Williamson County Commissioners Court was presented with a final draft of a 10-year comprehensive master parks plan Tuesday which includes the creation of a regional trail. The plan—designed to give the court a roadmap—establishes a framework of four key focus areas where 10 goals were derived from. Those goals can be further prioritized in two-, five- and 10-year timelines at the discretion of the court. The plan was drafted in collaboration with Halff Associates, an engineering-architecture planning company. “As I’ve been out in the community talking to folks, our parks system is one of the things that almost 50 percent of the folks when I talk about county services they love, they are talking about [parks],” Precinct 2 Commissioner Cynthia Long said. The master plan’s four focus areas include a regional trail plan, a park system expansion, parkland improvements, and operations and maintenance. The 10 goals include evaluating opportunities for land acquisition, efficiently develop and enhance park facilities and amenities, and emphasize education and conservation as primary themes in new parks, among other goals. Jordan Maddox, Halff project manager who presented the plan, said in composing the draft they held four open houses, stakeholder meetings and an online survey to allow for feedback before presenting a final draft. Maddox said after conducting the surveys, they found that people were very interested in expanding the trail system. “Brushy Creek, Lake Creek are very popular trails. Especially Brushy as expansion for that system is on-going,” Maddox said. “Citizens throughout the county were very interested in additional trails, whether they were city trails or county trails or MUD trails.” Maddox said that they found that 90 percent of survey-takers wanted to see an expansion of trails. The Williamson County residents were not so concerned with which government entity built the trail, but in wanting more and wanting them to be interconnected to form a regional trail, Maddox added. Maddox said that the plan for the draft proposal is only conceptual at this time, and no construction is underway. “The goal is to continue to build partnerships with various communities and interest groups and seek funding sources for a system like this,” Maddox said. “Our view is that the county would function more as the facilitator than the manager of this system.” The public still has the opportunity to view the draft plan online and can email comments through July 10 at [email protected]. The commissioners will vote on the proposed plan during a July meeting, after additional and final public comments are considered. Reminder: The court will not be holding a July 3 regular meeting ahead of the July 4 holiday.