County holds off on Lower Verzuh decision

Waiting until next week due to Internet outage

by Katherine Nettles

Gunnison County commissioners will be making their final decision next week on the sketch plan application for the Lower Verzuh major impact project application. In a major change of course last week, the Gunnison County Planning Commission voted unanimously to recommend sketch plan approval with conditions for the application. The decision was then moved to Gunnison County commissioners for a final decision on Tuesday, August 11. And after considerable debate, commissioners decided in a split vote to forgo an additional public hearing, but to hold off on their final decision until next Tuesday, August 18.

The decision to hold off on their ruling for another week was due to valley-wide internet and cellular service outages on Monday and Tuesday that prevented commissioners from fully reviewing the planning commission’s August 6 deliberation and also prevented the public from remote access to the commissioner’s meeting on August 11.

The applicant, Bill Lacy and Daniel Dow of Lacy and Dow LLC propose to develop a 450-acre parcel near Brush Creek Road along the east side of Highway 135 for 338 residential lots. The lots would accommodate 433 units, including 179 essential housing units.

The planning commission deliberated the recommendation twice, having first reached a 2-2 stalemate after a joint public hearing with county commissioners on July 9. The stalemate resulted in failure to send any recommendation to county commissioners, whether for denial, approval or approval with conditions. Commissioners then decided to remand the recommendation to the planning commission for a more thorough analysis of whether the application met the county’s land use resolution criteria for sketch plan approval.

The planning commissioners reopened that discussion on August 6 and made relatively fast progress in finalizing a referral draft to approve the project with 11 conditions (see story on page 14).

The planning commission then voted unanimously in favor of recommending the plan for approval with conditions.

Commissioners’ take

County commissioners had the discussion on their August 11 agenda and had extensive debate over the first decision of whether to hold a public hearing before making a final decision on the application. Ultimately, they voted 2-1 to opt out of a public hearing, with commissioners Jonathan Houck and Liz Smith in favor and commissioner Laura Puckett Daniels against.

Smith and Houck both felt they had heard enough public comment during the joint public hearing on July 9, and did not believe they would hear new information to inform their decision. The criteria for a public hearing in this case is to receive new or additional information or to consider extraordinary public interest.

“I am not inclined to continue with another public hearing because I believe we would be getting another accumulation of testimony that is making the same points,” said Smith. She said she was open to considering new information but based on the planning commission recommendation she wasn’t seeing that and wanted to keep the review process moving.

Houck agreed that he didn’t anticipate new opinions or information from another public hearing.

Puckett Daniels said there were several reasons to hold another public hearing, however. Given how quickly the planning commission changed from a split vote to a unanimous vote, she wanted to watch the recording of their meeting from four days prior “for due diligence of the public process.” An internet outage had prevented her and the other commissioners from viewing the recording on Monday. She also said in her four years as a commissioner, “this is the most public interest I’ve seen.”

Puckett Daniels also made the point that she had received 12 public comments since they closed the joint public hearing last month, and she wants to be able to read them legally with a new public hearing to be a good steward of the public voice while balancing procedural efficiency.

“I’m not as concerned about listening to the deliberations of the planning commission,” said Houck. “I just wanted their recommendation to be toggled to the regulations.” He said he had taken people’s concerns and questions seriously, and many of those are based on things that cannot be answered during sketch plan. “But our process is designed for those questions to be answered after sketch plan at preliminary plan.”

Puckett Daniels noted that the joint public hearing is efficient for everyone to hear together, but the county commissioners participate lightly during actual planning commission deliberations. She also urged that letting the public know that tethering their comments to the planning criteria they must apply for this stage would be helpful. “While they don’t vote on this application, they certainly do vote for us…” she said.

After voting to opt out of the public hearing, commissioners debated whether to decide on the application immediately or to wait a week. While Smith and Houck indicated they were ready to make a decision, Puckett Daniels advocated to reschedule the decision for another day to allow the public to be in attendance given the communication hurdles. She noted their meeting was not widely available to anyone on Zoom as it would typically be, due to the continued internet outage.

“This is one of the most monumental decisions we will make,” she said. “I think we owe it to the people of Gunnison County to at least be able to hear us make the decision.”

Houck argued that sketch plan approval does not approve anything. “It simply states that you have met the criteria to explore further,” he said.

Puckett Daniels countered that saying yes to the sketch plan signals to the applicant that there is a path forward.

Smith and Houck both said they saw it differently. Smith said they have had projects that made it to preliminary plan and did not get approved. She said the recommendation that she had received from the planning commission was frankly what she had expected after the joint public hearing. She asked if there was confusion about the plan, or its alignment with criteria. She said she did not believe the communication barriers on Zoom would materially affect their ruling. “I am hesitant to prolong or extend the process. I think that there are hard decisions and making them timely is also part of the public process.”

Houck said he could appreciate Puckett Daniels’ point about the communications complications and given they had voted not to hold a public hearing, he and Smith agreed to hold off until next week to make their decision.