Glenwood gathering gets govts. gabbing about growth
November 7 , 2002
There were laughs and knowing nods when Carbondale Town
Planner Mark Chain told a story about taxes, as they relate to service demands,
at a growth conference held Wednesday in Glenwood Springs.
Chain said a
new Carbondale resident got all over him one day, complaining the town didn’t
plow its roads enough or provide other services. After a few minutes, Chain
asked the resident where he was originally from.
“He said he was from
Connecticut,” Chain said.
“When I asked why he moved, he said the
property taxes were killing him,” Chain said.
The joke here, for folks
who don’t regularly deal with the irate citizenry, is that people love their
municipal services, but they sometimes hate to pay for them.
“We’re all
having to deal with that,” Chain said.
Taxes, municipal services, impact
fees, growth and related topics were covered at the conference, presented by the
Carbondale-based Healthy Mountain Communities. Chain was one of more than a
dozen speakers from local, state and federal agencies, along with elected
officials and professional planners.
The conference, which attracted more
than 125 participants, is part of Healthy
Mountain Communities’ series of workshops to provide tools for dealing with
growth-related pressures at the local, county and regional level.
Chain
explained what Carbondale has done right and wrong during the past 10 years, a
decade in which the town’s population has more than doubled to 6,500.
On
the right side of the ledger, in 1994 Carbondale imposed a $1.50-per-square-foot
dedication fee on new houses at the new River Valley Ranch development to
partially offset the project’s impacts to the town.
Chain said the fee was
imposed after the town commissioned a fiscal impact study to determine how new
housing units would affect the town.
The study projected Carbondale
would enjoy increased use-tax revenues during River Valley Ranch’s early
construction stage, but those revenues would level out. Eventually the new
subdivision will cost the town more than it brings in due to increased service
demands, the study predicted.
That’s what is happening, Chain said, and
overall town expenses are expected to exceed revenues by next year. The
dedication fee has helped ease the town’s growing pains. Carbondale has pocketed
$2.5 million to date in River Valley Ranch dedication fees, which it can use for
police cars and other expenses.
At build-out, the dedication fee will
have netted Carbondale a total of $4 million.
“You don’t have to be a
sophisticated town to do this,” Chain told the conference, which included
representatives from nearby towns and counties and Leadville, Buena Vista and
other Western Slope communities.
Chain said Carbondale also made some
wrong moves in the past 10 years. One of those decisions was to accept land for
a soccer field at Hendrick Ranch, but not making the developer build the playing
field. Instead, Carbondale built the field, and it cost much more than
expected.
“We probably wouldn’t do that today,” Chain said.
Karen
Rowe, the Colorado Department of Transportation resident engineer in Glenwood
Springs, explained how her department’s planning process is slow, but growth is
happening fast.
Combine those two realities, and the department is now
looking to towns and developers to help fund highway upgrades such as
interchanges.
“New development is making our problems worse,” Rowe said.
“There’s no way we can pay.”
Pat Tucker, the Colorado Division of
Wildlife area manager, quickly listed ways that growth is affecting wildlife,
including decreased winter range for big game and more deaths from
roadkill.
DOW and police departments are fielding more calls from new
residents who are moving into bear habitat.
“The bears still like to call it
home, and it’s working for them,” Tucker said.
Then there are the law
enforcement calls DOW must handle during hunting season from new residents whose
homes are next to public lands.
“They call and say, ‘What’s this guy in
orange doing in my backyard? And he’s carrying a gun,’” Tucker
said.