Boulder County Parks and Open Space Director Eric Lane to resign

John Fryar, Daily Times-Call, Longmont, Colo.
·3 min read

Feb. 25—Editor's note: An earlier version of this story should have reported Boulder County Parks and Open Space Director Eric Lane is resigning. It also misspelled Boulder County Commissioner Marta Loachamin's surname. The article below has been corrected.

Boulder County Parks and Open Space Director Eric Lane is resigning from that position at the end of April, Boulder County commissioners announced Wednesday.

Lane, 50, was appointed by the then-members of the Board of County Commissioners to that department's director's post in September 2016.

He said in an interview that his 4 and 1/2 years in the job "have gone remarkably quickly." He said he'd decided that it was time to resign in order to be able to achieve more of a balance of priorities between his work and his outside-of-work life.

Lane said he has no firm post-resignation plans, which he said are currently "mostly to decompress."

In a Feb. 15 email to members of his department's staff, Lane said, "Reflecting on the past four and a half years with you, I'm really pleased with the progress we've made on a wide variety of issues and the continued excellent service we've provided, despite the county's largest fire and a global pandemic. We've begun to tackle head-on important issues such as cultural responsiveness and inclusion, safety, and climate action, as well as work to move the department's administration towards more standard business practices and cultivate a stronger culture of collaboration."

County Commissioners Matt Jones, Claire Levy and Marta Loachamin said in their Wednesday internal email to the entire county staff that "during Eric's tenure with Boulder County, the Parks and Open Space department has accomplished a great deal.

"In addition to adding 4,070 acres of open space during the last 4.5 years, Parks and Open Space has dived deep into creating a Cultural Responsiveness and Inclusion Strategic Plan (CRISP) to enable greater community participation in POS activities in alignment with updating the department's overall Strategic Plan.

"Under Eric's leadership, the department pivoted quickly to providing services in new and different ways during the pandemic, while seeing a record number of visitors to open space properties and ensuring compliance with public health orders related to social distancing and face coverings," the commissioners wrote.

"As the champion of the Commissioners' Land and Water Stewardship strategic priority area, Eric helped to shepherd important public policy issues related to regional trail connections, management of open space lands, and wildfire recovery. We are grateful for all that he has contributed during his public service with Boulder County," the commissioners said in their email to county employees.

Prior to being named in 2016 to fill the county Parks and Open Space Department director position — one that was being vacated by longtime director Ron Stewart's retirement — Lane was the Colorado Department of Agriculture's conservation services director from December 2006 through April 2016..

Lane's current Boulder County salary is $135,658 a year, according to county spokesperson Barb Halpin.

The county will now advertise the position and conduct a nationwide search to recruit and hire Lane's replacement, the commissioners said, a process they said could take about six months.

In the interim, two other Parks and Open Space staff members, Real Estate Division Manager Janis Whisman and Resource Planning Manager Jeff Moline, will be stepping into co-director leadership roles through this transition to a new permanent director, starting with Lane's departure on April 28.

Boulder County owns and manages about 65,900 acres of open space and holds conservation easements to restrict future development on about 39,500 other acres currently owned by private parties, according to one of the department's web pages, tinyurl.com/3reufkpd.