both rural and urban, in a vacation getaway.

When we talk about the opportunities a conservation bond can have, my focus is on the outdoors and trails, but it's bigger than that. We’re just a part of this bigger picture and that's what we want to emphasize, and that's what we want to make people come here for.

Comments: megan.woolard@thegazette.com