Growth control or disaster?

Growth control or disaster?
Amendment 24 sparks heated debate across state

Oct. 7, 2000

By Jim Mimiaga
Journal Staff Writer

Protecting the far-away and overcrowded Front Range from further, unchecked sprawl and all of its negative impacts may be a good reason to vote for Amendment 24.

But local planners say the Citizens for Controlled Growth plan doesn’t really make sense for rural Montezuma County because the county already has tools in place to control development in a way that favors open space and agriculture.

"That is the point of our agricultural focus — open space," said Loretta Murphy, a county planner. "Our land-use codes already preserve that quality; it is inherent in the code."

There are redundancies when comparing Amendment 24 to the county’s own land-use restrictions adopted in 1998. Both encourage higher-density subdivisions near established cities offering central water and sewer rather than rag-tag across the countryside with unsafe septics.

And both identify open space as a value worth protecting.

For example, the county’s 35-acre cluster incentive requires that 75 percent of land planned for neighborhoods be preserved as open space, and the land-use codes do not allow subdividing land three acres and less without central sewer, hence eliminating sprawl where there are no services.

But the radical change that Amendment 24 will bring if passed is that the voting public would have a say in where growth should, or should not, occur. If passed — and the amendment is strongly favored in the polls — local governments of cities and counties not exempted can only expand residences, industrial and commercial in, or next to, areas already "committed to development." Once identified by government planners, those growth zones are put on maps, which have to be approved by voters at a November, general election.

If denied, the process goes back to the drawing board, with new maps being drawn up in time to be voted on again the next November. In the meantime, development is effectively stalled.

"It won’t be long before new business needed for economic development and better jobs figures out to avoid Colorado because we can’t be responsive," said Cortez City Manager Hal Shepherd, referring to the potential year-long wait to get on a voter-approved growth map.

Shepherd warned that the measure could backfire because it honors current state laws that insure the landowner’s right to subdivide large tracts of lands into 35-acre, one-house lots. Assuming the tendency for developers to take the path of least resistance holds true, the area could experience the equally unappealing sprawl of "ranchettes" reaching to the horizon.

According to the amendment, the type of growth, and all of its costs and impacts, relating to roads, utilities, crime and fire protection, schools, recreation facilities, water and air quality, and relationship to neighboring communities must be fully disclosed and studied by government and then revealed during the map elections also.

Public hearings must be scheduled before the election describing the region destined for expansion.

The plan would not approve or deny specific projects; rather it would determine where they could go. Local governments would then give the final go-ahead for individual projects based on local regulations. The idea is to concentrate all growth in specific areas the public deems suitable. In other words, density, instead of sprawl, so that open space and farms stay intact.

The measure’s key supporter and promoter, nature photographer John Fielder, says the need to protect Colorado as a whole right now from unplanned development is paramount before the next million people move here.

And with no help from the state legislature to seriously manage the problem, doing so via a mandate to the state constitution is the best way to make sure the state is ready, he said.

"We are essentially promoting denser development to protect more open landscapes, with the trade-off being future development areas going in closer where build-up has already occurred," Fielder said during a phone interview. "We think Coloradoans in general are willing to live with higher densities to save outlying lands where they go to see natural views and recreate on the weekends."

Fielder adds that voter-controlled growth is needed to break the control developers hold over communities concerning industrial, commercial and suburban expansion. The initiative was brought about in part by surveys that hold open-space protection as a high priority for state residents.

"We do not believe that voters will put Colorado up for sale," he said. "We don’t want a Los Angeles in Colorado, which is where we are headed without some controls."

That heavy-handed approach is undoubtedly needed for the Front Range sprawl problems, conceded Murphy, but she said that agriculturally-based Montezuma County is not developer-driven, and the recent codes enacted by the county commission work in a manner that already prevent the passage of poorly-designed plans.

"Agriculture does not drive development because it depends on open space, and our plan protects this, with all information put out in the open, up front," she said. "Obviously you want to have development where it is the most cost-effective and practical to reach infrastructure."

Citizens for Management of Growth relies heavily on forcing communities to cooperate with each other regarding their collective futures.

Fielder said if the amendment passes, the state legislature would be motivated to enact conflict-resolution mechanisms to be used by communities who struggle to get along, or have conflicting values.

However, Montezuma County’s unique "Landowner Initiated Zoning" process already puts that type of cooperation and foresight into the hands of neighbors, Murphy said.

Under LIZ, landowners have the option of securing a preference zone from various options ranging from agriculture, to industrial or commercial. The idea is for neighbors to band together to protect what they want for their micro-community, setting a precedent that theoretically trumps any potential developer’s intentions to advocate plans that do not fit. (A farm in the middle of a residential area, or vice versa.)

"If this goes, LIZ would disappear," she said.

County Administrator Tom Weaver said the measure would penalize landowners that have not already subdivided.

"If you were planning to subdividing a piece of ranch land then this might give you a lot of heartache, but how many ranchers are really wanting to do that anyway?" Weaver said.

Existing subdivisions already approved would be exempt from the process. He said that if the amendment becomes law and survives constitutional challenges, then planning polices would change, but the land-use code would stay in place, although some parts of it would become obsolete.

Strangely enough, when Montezuma County voters hit the polls Nov. 7, they will simultaneously be asked to approve and deny Amendment 24.

The county commission approved a ballot question asking if the community prefers to opt out of Amendment 24 for four years, should it pass. That option is allowed for communities under 25,000 in population, based on the 2000 census.

Opting out locally also gives time for the measure to be challenged in court, which opponents promise to do. Plus it gives the county time to prepare for the changes, the commissioners said.