The decision by the Archuleta Board of County Commissioners to build a new jail using ‘Certificates of Participation’ (COPs) — after the necessary bond funding was rejected twice by local voters — put the County government deeply in debt without dedicated revenues to repay the debt.
At the conclusion of his comments, at the end of the Tuesday, October 6, Archuleta Board of County Commissioners’ work session, Commissioner John Ranson hoped that something ‘positive’ might come from the firings and/or resignations that have left the County Planning Department without any dedicated staff.
Commissioner Ranson:
“So I think there’s some real positives that we can turn this into. And again, I’m so glad that we have people in place, that there won’t be too many hiccups in covering this, in the short term.”
The “people in place” are Executive Assistant Tonya McCann and Administrative Assistant Micayla Porter, who normally handle administrative duties for the County Manager and Commissioners.
County Manager Longinos Gonzalez then commented on the current work updating the County Comprehensive Plan, which has involved the Planning Department and consultants from Colorado-Springs-based HR Green. Portions of that update must be completed by December 31, according to Colorado law.
But the Planning Department has also been responsible for making changes to the County’s Land Use Regulations (LUR). While the Comprehensive Plan is a (fairly vague) “plan” that offers some guidance, the LUR consists of the actual rules that must be followed (but sometimes, are not followed) when developing properties in the unincorporated county.
County Manager Gonzalez:
“I did want to mention one thing. The intent has been to do a ‘Land Use Code’ rewrite, and we did talk about this. We did want to try to get… as far as the back end of the Comprehensive Plan that’s being rewritten right now… before we did that… because we wanted to have the feedback from all the partners and the public on how to address… you know… the long term growth.
“Long term growth is one of the areas of the Comprehensive Plan [that must be addressed by December 31] as well as the ‘water supply’ and so on.
“So we will absolutely be addressing the Land Use Code, but we did want to get some initial feedback from the Comprehensive Plan, because we want to have those long-term strategies implemented into our land use.”
Okay. Let’s be honest. Archuleta County long-term land use strategies are something of a big mess. And no one in particular is to blame for that big mess. There are, in my opinion, three key factors that almost inevitably result in a semi-dysfunctional Planning Department and semi-dysfunctional County plans and regulations.
1. Absence of continuity and institutional knowledge.
2. Lack of enforcement capacity.
3. The essential delusion that a government can, and should, effectively control the growth of the community.
More about those problems in a moment.
At Tuesday’s work session, Commissioner Veronica Medina was attending via Zoom and had some suggestions related to the Planning Department issues — the current lack of employees, and the issues with the Comprehensive Plan and LUR.
“I think it’s a great idea, what Commissioner Ranson mentioned about our Land Use Code. You know, I had a conversation with [County Attorney Cathleen Giovannini] potentially about getting the Assistant County Attorney involved, since he has some land use experience.
“Why don’t we just start from ‘scratch’? Because we definitely have too many regulations that we are not enforcing. We just don’t have the staff to do it, even before what happened last week. But if we just started with what is required by state statute, throw everything else out the window, and work on building whatever else Archuleta County needs, I think that would be a get start, with a clean slate and things that we could do better.
“Just my opinion. And I would love to see that happen. Thank you.”
Commissioner Medina’s term is over in January, and she will not appear for re-election on the November ballot, so if such a drastic change were to happen with the County LUR, it will likely not happen on her watch.
I’ve been following, and documenting, the progress of local government land use regulations for 22 years, and I’ve never witnessed any planning department make the choice to “start with a blank slate”. I’ve seen plenty of ‘incremental’ changes, however, depending on who happens to be sitting on the government board and who happens to hold the staff positions.
As Commissioner Medina noted, the County has never been able to properly enforce all the regulations in the LUR. That’s partly due to a lack of enforcement personnel, and partly due to too many regulations, and partly due to staff and commissioner turnover, and partly due to regulations that are simply not enforceable the way they are written.
It’s also partly due to conflicting goals — between the Planning Department staff and the Board of County Commissioners.
If the conflicting goals remained the same, we might have had less turmoil at the County. But the goals have undergone constant change, as staff and commissioners have come and gone.
During the 22 years I’ve been writing for the Daily Post, the County has had eight County Managers, most of whom arrived from out-of-town, wet behind the ears, with little understanding of our community. The County has had eight Planning Directors in that same period, and once again, most of them have arrived from other places, bringing with them planning ideas from those other places.
And commissioners? In those 22 years, we’ve had 15 different commissioners, all with their own beliefs about how best to serve — or be served by — Archuleta County taxpayers.
As mentioned, one of the key challenges faced by Archuleta County — in terms of controlling, encouraging, or discouraging “growth” — is the absence of continuity and the lack of ‘institutional knowledge’. When the County has had more than 30 key leadership changes over the past 22 years, related to land use planning, and when most of those leaders were relative ‘newcomers’ to the community…
…what the hell did we expect?
Read Part Three… tomorrow…