I received an email from a friend last Thursday morning, letting me know that the Archuleta County Planning Department had lost its entire staff to either firings or resignations.
You may be aware, but I am just finding this out. [The Director of Development] was fired from the planning department, and the two associates that worked under her, who had already resigned with an end date sometime in November, walked out early upon hearing about the termination. There is currently no planning department.
Being a curious person, I reached out to our three Archuleta County commissioners and County Manager Longinos Gonzalez to find out whatever can be revealed to a news outlet — which, it turned out, was not very much. Because “personnel matters” are involved.
The response from Commissioner Veronica Medina, who had a previous career working in HR:
Bill,
This is a personnel matter; I am unable to comment.
Veronica
County Manager Gonzalez responded:
Hi, Bill. Sorry I wasn’t able to meet with you earlier. I did want to give you an update related to some questions we’d received.
We have had staff manning the Planning Department Office on-and-off every day this week and have continued responding to and addressing emails from residents/applicants.
We will finalize and post the Department’s temporary office hours for walk-in services on Monday in an effort to best meet constituent needs. As part of this, we ask for patience from residents during this period until the Department returns to regular business hours in approximately 45 days.
Meeting the needs of residents is our priority and we wanted to assure them that they can continue to direct questions related to their already open or new applications to the email and contact information found on the Department’s County webpage or in-person during the temporary office hours schedule.
From the County Planning Department website:
Quite possibly, this shake-up could not come at a worse time, in terms of the current and ongoing effort to re-write the County’s Comprehensive Plan — the document that supposedly sketches out how the County government plans to control, encourage, or discourage development within its jurisdiction over the next 5-10 years.
By state law, portions of the re-write are required to be completed by December 31. The lion’s share of the writing is being handled by consultants at Colorado-Springs-based HR Green, but the consultants have been — up until last week — working closely with the County Planning Department… which has now ceased to exist.
The Planning office is being staffed for limited hours by conscientious County employees who have, however, limited experience with land use planning and regulations.
County Manager Longinos apparently hopes to have the department staffed with fully-qualified workers within 45 days.
On the bright side — because every cloud has a silver lining — the housing and development industries in Archuleta County have been slowing down somewhat.
2021: Permits for Single Family Homes, 151; Permits for Commercial Buildings, 15.
2025: Permits for Single Family Homes, 113; Permits for Commercial Buildings, 8.
So far, in 2026: Permits for Single Family Homes, 90; Permits for Commercial Buildings, 3.
An uncertain economy, higher interest rates, price inflation for materials and labor, and so on.
As some Daily Post readers will recall, the County government had a similar shake-up in Development Services in July 2025. At yesterday’s Board of County Commissioners work session, Commissioner John Ranson mentioned that previous shake-up in his comments about the current situation.
“I want to touch base on the Planning Department. Just this past September, I was bragging about our management team here. and I still think we have top-notch people here in key positions. But the person who is now gone was part of that conversation. She was very talented. We had some problems, but that’s life. We’re always going to have that kind of stuff going on. And I for one am disappointed in losing her.
“At the same time, I do believe we could make lemonade out of lemons. This is the second go-around for the Planning Department since I’ve been commissioner. The first one was my doing, and my responsibility, so I’m not pointing fingers.”
As a point of information, Mr. Ranson has been commissioner for less than 2 years.
“But I think we need to take a step back, here, and potentially get the Building Committee involved and help us re-write some of our rules and regulations that seem to cause the problems. Maybe, God bless us, maybe we could ‘simplify’ before we go out and hire somebody… I think we need to take a step back. So this doesn’t happen again.
“We have two phenomenal people — in case you don’t know — between [Executive Assistant Tonya McCann] and [Administrative Assistant Micayla Porter]. They are going to service our people, and they give top-notch customer service.
“I’m so pleased that both of you are here. It’s a huge relief on my part. I know you two will do a crazy good job. I’m really proud of both of you, and thankful…
“And I really believe we can turn this into a big positive. That Planning Department, over five years, grew at an average rate of 30% a year, and I think we can become more efficient, substantially, to the tune of $250,000 a year in savings, and still have first class service…”
I seem to recall Commissioner Ranson making similar statements about “saving money” and making lemonade — or something like lemonade? — when the previous Development Director and Planning Director both resigned in 2025.
I have to agree with Commissioner Ranson, that Ms. McCann and Ms. Porter do indeed provide excellent service — and I feel sure they will do their very best filling, temporarily, the Planning Department vacancies. But they are not specifically trained in Community Planning.
If you’re curious about how complex the rules and regulations around housing and development have become, and how little a typical County Commissioner understands about that complexity, you will enjoy my eight-part editorial from July 2025.
Read Part Two… tomorrow…