The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Dear Community,
Recently there have been several editorials, letters to the editor, and public discussion about a “pause” or moratorium on development in the North Valley until the completion of the Gunnison to Mt. Crested Butte Corridor Plan. The editor of this paper and the town of CB have both asserted positions that have not been supported by legal argument or citations to law. I want to clarify a few important facts. There is a significant amount of misinformation circulating about what the county commissioners can—and cannot—legally do.
First, the County cannot pause or ignore land use applications that are already in progress; by law, we are required to review them once submitted, and there are often required timelines associated with that. Second, moratoria are legally limited to six months for counties. Because the Corridor Plan is expected to take 12 to 18 months to complete, a moratorium is an ineffective tool for long-term planning. Both of these legal opinions are from the county attorney, and we’re happy to cite the statutes and case law, if you’d like to get into that level of detail with us!
I, for one, want my elected leaders to follow the law. That seems like a basic tenet of good governance and decency. While I recognize our leaders in Washington seem to have a loose relationship with the law, adhering to laws continues to be a value I hold.
As one of your elected County Commissioners, I am listening carefully to community concerns, and I take them seriously. At the same time, I have an obligation to uphold the law, follow due process, and review applications that come before the County in a timely and impartial manner. Our responsibility is to work within the system we have—using existing land use regulations to say no to projects that are not right for the County and yes to those that meet our standards—while also building a stronger framework for the future through the Corridor Plan. That work is not an either/or proposition; it must happen simultaneously. Even if we issued a moratorium a year ago, it would have expired by now, and it wouldn’t have applied to the Starview sketch plan proposal. We would still be in the same position: undertaking our big picture planning and land use processes at the same time.
Please continue to engage and express your views. I, and your other local representatives, are listening. Most importantly, please come to the table during the Corridor Planning process this year to do the work of creating a vision for our future with the same passion you are showing now for saying no to things.
Laura Puckett Daniels
Chair, Gunnison County Board of County Commissioners
Editor of this paper response: I too want my elected leaders to the follow the law. I also want them to be nimble enough to react constructively to realities on the ground that change quickly.
I do not recall either myself or the town having “asserted positions that have not been supported by legal argument or citations to law.” If I recall correctly, the town of Crested Butte asked the county to institute a moratorium on new North Valley subdivision applications about a year ago in January of 2025. They could smell what was coming. The county did not respond. In February of 2025, Lacy and Dow officially submitted their Lower Verzuh Ranch proposal. It was not “in progress” at the time of the moratorium request.
While the Starview proposal was indeed “in progress,” I wrote last week that the county planning commission sent a clear message that the county’s Land Use Resolution can be used effectively for the county to get what it wants. What that is, even in the big picture, seems unclear. That is where taking a breath to focus on clarity might come in handy. Lower Verzuh is multiple times larger and has the potential to be multiple times more impactful in terms of numbers to the North Valley municipalities and residents than Starview. The commissioners had the opportunity to take that breath before the Lower Verzuh application was officially submitted. And the town’s recent letters to you and the other commissioners included suggestions pointing to specific LUR provisions that could be used to – take a breath and provide clarity by rejecting the proposal as it stood.
While I understand government bureaucracy is slow and you and the county feel a Corridor Plan for the North Valley will take until well into 2027 to complete, I contend that taking a breath and discussing what might be called the executive summary of what the county wants in the big picture would have benefitted (and still could benefit) everyone. Reading the pleas from the developers who contend they want to do the right thing for the community while making a profit (fair), providing clarity at the so-called 30,000-foot level seems it would be a plus for everyone involved – the developers, the county and the citizens.
And while I am not a lawyer but can play one on the Internet (and this probably will get me in trouble), everything I see says that while Colorado counties are limited to impose a moratorium no longer than six months, they can also extend them under certain circumstances through a public hearing process.
Ask your team about the Colorado Supreme Court decision established in Droste v. Board of County Commissioners that counties possess broader authority under the Local Government Land Use Control Enabling Act to maintain moratoria as long as they are reasonable and tied to a legitimate planning purpose. Hmmmm, planning.
According to a Big Pivots column we sometimes run, Montrose County recently ended a three-year moratorium on utility-scale solar installations. But lawyerly arguing isn’t the point…
Look, I don’t think anyone said navigating this stuff would be easy, but those of us in the North Valley, including me and the town, are looking for and suggesting alternative, perhaps out-of-the-box — but legal — tools that might be used to address quickly changing realities on the ground. Frankly the LUR is one as proved recently by both the BOCC and planning commission decisions. So is taking a breath to lay out the basic foundation of an 18-month corridor planning process.
We all know growth is inevitable and hope the North Valley Corridor Plan is a great document that guides the growth up here based on our small-town, rural community values that protect what we all hold dear. Personally, I prefer to be proactive rather than waiting for a consultant to give us a report in a year-and-a-half. Thanks for writing.
—Mark Reaman
