To share the learning of Healthy Mountain Communities' efforts to create the Roaring Fork Community Housing Fund, we have developed workbook for communities interested in using the multi-jurisdictional housing authority law.

The workbook is designed to help citizens, housing advocates, planners, and local officials understand how the state regional housing authority law can be a tool to address affordable housing issues in their community and region. The sections of the workbook offer several steps to help you use the regional housing authority law to your community's advantage.

This workbook was prepared at part of the same Colorado Heritage Planning Grant from the Department of Local Affairs in 2002 through which Healthy Mountain Communities helped the governments of the Lower Roaring Fork Valley created the Roaring Fork Community Housing Fund (see featured story).

This year's voters have a number of decisions to make at the national, state and local level. In addition to the Presidential election, voters in Pitkin and Garfield Counties will decide a number of tax questions on transit, tourism, and education.

The big regional questions include the Roaring Fork Transportation Authority's question to increase sales tax rates in a number of communities.

Roaring Fork School District is seeking approval of a $84 million bond and mill levy increase for infrastructure improvements and salary increases for teachers. Garfield County RE-2 is also going for a $2.7 million mill levy increase.

In addition to these questions, there are a number of local tax questions, including:

• Lodging tax questions in Rifle and Silt
• Questions on extension of the 1/4 cent sales tax for transit, property tax question for Downtown Development Authority, and $12 million bond for road projects in Glenwood Springs
• Perpetual extension the existing land transfer tax in Snowmass Village
• Aspen visitor center relocation
• Property tax increases for operating the Basalt Regional and Pitkin County Libraries

Remember to vote on November 2!

"(I'm) just unbelievably busy, I probably have hundreds (of registration forms) from the last couple of days," said Nina True, Pitkin County's election deputy on Tuesday. True later estimated she'd received upwards of 500 last-minute applications.

Garfield's County Clerk Mildred Alsdorf, who has been with the county for 33 years, said that this election has been the busiest she's seen in terms of new voter registrations. More than 1,000 people have registered to vote in Garfield since August, she said.

A similar increase has been seen in Eagle County. Elections coordinator Helen Lindow said there have been almost 1,000 new registrations since August, but a ream of paperwork is awaiting processing and the final number will be much higher.

According to the Associated Press, cities, suburbs and counties across the nation have been deluged by record numbers of new voters. Denver reportedly hired 14 people to work full-time just to process applications, coming in at up to 2,000 per day.

Edited from article by Thomas Watkins, 7.8.2004, www.aspendailynews.com

At first glance, the two houses being built in Blue Creek Ranch between Carbondale and El Jebel look like every other house being built in new housing developments.

The framework looks the same, the roofs are peaked, and the size is comparable to surrounding homes. Look closer, and it's clear the houses have much more to offer than ordinary houses. The houses are part of a project called NextGen.

Coordinated by Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE), with funding from The Building America Program, a U.S. Department of Energy initiative, the Building Science Corp., Fenton Construction, Novy Architects and several other contractors got together to work on NextGen, a project designed to reduce energy use and increase cost efficiency in new houses.

"Most homes in America are parasites, living on fossil fuels," said Randy Udall, director of the Community Office for Resource Efficiency. "If you disconnected them from the electric grid and gas pipeline, they would die. These two homes are going to produce most of their hot water and electricity while using very little energy."

The Energy Efficient Home will be 35 percent more energy efficient than the average house. The second house is the High Performance Home and will produce 75 percent of its hot water using a solar heating system, produce 50 percent of its own electricity, offset 100 percent of its fossil fuel greenhouse gas emissions and beat standard energy code requirements by 60 percent. Both houses cost about the same to build as an average two- to three-bedroom house in the valley, said Steve Novy of Novy Architects. They will sell for $215,000-$225,000 and are available for families who qualify for affordable housing.

Edited from article Ivy Vogel, www.postindependent.com, 9.14.2004

However, the company continues to decline to agree that its violations caused the seep, spokesman Walt Lowry said Sunday.

The gas seep was discovered in West Divide Creek April 1. The state cited EnCana for alleged violations including improper cementing of a well in the area, the release of natural gas to West Divide Creek, failure to prevent contamination of fresh water resources and failure to notify the Colorado Oil & Gas Commission promptly of problems in the well.

Lowry said EnCana hopes to take advantage of a COGCC rule that allows fines it pays to go directly to the community affected by the seep, rather than simply into state coffers. Whether this would mean neighboring residents, the greater Silt community or a larger area, and what types of programs the fines would fund, would have to be determined, he said.

Meanwhile, DeAnna Woolston, an organizer with the Western Colorado Congress, worries about what the future holds for drilling in the area. Tests continue to show high levels of cancer-causing benzene in groundwater due to gas contamination. The area around the seep is highly fractured underground, making it more difficult to drill without seeps resulting, and there should be a moratorium on drilling there.

"We're worried about something like this happening in the future," she said.

Edited from article by Dennis Webb, 8.16.2004, www.postindependent.com

The cost of a mansion in Pitkin County could be going up. It won't be the rising cost of real estate, but a new impact fee under consideration by county commissioners that bumps up the price tag. And the bigger the home, the bigger the fee. The idea has been kicked around for years, but it gathered steam when commissioners agreed earlier this year to hire consultants to analyze the county's housing needs and produce a formula to calculate an impact fee.

The Affordable Housing Support Study, prepared by Clarion Associates of Denver with James C. Nicholas of RRC Associates, documents the county's existing housing for its work force, including deed-restricted affordable housing and free-market digs that still house working locals.

In 1985, 73 percent of all employees in the county resided in the county, according to the report. By 2000, that percentage had dropped to 46 percent. The report predicts the number of workers residing in the county will drop to 38 percent by 2020 unless additional housing is provided in price ranges that employees can afford.

The proposed impact fees for homes range from $3,370 for a 500-square-foot residence to $295,594 for a 25,000-square-foot manse. A 5,000-square- foot home would be levied a fee of $20,693 under the proposal.

It's possible the county could set the minimum threshold for collecting the fee from new home construction at 5,000 square feet.

With the revenues from the impact fee, the county could pursue opportunities to provide additional deed-restricted worker housing, whether it's in the Aspen area, the Basalt portion of the county or elsewhere.

Edited from article by Janet Urquhart, www.aspentimes.com, 10.7.2004

For more on the impact of second homes visit the Northwest Colorado Council of Government or HMC's State of the Valley Symposium.

In the years since the first Burlingame vote, the makeup of the City Council has shifted. The shift in the council's makeup was followed by the hiring of consultants to analyze the city's options for additional worker housing and assess its overall need for more units. Burlingame emerged as a cost-effective project, given its scale, to provide significant additional housing, but the study delayed any forward movement on the project for a year.

The city has also renegotiated its pre-annexation agreement with the Zoline family, which owns the adjacent Bar/X Ranch, to increase the potential housing at Burlingame from 225 units to 330 homes. The Zolines get to build up to 12 luxury homes, a cabin and maintain a ranch compound on their property, along with an undefined cultural/educational facility.

It was approval of the pre-annexation agreement by voters four years ago that gave the project its green light in the public's eye, but the deal with the Zolines is a sore spot for opponents who contend a swath of sagebrush north of the Maroon Creek Club is the wrong spot for such a large residential development. It's also the focus of a pair of citizen initiatives that could, in effect, send the project back to the voters.

One of the ordinances would force the city to withdraw from the pre-annexation agreement it has struck with the Zolines and prevent the city from entering into such agreements in the future. The other would prohibit the city from spending money on capital improvements for a housing project and granting annexation or land-use approvals for the housing until the costs of the project have been determined and approved by voters.

If Burlingame opponents collect sufficient signatures on the two initiative petitions, the ordinances they propose could force an election regarding the project sometime next year. The timing of such an election may pose an interesting dilemma - the city could be poised to spend money on final design plans or actual construction before it knows the outcome of the vote.

The project's foes have amassed some $60,000 in pledges and are aiming for $150,000 either to launch an election campaign or battle the city in court, or both.

Edited from article by Janet Urquhart, 7.28.2004. www.aspentimes.com

Front Range diversions alone have cost the Roaring Fork above Aspen nearly 40 percent of its flow. Another 10 percent leaves the river above town at the Salvation Ditch, which waters hayfields and ranches down valley.

Few realize another troubling fact: The Roaring Fork appears to be on the verge of losing even more water, which could turn the river into the "Roaring Seep," as one Western Slope water official put it.

Quietly - as all water deals tend to unfold, at least initially - Front Range water interests are gearing up to do again what they've been doing for almost 125 years: move water from this moisture-rich region west of the Continental Divide to the water-starved communities on the east side.

Just how much water is a matter of debate, with estimates ranging from 8,000 to 15,000 acre-feet on average per year. That amounts to another 7 to 14 percent of the Roaring Fork's headwaters, on top of the 50 percent already taken.

Any new diversions out of the Roaring Fork would likely waken a sleeping giant. One big sign of that was the formation of the Roaring Fork Conservancy, a group that got its start in 1995 trying to protect riverside wildlife habitat from a planned golf course in Basalt.

Since then, the group has grown into Pitkin County's leading advocate for the Roaring Fork and its tributaries, monitoring water quality, protecting riverbanks from ecologically damaging development and educating schoolchildren about river science.

Kristine Crandall, a research specialist for the organization is struck by the irony of losing more water from Pitkin County and other headwater communities to the Front Range, when people from Denver and other cities love coming to the Western Slope to enjoy its waters.

"It's interesting because a lot of the Front Range benefits from our rivers and streams over here," Crandall said. "A lot of our tourism is built on these headwater communities and what they offer."

Edited from article by Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News, 10.6.2004 See the whole series at www.rockymountainnews.com

"They went down as far as they could go," Rifle Parks senior ranger Pete Firmin said of the Silt Water Conservancy District, the organization that allocates water from Rifle Gap and Harvey Gap reservoirs. "It'll gradually start to increase from now on." Firmin guessed it could take years of average snowfall to get the reservoir's level back to normal.

Harvey Gap, on the other hand, has filled every year since the drought started. That, Firmin said, is because Harvey Gap is smaller and has a higher priority than Rifle Gap in the state's water rights system.

Firmin said the two reservoirs exist primarily to store irrigation water, not provide a place for recreation. That's why the level has been allowed to drop so much. In fact, the bottom of the Rifle Gap boat ramp is well above the water level.

Scott Dodero, manager of the Silt Water Conservation District, said although the level of Rifle Gap has been dropping steadily, it could fill back up quicker than people think. "When they first built the reservoir in 1967, they thought it would take forever to fill," he said. But it took less than two years.

Edited from article by Greg Massé, www.postindedendent.com, 10.6.2004

The group is evaluating local population and job growth assumptions in light of the State's regional projections for our counties. The three counties, all jurisdictions and school districts are engaging in this Watershed Collaborative project.

This effort is exploring a number of growth related questions including:

• Are we anticipating capturing a larger share of growth, as jurisdictions, than might be reasonable?
• Are we predicting constraints and potential build-out for our own places?
• Are we predicting constraints and potential build-out for our own places?
• What does that mix look like?

The core planning group will be meeting October 22 with Westkott to try to thoroughly understand the assumptions behind the county projections used by the State and understand the economic drivers behind those assumptions. Resent projections imply more pressure on the Roaring Fork and Colorado River valleys than had been earlier anticipated.

To learn more about this effort contact Randy Russell, Garfield County Long Range Planner, 970-876-2093, rrussell@garfield- county.com.

Join citizens, bike enthusiasts, developers, health professionals, planners and engineers, community leaders, people involved in the tourism business and anyone interested in better community design, for an interactive session hosted by the New Century Transportation Foundation with Dan Burden to learn how we can make our communities, new developments, and our entire region as bike and pedestrian-friendly as possible.

Thursday, October 21, 6:00 - 9:00 pm
Carbondale Town Hall

Friday, October 22, 1:00 - 5:00 pm
Glenwood Springs Community Center

Workshops will focus on how to:

• improve bike and pedestrian infrastructure
• promote biking and walking mobility and decreases traffic congestion and parking needs
• use community design to help citizens incorporate physical activity into every day routines

Dan Burden is Director of Walkable Communities, Inc., a non-profit corporation formed in 1996 to help communities become more livable, walkable, and bikeable. During the past six years, Mr. Burden has worked in 1200 towns in all regions of North America, from small agricultural villages to large metropolises, helping communities identify better design or encouraging "active living".

The seventeenth Headwaters Conference, THE SECOND GREAT ETHIC: Ancient and Emerging Worldviews that determine how we live in a place, will take place at Western State College in Gunnison on Nov. 5-7. Speakers include:

• Dr. Holmes Rolston III, professor of philosophy and former minister, often described as "the father of environmental ethics as an academic discipline
• Dolores LaChapelle, writer and student of spiritual ways around the globe, who could be described as "the mother of deep ecology in America."
• Ed Marston, writer and former publisher of High Country News, who believes that a pragmatic spirit has stood us in good stead in the West and will carry us through the present.