The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Reducing greenhouse gas, establishing dedicated road funds and finishing corridor plan among priorities
By Katherine Nettles
Gunnison County commissioners are in the process of updating their strategic planning, and after a retreat followed by a work session discussion last week, they identified continual priorities on infrastructure, environment, community well-being and providing services as well as new priorities around community engagement.
The county updates the plan every two years, and last did so in 2024.
County staff and commissioners first gathered for a strategic planning retreat in February of this year to review progress and assess new challenges and fine-tune their goals. County manager Matthew Birnie said he had gathered the input from that retreat for this year’s updated plan and shared it with commissioners on May 26.
The plan uses four priorities as a guide: ensuring sound infrastructure, protecting the environment, promoting prosperous and healthy communities and delivering high-quality services. This year, the county added a fifth priority: to invigorate community engagement.
In a memo to commissioners, Birnie first listed some past successes from the strategic planning process, which included paving Cottonwood Pass, Shady Island Park, the Gunnison-Crested Butte Airport facility remodel and air service expansion. The county has supported conservation of more than 95,000 acres of private land, strengthened oil and gas regulations and reduced energy use in county facilities. The county also established the Sustainable Tourism and Outdoor Recreation (STOR) Committee and created the Gunnison Valley Regional Housing Authority (which recently transitioned to the Gunnison County Housing Authority) and facilitated workforce housing projects including Sawtooth and Whetstone Village. “We reduced youth substance use among students in grades 6–12 to 16% by 2021, and we implemented a 2011 tax reduction projected to save taxpayers approximately $18.3 million,” according to the memo. The county has also established biennial citizen surveys; completed an Emergency Preparedness Plan; modernized its Land Use Resolution (LUR); and completed the Gunnison Area Plan and Special Area Regulations.
Updated goals
The updated draft plan for ensuring sound infrastructure includes three goals: to establish funding for “more dependable, better-maintained county roads and bridges” by the end of 2026; to collaborate with the City of Gunnison to plan the extension of water supply to parcels in the Gunnison North Urban Transition Area, as described in the Gunnison Area Plan, by 2028; and to facilitate the airport’s master plan with expanded economic benefits to the community measurable by 2030.
To protect the environment, the draft plan identified three goals: work with partners to protect water quality and quantity for in-basin purposes; reduce energy use impacts and lower greenhouse gas emissions by 50% from 2005 levels by the end of 2030; and expand conserved private ranchland in the county by an additional 8,500 acres by 2031 “in order to protect open space and the watershed, ensure access to public lands and trails, and preserve agriculture.”
The subgoals of reducing energy use and greenhouse gas emissions are: a) continual decrease of Average EUI (energy use intensity) of commercial and residential buildings as measured biannually in the county’s Greenhouse Gas Inventory; b) 100% of Gunnison County buildings electrified, and Main Campus buildings onsite energy generation by 2030 and c) decreasing average VMT (vehicle miles travelled) by 8% per capita from 2015 levels by 2030 “as a result of the county’s land-use policies, creation of workforce housing near jobs, support of mass transit, and creation of additional multi-modal transportation options.”
For promoting prosperous communities there are four goals: stabilize and increase early childhood education; reduce youth substance use by the end of 2027 through the juvenile services department and several partnerships and programs; improve several health and human services measures (child vaccination rates, child welfare case circumstances, vital records audit results, food assistance eligibility determinations, adult protection case circumstances and opioid prevention measures); and facilitate the construction of 300 new essential housing units by the end of 2030. This refers to the housing projects already in the queue, as opposed to any new projects, confirmed Birnie.
Under high quality services, there are three goals: implement licensing procedures for short-term rentals (STRs) by the end of 2026, make measurable advancements in leadership capacity/workforce excellence; and by the end of 2028, initiate an expedited review process to approve essential housing projects in designated areas. Commissioners briefly discussed the need to delay this summer’s planned rollout of the new STR licensing program. “We really do need that additional time to just figure out how we’re going to take all these [applications] in and conduct our reviews,” said assistant county manager for community and economic development April Kroner. “We don’t even have the system set up yet…and during those summer months that’s really our busy time so our building team is going to be out there doing a ton of inspections.” She said inspecting onsite wastewater treatment systems and capacities for STRs would be difficult, but she said they would work on getting the systems set up.
Commissioners agreed they would rather make sure the licensing system was a better product than to rush it.
The expedited essential housing review process goal included the subgoal of completing the comprehensive corridor plan from Gunnison to Mt. Crested Butte by the end of 2027. That plan was initiated this spring.
The newest category, invigorate community engagement, includes two goals: continue to be intentional in committing to being a strategic partner with neighboring jurisdictions and other organizations “seeking to preserve and improve the quality of life in our community,” and ensure better community understanding of county services and how to participate in local government. The second goal will be measured by biennial citizen survey results.
Regarding the last category, commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels said she wanted to add quarterly meetings with town councils and the CB South Property Owner’s Association. Commissioner Jonathan Houck responded that much of that goal felt a bit like naming what they already do. “It’s doing our jobs,” he said, and suggested that they name “regular meetings” with those entities but that anything they schedule they must measure and track to be accountable. He said they can meet a minimum and exceed that minimum as things come up. Commissioner Liz Smith suggested annual town hall meetings in Somerset as well.
Birnie said he would adjust a few details based on the work session feedback and commissioners will review a final draft for adoption at the June 16 meeting.
