How Much Land Is for Sale?

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Forest Service plan to sell parcels of land to pay for rural schools. After quite a bit of poring over the Forest service websites, I calculated a total of 2,100 acres for sale in Boulder County.

A week after my diatribe, the Boulder County Commissioners had a guest opinion in the Boulder Daily Camera. In addition to agreeing with many of my points (no, I'm not accusing them of plagiarism), they raised a number of further arguments against the sale. And, they also gave the same number of acres for sale: 2,100. This gave me some confidence that my efforts in interpreting the maps and other information on the website were reasonably accurate.

Well, a couple of days ago, there was another article in the Camera. This article reported on a letter sent by those same County Commissioners to the Forest Service. This letter brings up many of the same points as well as some new ones. It also states that the list of parcels on the website shows 2,120 acres for sale in Boulder County, while the maps show 3,120.

Ok, now I'm freaked out. If they can't even agree on how much land they want to sell, how are we supposed to respond to this proposal? How did the maps suddenly show an additional 1,050 acres? If the total is 3,120 acres, the plan is 50% worse than I thought it was.