Boulder County commissioners 'put the kibosh on' requiring permission for protests on open space

People planning protests or demonstrations on Boulder County open space and parks properties will not have to get advance written permission for holding such "public assemblies" on those county-owned lands.

Boulder County's Parks and Open Space staff is dropping a recommendation that such a requirement be included in an update to the county's rules and regulations about open space uses.

After Boulder County commissioners learned that such a advance-permit rule was being considered by the county's Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee, the commissioners decided it was not needed, according to Commissioner Elise Jones.

"We put the kibosh on it," Jones said.

Several advisory committee members had already raised questions during their Dec. 21 meeting about how the staff-suggested advance-permission rule would be enforced and what the county's policies would be about when and whether demonstrators might just be issued warnings or ticketed and face possible fines.

That panel is scheduled to take the issue up again Thursday night.

Bevin Carithers, the Parks and Open Space Department's resource protection supervisor, has written the committee that the staff "has concluded that this regulation is not necessary" because county rules about public assemblies already are covered in a "Personnel and Policy Manual's" chapter on "Use of County Grounds and/or Buildings."

When presenting the proposed rule to the Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee at its Dec. 21 meeting, Carithers said the regulation was being suggested, in part, because "we're expecting some protests" on county properties if and when oil and gas exploration on those properties occurs.

The advisory panel decided during last month's meeting to hold off on recommending whether the Board of County Commissioners should adopt such a written-permission requirement for public assemblies on parks and open space lands.

Carithers said in a Thursday interview that after last month's committee meeting, "we got a lot of feedback" from people who thought "we were taking away their opportunity to protest."

That was not the case, he said.

"Our intent is just to keep the public safe" if and when any such demonstrations occur, Carithers said.

The county staff has said that included trying to ensure the safety of the protesters themselves, the safety of any non-protesting visitors to the parks and open space areas, and the safety of farmers working on open space they're leasing from the county, if people try to demonstrate on any of that ag land that might also become the sites of oil and gas exploration and production.

Jones said she and fellow Commissioners Deb Gardner and Cindy Domenico "were caught by surprise" and did not know about the proposed regulation until after learning that the advisory committee discussed it last month.

She said the commissioners made it clear to the staff that they would not adopt such a rule for parks and open space properties.

Jones said she thought the rule would send "the wrong message" to people who might want to protest about potential drilling on county-owned lands.

"The county is supportive of First Amendment rights," she said.

The county Parks and Open Space staff told advisory panel members last month that the proposed regulation would mirror an advance-written-permission public assemblies requirement already in place for such properties as the courtyard outside the county's downtown Boulder office complex on the Pearl Street Mall and the Boulder County Fairgrounds in Longmont.

Current county policies generally restrict large-group public assemblies — which can be a variety of organized gatherings, and not just protests — to those two locations.

Jones said that "we are getting ahead of ourselves" in thinking about any regulation related to protests that might occur at the startup of any drilling activities on county-owned land, since neither state regulators nor Boulder County have given final approval to any specific locations where oil and gas companies might seek to put wells pads and related facilities.

It's "sort of hypothetical" at this point, she said.

Michelle Krezek, the commissioners' staff deputy, said that some of the potential drill-pad sites would be on private property over which the county holds conservation easements limiting future development on those lands but where the county does not actually own the property itself or the mineral rights underneath it.

Krezek and Jones noted that there is no general-public access available on tenant farms on county-owned open space, unless the tenant farmer approves such visits.

"You don't want crowds tromping across your corn fields," Jones said.

Krezek said that when it comes to county-owned open space and park land, if one or two people show up with signs to demonstrate their support for protecting prairie dogs or their opposition to oil and gas exploration, "we're probably not going to do anything about it "as long as they're in a safe place."

As for larger groups, authorities would work with the protesters to keep them off roadways or other areas where their presence might pose safety problems, county officials said.

The Parks and Open Space Advisory Committee is scheduled on Thursday night to consider whether to proceed with recommending that the Board of County Commissioners adopt a number of other revisions to parks and open space rules and regulations updates — and whether to ago along with the latest staff recommendation to remove the public-assemblies written-permission requirement from that package of updates.

The committee is expected at that meeting to reaffirm its December support for the staff's suggestions other regulatory updates, including one that would restrict the riding of electric bicycles on open space trails and another that would require dog owners to pick up and dispose of their dogs' feces when they're visiting parks and open space areas.

John Fryar: 303-684-5211, jfryar@times-call.com or twitter.com/jfryartc