Planning Commission 04/08/2026 - Apr 08, 2026

meeting

Prince William County Planning Commission 1h 17m 3 speakers 7 agenda items transcribed 2 months ago official recording ↗

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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.

What is the main topic discussed in this episode?

Bryce Barrett 0:01

Oh, just forward that way?

Patty Pakla 0:09

Okay, technology.

Patty Pakla 0:18

All right, well good evening. I'm Patty Pakla, Planning Manager with the Parks Department, and we're here just to give you an overview of our Pathways 2035 Countywide Trails Master Plan update. This is just a courtesy kind of presentation for your benefit and information. We heard through the grapevine that there might be some interest in what we've been working on, and so we wanted to bring it to you. It's in a draft format right now. We're not at a final stage, But I'll go ahead and, oops, that's not the one. How do I get, is that the one? How do I forward?

Madam Clerk 0:59

You just click it.

Patty Pakla 1:00

I clicked the right one, not the left. Oh, left one? Okay. So this is an internal document that we're doing with staff and with the members, the departments that assist the Trails and Blueways Council. So on the project team, we have my team from the Parks and Rec Department, which is myself, Robert Boyd, David Krager, Janelle Pridemore, and Catherine Gonzalez. And from Department of Transportation, it's Bryce Barrett, and from the Planning Office, Yolanda Hivsky.

What is the Pathways 2035 Countywide Trails Master Plan update and who presented it?

Patty Pakla 1:36

Why this update is needed? Well, in the mobility chapter, RT 9.2 called for the development of a trails master plan, and we put that in the mobility chapter when it was updated because we really hadn't done a comprehensive trails master plan since 1993. Trail planning in Prince William County started with the Park Authority back in the 90s through the Trails and Greenways Master Plan. But that was primarily focused on greenways following some of our stream corridors, and that was where the trail planning went. And it was all mostly under the Parks Department. In 2008, there was the update to the comprehensive plan. And in that update, we started to look at the roadway network as well and the shared use path and other trail network.

Patty Pakla 2:31

But we never really, even in that document, we never really combined them. They were still mapped separately, so it was really hard to see the overlay of the complete network. And so we've also had increasing interest in blueways or water trails along our streams and rivers, and that's been mentioned in the Parks and Recreation Open Space Master Plan. And so again, it was recommended in the mobility chapter in RT 9.2 that we go ahead and develop a plan that covers both active mobility, or all active mobility, rec trails and the blueways. So where does this fit in the plan? Obviously, you have the comp plan at the upper level, the big plans, the comprehensive plan. In the comprehensive plan, then we have goals for other department plan.

Patty Pakla 3:22

So like I mentioned, we have the parks, recreation, and open space master plan. That is our department level plan that coincides with the parks chapter. So this is the... department level plan that coincides with implementing some of the goals in the mobility chapter. We intend for this to be a 10 year plan, a little outside the four to six year timeline in this document, so that it'll coincide well with the updates to other plans like I mentioned our parks and rec master plan is done every 10 years. That was last done five years ago. So this is a nice filler in between five years from now, we'll do the parks plan again. And 10 years from now, we'll do the trail plan again. We also do in the parks department, we do our needs assessment survey.

Patty Pakla 4:13

So some of that information helps feed this plan. The county strategic plan helps feed this plan. And then the intent of this plan is that it will help drive future planning for capital improvement program for our trail related projects. The pros, which is our parks, recreation and open space master plan setting up continued again in the five year and then also looking at capital maintenance budgets and other budgets for implementation of the trails network. So the plan scope, we wanted to identify the gaps in the system. The mobility chapter identifies in pretty good detail all of the transportation gaps. It does not identify a lot of the recreation gaps, and we've been working to update that and get more information on the gaps in our recreational trails network.