City to give first look at proposed trails plan

The first draft of a plan to link the paths and trails meandering through Carson City into a unified system is scheduled to be unveiled at a special meeting Thursday.

Carson City Parks and Recreation officials have been working with a private urban planning consultant to come up with maps and policies on how to link the city's many trails. Now, the city and its consultant are ready to ask the public and the Parks and Recreation Commission whether they're headed in the right direction.

Parks and recreation officials, along with the consultant and a University of Nevada, Reno professor, have also been trying to tabulate and make sense of results from a six-page questionnaire randomly sent to 3,000 residents this spring.

The city had been expecting 600 surveys returned, for a 95 percent statistically valid result. Closer to 850 responses actually came back in.

Answers from the surveys have been added up and cross-checked in so many different ways, Park Planner Vern Krahn said it's been a challenge to figure out what they really mean.

"It's providing huge amounts of information, and we've been trying to interpret it," Krahn said. "Sometimes, it's been overwhelming for staff."

One of the most interesting ways the results have been grouped is by the neighborhood in which the respondents live, he said, giving parks and recreation an idea of what kind of amenities are in demand in specific areas.

"This data is what we're going to be using to create our trails plan, and later the Parks and Recreation Master Plan," Krahn said.

"We have a framework now."

The questionnaire results, and interpretation of them, are scheduled to be revealed at the Thursday night meeting along with the preliminary Unified Trails Master Plan draft.

Parks Trails Plan

What: Survey results on parks and recreation unveiled for the public and city Parks and Recreation Commission

When: 5:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: Sierra Room of the Carson City Community Center, 851 E. William St.

Call: 887-2363