Saturday, February 12, 2011, 9:00am: ShinDig to Open Little Rainbow.

Weather permitting, SMT is scheduling the February Volunteer ShinDig to coincide with the Grand Opening of the Little Rainbow Trail and to do some re-routing of the trail as it reaches the CR110 parking lot. Meet at the CR110 trailhead parking lot, which is 2.2 miles south on CR110 from Hwy 50. Turn left at the 2.2 mile point and go up a short incline to the parking lot. We will work on the trail until 12 noon, at which time the trail opening ceremony will take place. After the ceremony, lunch will be provided to the volunteers behind or inside the Salida Cafe and Roastery. As usual, come prepared with water, gloves, long pants and sturdy boots. Be sure to dress warmly for the low February morning temperatures. Tools will be provided

The Salida Regional Planning Commission will host a public hearing on Wednesday, November 17^th at 6:00 p.m. to discuss the zoning around Salida.  The hearing will be held in the City Council Chambers at the Touber Building at 448 E. 1^st Street and anyone is welcome to attend and comment on the proposed zoning.  The Regional Planning Commission will then forward their recommendations to the County for zoning around Salida.

This hearing will be the first of several steps in updating the County zoning map.  Prior to adoption this recommendation will also be reviewed by the County Planning Commission and Board of County Commissioners.  Hearings before those boards have not yet been scheduled.

The County is considering several new zoning classifications to replace the existing zone designations.  The new zone districts under consideration are Backcountry, Rural, Residential, Light Commercial Recreational, Highway Commercial and Industrial.  In considering where these zone districts should be applied the Regional Planning Commission will consider the existing zoning on the site, current use of the site, surrounding uses, access and location with respect to municipal services among other factors.

The proposed zoning around Salida was drafted by city and county staff and was discussed and updated with the Regional Planning Commission during their meeting on October 20^th.  This additional meeting is being held in order to seek additional comments from the property owners and others who may be interested.

Affected property owners in the areas surrounding Salida should plan to attend the Regional Planning Commission meeting next Wednesday or contact city or county planning staff for more information.

Additional information is available on the Chaffee County website at www.chaffeecounty.org.  Follow the link at the bottom of the page for the latest drafts of the proposed zone districts and maps.  Any comments or questions are welcome and can be directed to myself at dmacdonald@cityofsalida.com, 530-2629, or Kim Antonucci, County Planner at kantonucci@chaffeecounty.org, 530-5567.

We want to hear from you.  Please take a few minutes to fill out the online survey and tell the City of Salida what you think should be the priorities in the coming years.  The survey is available at www.cityofsalida.com.  Paper copies can be filled out at the Salida Regional Library, Salida Café, Simmering Cup, Café Dawn, the Salida Community Center and City Hall.  Printed copies can also be obtained by calling 530-2626.

The City of Salida wants citizen help in identifying priorities for the community.  As the Planning Commission finalizes the draft of the Comprehensive Plan, we want to include an implementation plan that reflects the priorities of the community and fits within a realistic budget.  We want to hear from the community what they feel are the highest priorities for the City to undertake.

In order to gather input, the City has developed a survey reflecting the priorities of the draft comprehensive plan.  This survey is not as quick and easy as some you may have seen in the past.  There are 10 pages of detailed questions asking you to rank the importance of issues and actions.

Members of the City Council and Planning Commission dedicate countless hours each month to administering the business of our City.  We are asking for you to take 15 minutes of your time to provide us with thoughtful input.  There are many services that are currently provided by the City or which we hear that citizen’s desire.  Help us to identify which are really the top priorities and which we should abandon.

There are many hard decisions made each year by the City Council which balance the priorities for maintenance and improvements in the city against limited budget funds.  The comprehensive plan should serve as a guiding document looking ahead 5 – 10 years.  The City Council utilizes the comprehensive plan in selecting what projects to pursue and approving the annual budget.

The Salida Planning Commission has spent the last year developing the draft comprehensive plan.  They have sought input through public meetings, advertisements and the 2009 Community Survey.  The entire draft plan is available for review on the City’s website:  www.cityofsalida.com/projects/comprehensive-plan.

The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and will be open for three weeks, or until Wednesday, September 22^nd.

Both the survey results and the draft plan will be discussed at an upcoming public meeting to be held Thursday, October 14^th at the Salida SteamPlant.  The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m.  The most important asset of our community is the citizens.  By participating in this survey, help us to best represent your desires for the City.

Dara MacDonald

Director of Community Development

In order to gather input, the City has developed a survey reflecting the priorities of the draft comprehensive plan.  There are many hard decisions made each year by the City Council which balance the priorities for maintenance and improvements in the city against limited budget funds.  The comprehensive plan should serve as a guiding document looking ahead 5 – 10 years.  The Council utilizes the comprehensive plan in selecting what projects to pursue and approving the annual budget.

The online survey is available at www.cityofsalida.com.  Paper copies can be filled out at the Salida Regional Library, local coffee shops, the Salida Community Center and City Hall.  Printed copies can also be obtained by calling 530-2626.  The survey takes about 15 minutes to complete and will be open for three weeks, or until Wednesday, September 22^nd.

The Salida Planning Commission has spent the last year developing the draft comprehensive plan.  They have sought input through public meetings, advertisements and the 2009 Community Survey.  The entire draft plan is available for review on the City’s website:  www.cityofsalida.com/projects/comprehensive-plan.

Both the survey results and the draft plan will be discussed at an upcoming public meeting to be held Tuesday, October 14^th at the Salida SteamPlant.  The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m.

For me, her story raises the question of why? Why is there yet another committee of citizen laymen charged with something that seems better handled by professional staff?

Government-appointed citizen committees have their place, especially those like the county’s roundtable committee that was so carefully and deliberately selected to embrace all stakeholders – especially those with the most to gain or lose. Such diverse, collaborative forums help local officials learn more about the issues at hand and weigh and balance competing viewpoints. At the end of the local two-year roundtable process, while not everyone was 100 percent happy with the resulting guiding land planning recommendations, everyone agreed they could live with them.

Let’s build on that achievement by letting the pro staff take over where the laymen, logically, left off.

Read through the land use code. I think those without formal training and expertise in land use planning can agree it’s pretty technical. Even though I’m a landowner, with property at both ends of the county, I wouldn’t pretend to have the expertise necessary to update such a technical document.

So it is at this juncture, now that the community has studied the issues and spoken, we can and should get out of the way and let the county’s educated, trained and certified pros draft the new code. It’s a technical job.

I think of it like this. I own a compact car but that doesn’t mean I know how to fix it. Even if I owned a bigger car, say a Cadillac Escalade, or even a whole fleet of cars, owning more doesn’t mean I’m automatically more qualified to fix any of them.

So I would let the pro staff draft the updates then go back to the roundtable participants for feedback and edits to ensure consistency with that group’s recommendations. The revised draft would then logically be presented to the planning commission for review and referral to the county commissioners for public hearing and final approval. Those steps alone represent a lengthy process, probably at least six months, with ample opportunity for public input.

Our current land use code is a jalopy and the longer we delay repairing it, the longer we get in our own way in achieving the universally shared goals of sustainable economic development and preservation of quality of life.

With the decline in new construction due to the sorry state of the economy, it may seem to those in office that they can continue to dawdle. I would argue the reason our current code is so desperately antiquated is due to dawdling rooted in a collective, years-long lack of intestinal fortitude among elected officials driven, in part, by a persistent disinformation campaign by a lobby whose minds appear closed to the possibilities of a more progressive approach to planning which, by the way, does NOT inherently mean infringing on private property rights or devaluing real estate. Heaps of research, data and case studies prove quite the contrary, actually.

Let’s get a new code in place sooner than later and put an end to the interminable and polarizing game of political hot potato. Our future is riding on it.

Developer P.T. Wood, the applicant, purchased 17 acres on Tenderfoot Mountain from Judy Everett and subsequently traded the parcel to the City of Salida for 12 lots at base of the mountain. If approved by the City Council, the plat application would replat the 12 lots, resulting in three larger lots.

Local resident Jack Chivvis spoke in favor of the application.

The trail used for the Tenderfoot Hill Climb during FIBArk crosses one of the proposed lots and was the cause of some discussion. According to City staff, the Recreation Advisory Board recommended that a proposed easement for the trail be rejected by the City — the easement would be used only one day a year — and suggested instead that Wood pay a fee-in-lieu which could be used as leverage to help obtain grants for purchase of open space or park improvements.

Ultimately, the Commission approved the preliminary plat on a split vote, incorporating the trail easement rather than a fee-in-lieu and adding language to require a 1.2% real estate transfer assessment (RETA) from future buyers of the property. P.T. Wood, who sits on the Commission, recused himself during the discussion and vote.

Chair Don Stevens and newly-appointed alternate Lisa Malde were generally supportive of the application but voted against it because of language which would allow building footprints to be 40% of the lot size. Stevens said landowners would be allowed to build houses larger than 10,000 square feet. “I have a problem with that,” Stevens said.

“I’m sure any house that big would be beautiful,” Commissioner Verl Curtis said.

Wood had said earlier in the meeting that he would have been amenable to a reduction in the allowed size of the building footprint and, as a longstanding proponent of real estate transfer assessments, that he accepted the imposition of the RETA by Commissioner Chris Tracy. The final plat for the Hillside Minor Subdivision will be considered by the City Council.

In other business, the Planning Commission unanimously recommended that the City Council adopt the Regional Transportation Plan.

The draft Regional Transportation Plan, which can be downloaded from the City’s website, was largely developed over the past ten months with the help of citizens who attended public participation events. Planning staff from both the City and the County provided various exercises allowing people to make recommendations on existing and future transportation systems around Salida. While the City’s comprehensive plan will govern development within the city limits, the Regional Transportation Plan aims to address development extending several miles into the County.

According to the City:

The creation of a Regional Transportation Plan is an important tool that will be used to help guide future growth to prevent traffic congestion, provide opportunities for pedestrian and bicycles, create better connections for faster emergency response times, and increase the safety of the road network around Salida. This plan will also allow City and County staff to apply for State and Federal funding for future Capital improvement projects.

Most recently, the draft plan was amended to include comments from previous public hearings as well as from meetings between planners and the Division of Wildlife, Poncha Springs, and Salida Parks, Open Space and Trails.

Much of the discussion at Wednesday’s meeting stemmed from public comments by citizens who encouraged the Commission to weigh the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and other recreational users. A proposed “collector” route along CR 177 which would parallel the Union Pacific railroad from Cleora to CR 175 was criticized by several audience members, including Tom Jacobson and Lisa Malde. Planners noted that an important function of the plan is to establish right-of-ways which can be cited in the context of future applications for development and that inclusion of the right-of-ways in the document does not necessarily mean that they would ever be utilized.

The Commission recommended several changes to the plan based on the discussion. These included:

• Changing language in the plan to emphasize the conceptual nature of proposed alignments and intersections because any actual construction would depend on further engineering and traffic studies;
• Incorporating school bus routes;
• Noting that collaborative efforts with other entities like Chaffee County and Poncha Springs will necessarily inform any implementation;
• Including a discussion of the order in which development might occur, as well as possible triggers for implementation. In general, for example, an attempt to develop a parcel might provide the first opportunity to implement a planned trail or road realignment; and
• Expanding the discussion of CR 177 in general, and adding criticism by SPOT board member Shawn Gillis in particular. Gillis termed the proposed route counter-productive to local efforts to promote downtown Salida and develop Tenderfoot Mountain for non-motorized recreation.

The draft plan will be submitted to the Salida and Chaffee County planning commissions for their consideration.