ElbertNow.org

ElbertNow(.org)

Quality growth for Elbert County

Elbert County Colorado is growing, the pressures to accommodate new home development in our county are strong. The western part of our county is centrally located between Denver and Colorado Springs, and people move here every year, for our quiet country lifestyle and small town ambiance. As growth accelerates, especially during strong economic times, our county has tremendous economic growth potential as it becomes a more viable employment center, but it also could experience unforeseen challenges relating to widespread urban sprawl, and the demands and cost of providing services to residents, increased water demand, loss of ranch and farmland, and disputes between residents concerned about large development in their quiet backyard.

As we face the opportunity and challenge of becoming among the fastest growing counties in Colorado and the nation, we need to make careful decisions about how and where growth will happen, by providing fair and predictable opportunities for developers, balanced with the need to protect taxpayers from degraded services, crowded schools, deteriorated roads, and increased emergency response times. With careful planning we can increase the vibrancy of our towns by focusing urban style development where prospective new business may want to locate, decreasing cost of commuting for residents, efficient urban-area use of water, electrical, schools and transportation systems. And the one-time chance to keep our government size and taxes low.

How we grow will affect our children and grandchildren, our country life style, towns, farm and ranching, and economy. We cannot take our current Elbert County quality of life for granted, it will change. Will we sit back and see where growth takes us, or will we become advocates for quality growth?

What changed?

In 2009 the Elbert County Planning Commission members voted unanimously to approve a new Master Plan, which completely removed the Future Land Use (FLU) map, even after citizens urged them to keep and refine as-necessary the old FLU as-needed.

Recently the Planning Director has stated it is his goal to author an entirely new FLU but cannot provide a time frame for when this will be available for public review, nor when it will finally return to our Master Plan; history shows time frames are minimum 2-4 years; and the PC can still vote to reject it.

A FLU serves as a plan to limit what areas in our county, and taxpayer dollars, will support various types of development, i.e high density housing, farms, commercial-use etc.
Our Planning director and Road and Bridge directors have publicly acknowledged that past development (before out last FLU) has been costing our county tax payer dollars and degraded services, and;
The majority of this expense is from widespread/dispersed developments and cost of providing more taxpayer and gov't services to them (roads, emergency services, schools, utilities).
In the absence of a FLU, development cost and compatibility are more subjective criteria, not objective: each new proposal (even in the same area) requires more negotiation and analysis by the Planning staff and Planning Commission and BOCC (and turnover in these groups).
Per-proposal negotiation increases potential of backroom deals by elected and appointed officials in exchange for approval;
Per-proposal negotiation reduces the chance of fair/equal treatment for two different developers residents, even in same neighborhood, especially over time.
No FLU reduces predictability for developers and investors (that a proposed development will be approved, cost compatibility etc).
No FLU reduces predictability to taxpayers of new costs-to, or degraded, services.
No FLU reduces predictability of compatibile adjacent land-uses such has farms and residential communities.
A FLU does not prohibit good designs and neighborhoods, it improves them; Throughout time if an area's resources and residents agree makes more sense for development, the FLU be changed in a public and deliberated forum.
The longer we don't have a FLU, the harder it will be to re-implement one, as new speculators and incompatible developments occur in our county.
El Paso, Douglas counties have FLUs for all these reasons.

If Colorado's TABOR is overturned, local government will be able to increase taxes to subsidize losses. Clearly defined, written regulation are tools to prevent discretionary government spending / subsidizing with our tax dollars (recent news: Aurora developer receives 2Mil tax breaks; CO bill submitted to overturn TABOR; Fed stimulus bill closed-door health care bill, Nebraska-type kickbacks all can happen at a local level too).

What can you do? This is a PUBLIC process. Get involved and stay involved: WATCH agendas (2) for upcoming public hearings and votes; PARTICIPATE in meetings if you have experience or ideas in county planning or budgeting; LISTEN to audio from meetings (on ElbertCitizens) from meetings you can't attend; Having expertise or even just prior experience with financial or development-planning make your opinion valuable..... TELL your friends and neighbors and encourage them to get involved. READ, or WRITE letters-to-the editor in our local newspapers, and SUBSCRIBE to web-based public forums (we are list some below; send us any others you know about!).

Links:

Calendar of Planning Commission hearings

Calendar of BOCC (Board of County Commissioners) hearings

Planning department (now Community and Development Services)

Elbert County Public services departments

Elbert County public records search

Colorado Sec'y of State, conflict search

Colorado statutes

"ElbertCitizens" (open forum to discuss any county or state topic, and public record of email correspondence)

Colorado Community Newspaper

Ranchland News Newspaper

ABE21 ("A Better Elbert County 21st century" news provided by volunteers)

Email your links or general comments to elco09@onnet.cc, we will post them here.