Gunnison County approaches zoning discussion cautiously

Sage Grouse might force the planners’ hands

If there’s one word that can silence a planning commission meeting, if only briefly, it’s ‘zoning’. But the silences are growing shorter as the idea becomes more commonplace in a push by the Gunnison Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) to guide development in the county.

When the topic came up again at a joint meeting of the BOCC and Planning Commission Friday, September 4, the discussion of how to proceed wasn’t deferred to a later time, but instead started a conversation about how to get started mapping future growth in the county.
County commission chairperson Paula Swenson told the county planners that “long term planning is something that the commissioners have wrestled with,” but there is agreement among the BOCC that density should be kept close to urban areas.
One way the county is trying to encourage the shift in development from rural to urban areas is through amendments to the County’s Land Use Resolution, which regulates most development in unincorporated areas of the county, and that is where they’re headed next.
“We have ideas of directing growth to where the utilities are, so we don’t have 500 septic systems scattered around a mountain,” county commissioner Jim Starr said. “But we need to work together on ways we can accomplish that.”
Planning Commissioner David Owen asked if they were “talking about the ‘z’ word? It sounds like we’re getting closer to zoning.”
With only a brief pause at the suggestion, Swenson said, “Yeah, I think we are.”
But the idea of zoning as the commissioners have described it isn’t the classic “Euclidian” style of zoning, where everything has its place, according to commissioner Hap Channell. It will look more like overlays on the county map that restricts certain activities in certain areas.  
And while there is a desire to guide development, the more pressing concern is keeping the authority over development in local hands, which could be compromised if the Gunnison Sage-Grouse gets protection from the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA).
Listing the bird as endangered is something the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which oversees the ESA, will be considering over the next year and the Colorado Wildlife Commission has to give a recommendation on how management of the species should go forward June 30.
“The Fish and Wildlife Service wants us to make a decision on this,” county wildlife coordinator Jim Cochran said. “If we can put together a reasonable plan and show that we have control then they’ll most likely include out management strategy in whatever plan they come up with.”
Although a Gunnison Sage Grouse Strategic Conservation Plan is in place, the county has to establish where the occupied sage grouse habitat is and try to keep people and development away.
County GIS director Mike Pelletier is already working on developing an overlay to give county planners an idea of where those areas of concern might be. Right now, Cochran has to review every Land Use Change application to make a case-by-case assessment of the impacts to the sage grouse.
But the Fish and Wildlife Service will want more than that, he said.
“We have to find a way of determining places where development is okay and others where it is not,” Cochran said. “It is a function of listing or not listing. Most likely the species will be listed if this does not occur. If it is listed, a Habitat Conservation Plan will be required and it will have this kind of zoning in there.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service will make a determination on the listing of the Gunnison sage Grouse by June 30, 2010 and Cochran thinks the County has to act now to keep control then.
Planning Commission chairman Ian Billick, wanting some clarification, said, “This is all about maintaining local control over land use decisions.”
Cochran nodded deliberately. “They’re looking at us to take control at the local level.”
Swenson said, “It’s huge. It’s very huge.”
So the effort to develop an overlay identifying areas of important habitat for the Gunnison sage grouse is under way. Starr said it would probably be a long time before the county creates any other overlays to be used in development planning.