CB town council starts budget process with goals and priorities

Affordable housing, climate, Community Compass plan

by Mark Reaman

As the Crested Butte Town Council prepares to look at a draft budget for 2021, the first step of listing goals and priorities started this week during a Monday work session.

In both the short-term 2021 future and a longer five-year planning future, continuing to focus on affordable housing, moving forward with a comprehensive planning document known as the Community Compass, maintaining the town’s solid financial reserves, implementing the Climate Action Plan and looking at traffic and parking including a possible continuation next summer of the reconfigured Elk Avenue all made the list.

Staff and council voiced many times that the future of Crested Butte revenues, especially through sales tax, remains uncertain. No one knows how the winter ski season will play out or if there will still be restrictions in place next summer that will impact visitors.

“The staff will use the goals and priorities as a guidepost for the budget,” said Crested Butte finance director Rob Zillioux. He said a first detailed draft of the budget would come to the council in early October.

“Our hope as the staff is to have a balanced budget next year where revenues and expenses are neutral. It is very strange right now,” said town manager Dara MacDonald. “Our recommendation is to remain as conservative with the budget as we can while continuing to provide as many services as possible.”

Zillioux said that while sales tax revenue has been hurt this summer as a result of restrictions associated with COVID-19, overall revenues haven’t been too far off. “But this winter will probably be a different story, with reservations needed to ski and people not able to sit outside and eat at the local restaurants. I’m worried capacity restrictions might really hurt our local restaurants this winter.”

Council member Mona Merrill who owns a café in Breckenridge said she got a taste of what might be to come last Saturday when it rained all day. “People don’t want to be inside,” she said. “Our revenues on Saturday probably declined 80 percent. It was an ‘Ah ha, holy sh*t’ moment of what might come this winter.”

Mayor Jim Schmidt said he was hopeful that local restaurants would be able to have a robust take-out business to complement inside restrictions.

 

Affordable housing still on the forefront

Several affordable housing initiatives are front and center for the council. They want to evaluate what might go on the lot dedicated to affordable housing with the new Slate River annexation across from the Gas Café. Staff is currently analyzing a program based on Vail’s InDeed program that pays local homeowners a portion of the property value in exchange for putting some sort of deed restriction on the unit. Community development director Troy Russ said his team was gathering information on how it could work in Crested Butte. He said the council should see something relatively soon.

Other budget initiatives tied to affordable housing include “collaborating and cooperating” with Mt. Crested Butte for more affordable housing construction; monitoring units being built throughout the county that might impact what direction to take to finish out the Paradise Park deed-restricted lots; moving ahead with the Crested Butte Community School students on a combination affordable housing unit and Nordic snowcat barn; being at the ready in case people in some deed-restricted units have difficulty paying their mortgage; and offering assistance so as to not lose the deed-restricted units.

Long-term council goals include achieving 75 percent occupancy in town by full-time residents and having 30 percent of units in town be deed-restricted, including 15 rentals units for town employees.

 

Traffic, parking, snow storage and Elk Avenue

Traffic and parking remains on the council’s list of priorities. There will be discussion on whether to reconfigure Elk Avenue next summer with one-way traffic, regardless of pandemic restrictions that may be still in effect. “I have heard mainly positive comments,” said Schmidt. “There is some negative feedback on the impact to the side streets but I think it is something we need to discuss.”

“My scars from the initial Elk Avenue discussion are disappearing,” said MacDonald. “We now have good data on how it actually worked and we can talk about it now in more thoughtful ways.”

Council members Will Dujardin and Chris Haver want to bring back the Crested Butte parking plan that was completed a few years ago and see how it fits into the equation.

What to do about snow storage, especially on the west side of town, is coming into play. Public Works director Shea Earley said that as open lots disappear throughout town, the leases the town has with property owners to store snow also disappear. He said securing some of the lots as permanent snow storage sites will not be cheap, telling the council to expect to spend close to $1 million for some of the lots.

 

Community Compass

The once lukewarm council reception for the so-called Community Compass comprehensive plan got enough interest to stay on the list of priorities. “Such a plan really sets the framework of decision making in a community,” said Russ. “It is a policy driver, an aspirational document. It is a roadmap that changes over time.”

“Not having such a comprehensive plan is problematic,” emphasized MacDonald. “With the retirement of key senior staff it keeps the reasoning for certain decisions in front of us with historical perspective. A lot of the key people in the community are also moving on and not around to provide historical context. The plan comes from having a community-wide conversation of who we are and what we as a community want to be. The development of this document guides where we want to go. It is a fluid document.”

“Decisions that 20 years ago might have been black and white are more complex now,” said council member Merrill. “In my mind, it also gets more people involved.”

“I don’t anticipate this being a big impact on the budget but it is an important conversation to have,” said MacDonald. “We need to understand where the community falls on big issues.”

“I think our community is at a tipping point,” added Zillioux. “I’m worried about it. There are some big issues that need to be addressed with community input. Do we want to protect what we love or develop every inch of land up and down Highway 135, for example?”

Russ said he hopes to start having that conversation with the community in the first quarter of 2021. “We’re not yet sure of the process to get the community involved under the circumstances but we’ll figure it out,” he said.

Raising rates?

Zillioux said the town was reaching a point where taxes and fees that fund Enterprise Funds addressing features such as streets and alleys, water and sewer services will likely need a financial boost and that could mean an increase in rates.

The town could raise the mill levy for the street and alley fund since voters approved a mill levy that is not fully implemented.

Council member Mallika Magner argued against any increases in rates and taxes since it would burden already struggling businesses and citizens.

“All property taxes will go up exponentially, given what’s been happening recently with sales prices,” said council member Laura Mitchell.

Magner said she’s been told by the county that valuations in the north end of the valley will indeed be going up “unpleasantly” in the coming years.

Staff will gather more information for the council on what a mill levy and rate increase will mean specifically to local businesses and residents.