The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“I can’t say yes to approving an amendment without a plan”
By Kendra Walker
The town of Mt. Crested Butte and the Pitchfork Homeowner’s Association are still in the process of putting together a formal snow management and parking agreement. As previously reported in the Crested Butte News, the Pitchfork HOA has requested an amendment to the subdivision’s plat to reassign its public access parking to HOA parking use only to help ease the neighborhood’s parking and snow removal challenges.
After lengthy discussion during the October 7 council meeting, the council was not quite ready to move forward on the draft agreement and in a split vote agreed to continue the conversation to another meeting. However, they stressed the need to establish a snow management agreement this year before the snow flies. They are also toying with the idea of issuing the Pitchfork HOA a temporary one-year license agreement regarding parking for a trial run, rather than making an amendment to the plat.
Parking spaces in the neighborhood are a combination of specifically designated, public easement parking on private property and seasonal parking on town right-of-way (ROW). In previous years, the HOA and town of Mt. Crested Butte have worked together through a verbal agreement to manage snow removal in the winter. Staff has recommended that the town develop a formal operational agreement on snow management with the association, whether or not the council approves the parking amendment request. The HOA has argued that the parking amendment is just as crucial, as people that do not live in Pitchfork often come in and take advantage of the “free parking,” therefore hindering the snow removal process.
If the parking amendment is granted, the HOA said they plan to install signs stating that all parking in Pitchfork is for residents and their guests only.
“We’ll see how this winter goes with public signage, and we’ll learn very quickly from that,” said HOA representative Scott Robinson.
“We can accomplish a lot with signage at the entrance to the community and throughout. The noticing itself should get rid of the problem,” said HOA attorney Beth Appleton. “The signs serve as legal notice which will allow Pitchfork to tow. Ultimately, we have to work out details with towing. We’re going to find out this winter and come up with solutions.”
Councilmember Alec Lindeman expressed his disappointment that the HOA did not have more details on their plans for enforcement, as requested by the council. “I was pretty explicit about wanting to see a robust plan. This was already a huge entitlement by giving them access to a public right of way,” he said. “This ‘wait and see’ allows for so much flexibility that I just don’t feel comfortable. I can’t say yes to approving an amendment without a plan.”
Council member Roman Kolodziej stressed that he wanted the parking agreement completely separate from the snow removal agreement with the town. “There are so many unknowns, information about cost, where we’re storing snow and how we’re preventing snow storage to occur,” he said. “There’s snow storage not being used, and I’d like that to be addressed. People are planting trees in snow storage areas, in the right-of-way and decreasing snow storage. What is the plan to enforce the rules we already have before we change the rules again? You already have stuff you can do to increase snow storage… give them a winter or two to enforce rules we already have.”
Alex Summerfelt, who works for Toad Property Management to manage snow removal in the neighborhood, said the HOA is exploring the tree situation and is working with an arborist to conduct a tree survey. “The board is hearing you and trying to take action.”
“Are there some areas where you could work with people, are there things that could make life easier in there and more efficient?” asked councilmember Steve Morris, addressing the town’s maintenance department supervisor, Bobby Block.
“The town has roughly the same amount of snow storage on these roads as we have on most of our other roads. But if all private parking snow is coming into our right-of-way, it shrinks fast,” said Block. “You’d can’t put cars in front of snow storage areas where we can’t get to the snow. If a trash truck or fire truck can’t make the tight loop, that’s a problem. We’ll be able to do it if we have our space.”
Morris and councilmember Bobbie Sferra were both concerned that parking enforcement could increase residents’ HOA dues. “I want to know, what is each step of the process and the cost of each step in the process,” said Morris.
Lindeman made a motion to continue the consideration of the snow management plan and the plat amendment until the town has an updated snow management plan and a parking plan from the HOA, and to make those two separate agenda items in the future. However, the motion failed with Morris, mayor Nicholas Kempin and councilmember Bruce Nation voting against. Councilmember Valeda Scribner was not at the meeting.
Town attorney Gerald Dahl suggested the town could issue a parking license instead of a parking plat amendment. “You could do some license and then a year from now you can look at it and decide whether to make it more permanent and tweak the agreement based on the year’s experiment. That’s a middle ground between approving it now and not approving it at all.”
“It seems like that achieves all the goals,” said Kempin. “It gets the Pitchfork folks to where they want to be this winter, and it also gives us a chance to reevaluate it at a future time to tweak and have a better version in front of us a year from now.”
The council voted 4-2 (Morris and Kolodziej voting against) to continue the discussion and to direct staff to bring back for the council’s consideration the revised snow management and parking agreement, proposed parking management plan by the HOA and a temporary license agreement to implement the parking plan. The item will be scheduled for a future meeting once Pitchfork submits a revised plan to the town.
