MnGCA

[Paklid]

Here's a note of clarification about a perceived overlap of jurisdiction of parks in northwest Bloomington. The facts presented here have been verified with both Three Rivers and the city of Bloomington.

Three Rivers Parks District needs to maintain a certain percentage of park area undeveloped. To comply with that, they have a cooperative agreement with the City of Bloominton to include acreage from a few Bloomington park areas within the Three Rivers Boundary as it applies to figuring this "percent developed" area.

Specifically, if you visit Tierney's Woods and Bush Lake parks in Bloomington, you'll see signs that seem to show that the parks are both Bloomington city parks as well as Three Rivers Parks. These parks are not Three Rivers Parks. They are owned and maintained by the City of Bloominton. As such, when placing and seeking caches in Bush Lake Park and Tierney's woods, we are governed by Bloomington Parks rules and regulations. Three Rivers does NOT want registration forms for caches placed in these parks. If you visit the Three Rivers Park District website, you can find a nicely detailed pdf map of Three Rivers property. The areas in DARK green are owned and operated by Three Rivers. The light green areas such as the Tierney's Woods and Bush Lake areas are included to meet the area percentage requirements but are NOT part of Three Rivers property.

Incidentally, Randy Qualley, the director of parks in Bloomington has specifically stated that he thinks geocaching is an appropriate recreational use of the Bloomington city parks. He has no desire to regulate geocaching beyond the understanding that cachers obey the same park rules that every other park visitor is bound by. The only exception to this blanket acceptance of geocaching is if we were to hold an event in which a "significant" number of people are likely to attend, he would like to know in advance so city police can know that a gathering is taking place.
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-Paklid

[Paklid]

After submitting a couple caches for approval by Three Rivers, I was asked a few things by Marlene and through the course of discussion, it became clear that she was going to be including Tierney's woods caches in the total count for the Anderson/Tierney's/Hyland park.

She did some research into it and came up with the following:

Anderson Lakes:
owned by Three Rivers, managed by Three Rivers
cache registration required by Three Rivers

Tierney's Woods and Hyland Lake Park:
owned by Bloomington, managed by Three Rivers
cache registration required by Three Rivers

Bush Lake, North Corridor, South Corridor:
owned by Bloomington, managed by Bloomington
Bloomington knows all about geocaching and sees it as an appropriate use of park land (no permits needed)

For purposes of cache count, Anderson, Tierney's, and Hyland are all considered as one park for the total max of 20.
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-Paklid

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