Garfield County staff have also been working through the arduous task of re-writng the County Land Use Code that has not been revised since 1984.

The draft proposed Garfield County Development Code is now online for pubilc comment. (At 460+ pages, it will take a 52K modem user about 5 minutes to download.)

The new Code combines the Zoning and Subdivision regulations that had been in force for several decades into a unified Development Code covering zoning, application procedures, types of land use permits, standards, codes and reviews.

The draft Code updates definitions, suggests making some applications administrative, uses tables and charts to clarify types of uses and applications within a zoning district, unifies review times and clarifies the groundwork for the County entering into MOU's and IGA's with municipalities for shared standards and reviews.

The County is hosting review meetings for all municipal elected council persons,appointed planning commissioners, and staff on:

• Thursday, September 29th at 6:30pm in the Rifle City Council Chambers
• Monday, October 3rd, at 6:30pm in the Garfield BOCC Hearing Room, 6:30, Courthouse Plaza, 108 8th St. in Glenwood Springs

The Garfield County Planning commission will meet several times over the next six weeks to work on final review and revisions. The BOCC hearing or set of hearings is anticipated prior to the end of the year.

Comments are welcome, either in writing to the Building and Planning Department, 108 8th St., Suite 201, Glenwood Springs, CO 81601 or via the special e-mail response mechanism set up on the Web Site.

For the second year, assistant county manager Jess Smith invited a representative group of people randomly selected from property tax and voter registration rolls to find out what residents of Garfield County feel are the important issues." The focus group meetings were held in Glenwood Springs, Carbondale, Rifle, Battlement Mesa and Silt, with 102 people attending.

This year Pitkin County is on track for record- breaking sales of $2 billion. The market is attracting more people into the real estate field as well. During the first quarter of last year there were 1,072 people working for real estate sales, development and leasing companies in Pitkin County. During the first quarter of this year, the number of people employed in the sector swelled to 1,401 - growth of 329 people, or 31 percent, in one year.

Staff and Council are looking at a number of revenue generating options such as increasing traffic fines Motorists and increasing its utility franchise fees and utility payments in lieu of taxes.

One of the fastest Colorado counties over the last decade is wondering if they have too much of a good thing.

Development has occured in Eagle County at suggest a rapid pace that County Commissioner Peter Runyon believes a ban is a neccessary "break" while the county updates its land use regulations. He wants the ban to only apply to changing a piece of land's zoning to allow more homes to be built and allow for commissioners to be able to approve small subdivisions where the property owners can prove it would be a "hardship" to wait for the ban to expire.

Given how dependent the Eagle County economy is on real estate development, the discussions at the county courthose should be well attended. The issue is schedule to be on the Commissioners' agenda in October.

Interstate 70 is Colorado's main artery into the mountains. It dumps millions of tourists, cars, and mag chloride into the communities along its corridor. Concern over how the I-70 corridor is managed and improved have a coalition of 31 local governments and businesses thinking regionally. They are exploring the best way to get organized to ensure their preferred alternative for a corridor transportation plan are on the table.

The coalition met in Glenwood on Sept. 15 to discuss funding mechanisms to support the regional partnership and ultimately to support their preferred future for the corridor. Visit the NWCCOG website for minutes of the meeting.

Above-ground construction will begin in the spring of 2006 because of delays related to securing an Army Corps of Engineers permit, according to a news release from the development company. Construction on buildings had been scheduled to begin last spring.

Excavation on a three-story underground parking structure, construction of another parking lot and other infrastructure work will continue. But only 35 to 40 construction workers have been working on Base Village this summer though Intrawest had anticipated having 350 workers during the summer building months.

Intrawest is partnering with the Aspen Skiing Co. in building Base Village, a $400 million project that will bring 1 million square feet of development to Fanny Hill.

Carbondale’s Economic Roadmap Group presented its vision of the town’s economic future at a pair recent community meetings.

The full report is available on the Town of Carbondale's website.

The study will review and provide updated benchmark data on housing issues from Basalt to Parachute and benefit 7 municipalities. Regulatory recommendations will primarily focus on the Garfield County portions of the Roaring Fork drainage area, which is the only area now covered for affordable housing development stipulations in unincorporated Garfield County. Contact Randy Russell for more information 970-945- 8212 / randyrussell@juno.com.

Land Values
Garco has also contracted with BBC Research and Consulting in Denver to undertake an exhaustive study on land values to be overseen by the County's Energy Advisory Board.

This unique effort will examine the forces at work on changing land values, with special attention given to sudden changes in value caused by development efforts, such as the proximate location of drilling rigs, tanks, compressor stations, and haul routes. The study effort will work with land owners, real estate professionals, appraisers, lenders and industry representatives to identify creative solutions to shorter term impacts on property values, as well as at long term property value implications. For more information, contact Doug Dennison, County Oil and Gas Auditor (970-625-5691 or ddennison@garfield-county.com).

Numbers don't always tell the whole story, but recent numbers on housing, health insurance, and lobbyists are certainly interesting:

Housing

According to a recently released study by the Center for Housing Policy, the median price of a home in the U.S. increased from $186,000 to $225,000, or 20 percent. Meanwhile, wages for key community workers (elementary school teachers, police officers, nurses, retail salespersons and janitors) in the majority of cities nationwide remained flat.

The Center has set up an on-line seachable database of housing and wage info for metropolitan areas, so only Front Range communities are included from Colorado. For folks in Western Slope communities, the information is interesting nontheless.

Turns out that Pueblo is the only metro area on the Front Range where elementary school teachers and police offiers make enough (~$45,000) to afford the median priced home ($116,00). In Colorado Springs, Ft. Collins, Denver, and Boulder. Elementary teachers and police officers need to make $13,000 more in Colorado Springs and $44,000 more in Boulder to afford the median priced homes in those communities ($180,00 and $285,000 respectively). The situation is more dire in resort communities where median housing prices are in the $300K - $500K range.

Health Insurance

The U.S. Census Bureau recently reported that number of Colorado residents without health insurance edged up to 767,000 people last year, or 17.1 percent of the state population - higher than the 15.7%national average.

Lobbyists

Colorado has 11 lobbyists for every state legislator according to a report released by the Center for Public Integrity. With 1,054 lobbyists for the 100 legislators put Colorado in fourth place (and more than twice the national average) for the number of lobbyists per legislator. Only New York, Florida, and Illinois had higher ratios.

Over the past several months, the municipalities of Parachute, Rifle and Glenwood Springs, Garfield and Rio Blanco Counties, and the State Department of Natural Resources (Division of Wildlife, Parks and Recreation, State Geological Survey and the Colorado Oil and Gas Commission) have been working with the Glenwood Spring office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) as Cooperating Partners on the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Roan Plateau Resource Management Plan.

The Draft Plan received over 74,000 public responses, most concerned with whether or not natural gas drilling activities would be allowed on the plateau top.

Responses from the local and state partners do not reflect a consensus about drilling on top on the plateau (with Glenwood Springs and Rifle suggesting that isn't a preferable alternative now, along with a minority opinion letter from Garfield Commissioner Tresi Houpt), but all of the responses do indicate a strong consensus for development planning and stipulations crafted by the Department of Natural Resources participants.

The current DNR hybrid solution includes a limitation of less than 1% of the land on top allowed to be disturbed for roads, pads, compressor stations, pipelines, etc. and that this be a land 'bank' that would require areas to be reclaimed before additional land could be disturbed. It also calls for a 'rolling and phased' development of areas on the top to allow for wildlife disturbance to be shifted gradually between areas, for development to be primarily from ridge tops and on existing roads, half-mile spacing between well pads, for No Surface Occupancy stipulations to be honored to protect sensitive areas, that the entire area be managed as a Watershed Management Area to protect Parachute Creek, and that the area be declared an undivided federal unit requiring all lease holders on top to designate one sole production developer.

BLM now goes into an intensive and internal rewrite process with their consultants on the project. For more information, contact Greg Goodenow, at the Glenwood Springs BLM office, 947-2824 or greg_goodenow@co.blm.gov

The 16th annual Headwaters Conference takes place at Western State College in Gunnison, Nov. 4-6. This event is always fun, thought provoking, and affordable.

This year's title, The American Dream in the High Borderlands, explores two significant in- migrations (Latino and ex-urbanite) into the communities of the Headwater's region.