After 15 years leading the Trails and Open Space Coalition, Susan Davies has retired. Her successor, Glenn Carlson, has long been involved with the organization.
The Trails and Open Space Coalition is a non-profit organization in Colorado Springs that advocates for preserving open spaces and creating a network of trails and bikeways in the Pikes Peak Region.
KRCC's Mike Procell recently had a chance to ask Davies some questions about her time leading the organization and what direction TOSC is heading.
This interview has been edited for time and clarity.
Mike Procell: Coming from a background of environmental science and journalism, did you find it easy to combine the two interests into advocating for public lands and conservation?
Susan Davies: Parts of it were easy and parts of it were terrifying. It was fun to be doing the writing. It was fun to advocate, which is something as a journalist you don't get to do. So, taking a point of view, having an opinion, taking a stand on issues after considering them objectively as a journalist does, I was delighted to be able to do that.
Now, running a nonprofit is like running a business, you know, you're thinking of your bottom line, you're thinking of staff, you're thinking of budgets, all those things that I'd never had to do before. So that was quite the learning curve.
Procell: Tell me about some of the more challenging or even controversial things that you dealt with over the years. And would you have done anything differently?
Davies: So going back to some of the critical moments in my history with TOSC… as you recall, we were going through a recession.
County commissioners had talked about selling Bear Creek Park, so a group of us thought that perhaps a parks district where you brought the city and county together and raised one source of dollar income to support the whole system, you might be able to save money and take care of the whole system.
It was a tough climb, lots of conversations.
I learned so much about the political process. We lost, but we learned a lot and what we did do is sort of put parks front and center in a lot of decision makers' minds and I think that led to a softening of views of parks. They started, some of them, to consider it as critical infrastructure, that it really mattered to the identity of the city and the county.
Another one was Strawberry Fields… We were in the middle of all that and we took a very, what I would say, brave stand. We had many donors and some board members that wanted us to lay low and not get out in front of it, and we felt we absolutely had to.
And one of the reasons we felt we had to was because at the time, we were very much proponents of finishing the Chamberlain Trail, which is still not finished, but one day will be a trail much like the Pikes Peak Greenway, except the soft surface version of it, from Blodget all the way to Cheyenne Mountain State Park.
There was a critical piece in there that we didn't see how we were ever going to attain unless we were able to get it from the Broadmoor. And they threw that into the deal. And once that was in the deal, as well as a huge expansion of North Cañon and some other little things, it was a no brainer for us.
Yes, we had to give up some park land, and there were people that fundamentally believed if you ever have to either trade or sell parkland, you just never do it on principle.
Pragmatically we said, you know, it's only a very little piece, and we think it's worth it to get all these other acres and all these other opportunities for the greater good of the public.
So we took a lot of flak, but at the end of the day I think it was absolutely the right decision.
So that was another sort of milestone in my tenure.
Procell: Is there some specific task that maybe you wish you could have gotten to but didn't?
Or let me reframe it this way, is there something that Glenn Carlson, the new executive director, might look at on his new to-do list and go, man, I wish Susan Davies would have taken care of that?
Davies: Funny you should ask that because I have pleaded with Glenn to allow me to continue to be a volunteer and help. In fact, my new email address says Susan Davies, Trails and Open Space Coalition volunteer.
Procell: So Glenn knows where to find you.
Davies: He does know where to find me! So I want to help him get a TOPS tax for the county, or at least give people the chance to decide, which is supposed to be the essence of TABOR (Taxpayers Bill of Rights). Don't decide for them. Let people decide if they would be willing to pay one penny per a $10 purchase in the county. We've done some math and it looks like that's about $14 per person per year that it would cost if we were able to do that.
So that will be something that I'm encouraging Glenn to pay attention to and I will pay attention to and help him if he's, you know, willing to let me continue to work on that.
I would still like to see an increase in our TOPS tax too. A penny was a good start in '97.
But we really need to increase that because the costs have gone up. The penny isn't enough anymore.
Procell: And finally, why now? Why retire now when you still clearly have a passion for this work?
Davies: It's time. I've been advocating for these trails, parks and open spaces for 15 years.
Guess what? I don't get a lot of time to spend in them, but I want to go out and actually play in them.
Procell: Fair enough. See you out on the trails.
Davies: I sure hope so.
