Healthy Mountain Communities
HMC Newsletter
March
31, 2001
CONTENTS
I. HEALTHY MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES NEWS
- HMC Welcomes 3 New Board of Directors
- HMC Launches Website/Regional Indicators Expanded and
On-line
- Community Innovation Workshop Series Begins, Wednesday,
May 2
- Local Governments Consider Affordable Housing
Mitigation Ordinances
- Planning Software Preparing For Second Test
II. REGIONAL AND STATE NEWS
- Boulder County Civic Forum Releases Second
Quality of Life Index
- Five County Revenue Sharing Pilot Project Gets Underway
- Growth Dominates Durango City Council Forum
- Steamboat Springs Pursues Growth Impact Fees
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I. HEALTHY MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES NEWS
HMC Welcomes 3 New Board of Directors
HMC is pleased to announce three new board members. They
include:
*Russ Criswell, Town Trustee, Carbondale
*Rick Davis, City Council Member, Glenwood Springs
*Shelley Molz, Executive Director, Valley Partnership for
Drug Prevention
New board members join existing Board of Directors Doug
Pratte (Basalt,
Community member); (Kit Lyon, Garfield County, Government
Representative);
Nan Sundeen (Pitkin County, Government Representative);
and Sarah Schipper
(Eagle County, Government Representative).
Special thanks to Tom Newland for several years of
service on the HMC board.
Tom is stepping off the board in April.
If you are interested in serving on HMC's board contact
Colin Laird,
970.963.5502 or claird@hmccolorado.org.
HMC Launches Website/ Regional Indicators
Expanded and On-line
The world-wide web just got a little more congested in
2000 as HMC joined
the millions of other organizations and individuals
looking for some space
in the infosphere.
HMC's site has updated and expanded regional indicators
information
available on-line. This effort is supported by Employees
of the Aspen Skiing
Company.
The site also includes our history, information on our
projects, PDF
versions of our reports, and links to . . well, you'll
have to see for
yourself. Our cyber address is www.hmccolorado.org (hmc.org was
already
taken by Hancock Medical Center in St. Louis, MO). He who
hesitates will not
get a good web address!
Community Innovation Workshop Series Begins,
Wednesday, May 2
Smart Growth and Affordable Housing: Making Connections
is the first in a
series of workshops focusing on innovative tools,
policies, and approaches
to improve the quality of life in Colorado's mountain
communities.
The workshop is designed to help citizens and elected
officials learn about:
*Tools to evaluate development trends and foster smart
growth.
*The latest research on job generation from residential
development and the
link to affordable housing programs.
*A presentation of 3-D planning software, CommunityVizä
, and how it can be
used to evaluate development proposals.
Speakers include: Ken Snyder - Department of Energy; The
Orton Foundation;
Chris Cares - RRC Associates/The Housing Collaborative.
The workshop will be from 5-8pm, May 2 at the Carbondale
Town Hall. Food and
refreshments will be served. The event is free and open
to the public. RSVP
is required. Contact Colin Laird, 970.963.5502 or claird@hmccolorado.org.
Local Governments Consider Affordable Housing
Mitigation Ordinances
The City of Glenwood Springs and The Town of Carbondale
are considering the
adoption of inclusionary zoning ordinances to foster more
affordable housing
in the lower Roaring Fork Valley. The effort stems from
the Regional
Affordable Housing Initiative, a multi-jurisdictional
effort sponsored by
the Town of Carbondale and funded by a state Smart Growth
Regional
Partnerships Grant in 1999. HMC managed the initiative.
The initiative analyzed housing need in the Basalt to
Glenwood Springs
region, researched the legal foundation for local
government action on
affordable housing issues, and developed model ordinances
for consideration
by local governments. A full report is available at www.hmccolorado.org. A
citizen task force and a Regional Affordable Housing
Summit funded by the
Aspen Valley Community Foundation were critical
components of this effort.
If elected officials in Glenwood Springs and Carbondale
join their
colleagues in Basalt and Garfield County in adopting
inclusionary zoning
ordinances, HMC will assist with the development of a
regional affordable
housing administrative entity. This entity would manage
deed-restricted
units in the Basalt to Glenwood Springs area and reduce
the costs to each
local government.
Planning Software Preparing For Second Test
After a successful test in Carbondale of the
CommunityVizä planning software
developed by the Orton Foundation (www.orton.org), HMC is
working with Orton
and Otak/RockCreek Studio to use the software at a
regional level. The goal
is to test possible growth management strategies against
current trends in
the region. Check out HMC's website for a slide show on
the beta-test of the
software (www.hmccolorado.org).
II. STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS
Boulder County Civic Forum Releases Second
Quality of Life Index
The Boulder County Civic Forum - formerly the Boulder
County Healthy
Communities Initiative - has released the 2000
"Quality of Life in Boulder
County" Community Indicators Report. It is online at
www.bococivicforum.org.
Contact Bruce Swinehart, 303.415.1388 or swinehartb@mindspring.com for more
information.
The report includes a broad range of Boulder County
information and data,
including:
**Affordability: Assessing the economic, environmental
and social impacts of
skyrocketing housing costs; calculation of an
"affordable wage" for local
communities.
**Child and Youth Development: Boulder County kids are
generally doing very
well, but there are disturbing trends such as disparities
in educational
achievement, high rates of drug and alcohol abuse, and
difficulty in finding
quality, affordable, convenient child care.
**Social Capital (a "sense of community"):
Boulder County is rapidly growing
and changing, challenging the sense of belonging to a
particular community.
An upcoming BCCF survey on social capital will assess
residents'
connectedness to each other and to the communities in
which they live.
**Regionalism & Regional Cooperation: Most of the
challenges Boulder County
faces today transcend geopolitical boundaries.
Strengthening its identity as
a County and region will help us tackle complex issues
such as
transportation, economic sustainability and human
services planning.
Five County Revenue Sharing Pilot Project Gets
Underway
With a $50,000 grant from the Smart Growth Office of the
Department of Local
Affairs' Heritage Planning Grants Program, the five
counties of the Rural
Resort Region (Eagle, Garfield, Lake, Pitkin, and Summit)
will investigate
potential mechanisms for regional sharing of locally
collected revenues. The
project hopes to result in the selection of a specific
implementation option
in all or part of the region. The effort stems from a
four-year legislative
effort to pilot revenue sharing with surplus state sales
tax revenues.
The Rural Resort Region just released a request for
proposals on the initial
research component of the project. Responses are due by
April 20. For more
information, contact Rural Resort Region Coordinator, Jim
Spehar,
970.256.1060 or jimspehar@home.com.
Growth Dominates Durango City Council Forum
The six candidates vying for three Durango City Council
positions all agreed
that growth is a crucial issue facing the city and
county. Voters get to
chose which candidate's approach to managing growth they
like the most on
April 3. Many candidates vowed to maintain and preserve
the quality of life
that brought people to Durango in the first place.
Current Mayor Jim
Sheppard said the effects of growth will put a
"heavy burden on all of us"
because they impact the jail, the library and the
schools. He said the city
needs to manage these results of growth now so taxes
aren't overwhelming in
the future. One candidate is a twenty-year old student
who attends Ft. Lewis
College. (Durango Herald, 03/16/01, K.W. Harp, www.durangoherald.com)
Steamboat Springs Pursues Growth Impact Fees
On the same day as the release of new census information
showing that
Steamboat Springs population grew by more than 46% since
1990, the Steamboat
Springs City Council asked staff for an ordinance to
institute fees on new
development to mitigate growth-related impacts.
Unlike the excise tax for affordable housing that lost 3
to 1 in the city
last November, the City Council does not have to take an
impact "fee" to the
ballot box. The city would use impact fee revenue to
address specific
capital needs created by growth and development. A study
by Tischler and
Associates shows that the maximum supportable impact fees
in Steamboat
Springs could be as high as $4,458 for a detached single
family residential
home and $3,146 per 1,000 square feet of a restaurant.
The impact fees could
generate $1.2 to $1.5 million in revenue for the city
each year. (Steamboat
Pilot, 3/21/01, www.steamboatpilot.com)
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