The Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs and Routt County are facing an unprecedented call for expansions of their Urban Growth Boundary — a fact the Community Alliance of the Yampa Valley thinks may be falling on deaf ears.

In an effort to get the public more engaged in the city and county’s joint consideration of 929.5 total acres of potential additions to the boundary, which delineates between land designed for urban and rural use, the alliance is hosting a meeting tonight on the history of the UGB, the amendment process and its relationship to annexation. The meeting is scheduled for 7 p.m. at the Steamboat Springs Community Center.

“The community itself hasn’t been that involved in the Urban Growth Boundary and even annexation,” said Steve Aigner, the alliance’s organizer. “We wanted to involve the community before the Aug. 12 meeting.”

Aug. 12 is when the Steam­boat Springs City Council and Routt County Board of Commissioners will hold a joint meeting to consider five proposed expansions of the UGB. The city and county planning commissions already have reviewed the proposals, with the exception of 360 Village, whose consideration by the Routt County Planning Commission was postponed last week until 6 p.m. Thursday.

Those meetings were marked by contentious discussion and close votes, but county planner Ellen Hoj agrees with Aigner that the public’s interest has fallen flat.

“The most surprising thing to me is how close the votes are and the lack of community members showing up to testify,” Hoj said. “There’s all sorts of misconceptions about the process and what’s in the petitions themselves.”

John Eastman, planning ser­­vices manager for the city, did not agree that public participation has been lacking, but applauded the alliance’s efforts to further involve the public.

“Call it Urban Growth Boundary 101,” Eastman said of the meeting. “What we’re not going to do is get into specific discussions of the current proposals.”

Aigner said Eastman and Hoj will speak to the history, purpose and process of amending the UGB. After the two planners take questions, there will be smaller group discussions at tables, Aigner said. Developers have been invited to the event; Aigner said they will answer questions and give factual statements but will not be allowed to pitch their proposals. Aigner said the meeting is open to members and nonmembers of the Community Alliance of the Yampa Valley.

Areas within the UGB are eligible for annexation into city limits. Those outside of it are not. For three projects in particular, annexation is vital to developers’ plans to increase Steamboat’s housing stock by about 3,000 homes combined in coming years.

One hundred and eighty-five acres of the proposed 700-acre Steamboat 700 project lie outside the UGB. The proposed 360 Village development includes 240 acres outside the UGB. That project totals 350 acres. The entire 464-acre Emerald Mountain parcel that owner Lyman Orton hopes to develop lies outside the UGB.

The two smaller applications among the five are for a half-acre lot owned by Butch Dougherty and for 40 acres owned by Alex Koftinow, who proposes 26 dwelling units along the Yampa River.

Of the five applications, Dougherty’s is the only one to receive support from the city and county planning commissions. In two narrowly divided votes, Steamboat 700 won a recommendation from the city planning commission but was voted down by county planning commissioners.