Chaffee Recreation Council
Rec Funding Playbook: A model for community-driven sustainable recreation funding in Chaffee County
Cindy Williams
Executive Summary
Chaffee County is looking for graduate student assistance to develop model strategies for funding
sustainable recreation in a way that addresses the three goals of the 2021 Chaffee County Outdoor
Recreation Management Plan:
- Sustaining economic benefits
- Maintaining natural resource health; and
- Retaining exceptional experiences
The challenge of funding recreational infrastructure, management and maintenance is one faced
by communities across the West. While there are large grants that are periodically available at the
federal and state levels, these are typically one-off, and often focused upon the funding of new
outdoor recreation infrastructure, not the maintenance of existing infrastructure nor visitor
education/enforcement/behavior engineering that will improve visitor behavior and subsequently,
the integrity of the natural environment. Taking into account that land management budgets are
declining on a per visitor basis (-10% a year or more in Chaffee County), there is a need for Chaffee
County to identify innovative and diverse sources of funding that would contribute to the creation
of a permanent Sustainable Recreation Fund.
This project will help the Chaffee Recreation Council implement the 2021 Chaffee County
Outdoor Recreation Management Plan. The plan provides integrated strategies to sustainably
manage increased visitor use to attractions including the most rafted river in the U.S., a fifth of Colorado’s
fourteen-thousand-foot peaks and the Colorado’s longest reach of Gold Medal trout habitat. Project results
will further serve as a ‘Sustainable Recreation Funding Playbook’ for the state. Currently seven Statewide communities
are in the process of developing a recreation plan similar to that of Chaffee County, through the
Colorado Parks and Wildlife Regional Partners Initiative (of which Chaffee County is a member).
The developed funding ‘playbook’ could provide statewide guidance on how these and other
communities with recreation-driven economies can fund infrastructure development, management
and maintenance to keep recreation clean, fund and wild now and into the future. The study may
also act as a guide for federal land management agencies, who will participate in the project.