Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

here. Church here. Ryan Hill I think also said he noted. Um Commissioner Tharp, Commissioner Lee. Yes, and Commissioner Bulock. Um we don't have any changes to the agenda, but do we do have minutes from October 20th? Do I have a motion to approve this? Everybody have a chance to review them? Um I didn't get to attend that meeting, so Okay. I I reviewed them. Yeah, they're fine. I move to approve the meetings minutes from the 20th. Great. Can I get a second? I second. Okay. All in favor? I I

Are you good with names? Sorry, I forgot to Okay. Um Jason, um All right. And we have new business. We have file 25-9 which is the Alpenflow staff continuation to December 8th. Um as well as file 25-31 kind of go hand in hand group camp code amendment for section 5.2.6. Um also staff continuation to um December 8th in order to remedy a public public notice error. Um is there anything additional? I think that covers it.

Okay. I know we have an applicant here. Okay. Do I have a motion to continue? And we'll have to read those both of those file numbers. Okay. I'll move to continue file 25-9 to December 8th. Individual move. Uh sure. Okay. Second. Okay. Any [clears throat] discussion? All in favor? I I I Okay. I move to continue file 25-31 to December 8th. Second. Okay. All in favor? I I

Great. Okay. December Bryce water enterprise presentation.

Okay. All right. Um, yeah. So, when I was asked to do this, I was really hoping I had some more like legal progress for you guys, but it's been a while since I presented about the water uh to the planning commission. So, I just wanted to give new members a chance to get some info and then just kind of give you guys an update of where we're at on the timeline of when this plan um is going to hopefully be implemented. I need to open [laughter]

and it did look like a commissioner joined us. How do I get this to share? Hi. Hi. Sorry I missed roll call. It's okay. We'll forgive you this time. Okay.

Well, Sarah Mud is here. Before she left, before her turn was up, she really helped on the water stuff and kind of got us to where the point where I took over. um last summerish I started learning and taking over and then before Sarah left office we were able to pass the water marketing policy and so basically we have a court case that allows us to use the small amount of water rights that Lake County owns in a pretty uh a blanket way you could say it's called a blanket augmentation plan but that just gives us the ability to use it throughout the county. It didn't really give us the way we could use it throughout the county. that was an internal decision. So through a lot of sessions um last year and the year before we kind of laid out the limitations of the water plan, the limitations of the water portfolio we have and then the needs we're trying to address. And so through that we created a water marketing policy which is resolution 2439. You want to look it up, but it's 20 pages that kind of just goes through a lot of the technical elements that I'll just discuss in brief tonight.

[laughter] I mean, it's an active registered.

All right. So, I just want to make it clear, you know, my name is Bryce Erlick, right? I'm a water resource program manager for Lake County. I am the county's staff member that handles water resources full-time, but um I'm part of a team. You know, I don't do it alone. I handle everything on the ground here in the county, but I also work with community planning and development, public works, parks, wreck, and open space just to kind of clue them in and also get their feedback on how we should be running our water resources. And through that feedback, we came up with some of the regulations we have in the water marketing policy that I'll go over. I have a contracted engineering firm, Brown and Caldwell. We went through an RFP process in 2024 and got a new engineering firm and they've been fantastic. I talk to Adam and Sky every week. I talked to Adam this morning about stuff. So, they're just they're really responsive. They're actually rather affordable um for what they give us. And um I have nothing but good things to say about them. As far as our legal team goes, we do fire our old water council. So, opposite um impression. And so, we are now going through the RFP process to select a new water attorney. Um, Matt Hobbs is our new county attorney, so he just started a few weeks ago. He's been great. He's very, uh, former litigator. Um, he's very by the book and so I I have a lot of confidence that he's going to get us a good attorney and also just one that's going to be a lot more responsive to our needs. That was what we were just struggling with. Our old attorney kind of treating us like a, you know, a tiny little insignificant player. And um we're going through so much change right now that we really need a more responsive, more engaged attorney. And we need someone that can think creatively too around a lot of these issues that we have. A lot of them if they're water related, they're probably going to require a court case. And so we need a water attorney that we can go with these ideas to and just, you know,

throw it. Look, here's an idea we have. Is this viable? Right? That is so valuable to have from a council and we just haven't had it. So that's what we're looking for. And um within the next month, I expect that RFP process to go rather quickly. So we should have a full-time water attorney again by the end of the month or by the end of November. So Lake County through a bunch of different history, um Lake County has a small portfolio of water, right? So we have one ditch, right? The dairy ditch number three, right, that we still yield water from. And then through a bunch of negotiations, the city of Aurora, who our water infrastructure is tied to and our water plant is now kind of tied to the hip to Aurora also provides us a bit of water every year out of their trans mountain accounts. So the first bit of water that comes through or I guess you could say the first bit of water that's called and prioritized that comes under the mountains is 40 acre feet reserved for Lake Countyy's use every year. And that's a use it or lose it, right? we don't if we don't use all of it, Aurora doesn't give us a little bit extra the next year. It's 40 acre feet a year and then whatever natural yield we get out of the dairy ditch number three. So, you know, in water in water, we can come back to this map, but I also want to bring up another map where we can dive in a little bit um you know, closer [clears throat] to it and look at some individual cases that are going on right now. But this is the area that Lake County can serve under our blanket augmentation plan with our water rights. So our water rights come from, you know, a very specific stream, but because it's so close to the Arkansas River, we can then what's called augment that water, right? We can take that natural stream flowing water, credit it as going to the river system, and then we can use that those credits we've accumulated to offset water use throughout the rest of this service

area. Historically, most of our water goes to irrigate the golf course, right? So, we measure the water down towards Twin Lakes. We say, "This is how much water our irrigation rate yielded." And then through a fancy paper exchange with the division engineers office in PBLO, we say actually we're going to use that water farther upstream at the golf course for irrigation.

So in water, we use a lot of different, you know, industry lingo. The biggest one is acrefoot. I know David knows acre feet in and out, but acre feet is essentially a football field sized area, one foot deep of water. And that's just, you know, when we're talking about large volumes of water, we can't talk about them in gallons anymore because then we're into millions and gallons right away. So, we we use a larger um measurement unit, which is acre foot, which is roughly 360,000 gallons of water. And then we also have an augmentation unit. So, that's a little bit of our water, right? A unit of our water that we've allocated that we then augment to another use. Be that the golf course, be that a new house as well. means water.

So, we're augmenting in augmenting in water means using it for a different purpose. Lake County, like I just said, we have 50% of dairy ditch number three. That yields an average of 34 acre feet a year.

And then our Aurora Trans Basin is 40 acre feet a year. BM supply. Key point is that that's super limited. You know, the Hayden Pond that we all drive by on Highway 24, that's roughly 50 acre feet of storage, the entire thing. So, if you gather all of our flowing water every year, it's about 1 and a half ten ponds worth of water. Um, [clears throat] my bible in my office is water court case 98 CW173. It's 68 pages long, and it dictates what our water is, what sources it is, and how we can use it. And so that court case took almost 20 years to get adjudicated. And it was finally adjudicated right when Sarah came into office and was able to start working on the actual technical elements of the blanket augmentation plan that the county needed to do to to use our water. And mostly that comes from measurement, right? To be able to use an amount of water, you have to measure how much is coming in and how much is going out. And so one of the Sarah focused mostly on the physical infrastructure that needed to get put in so we could actually measure all this water. So we put an augmentation station or a measurement station up on the base of Mount Albert that comes and um takes water from Bartle Lake Gulch and that marries our that measures our dairy ditch number three water. We also put a staff gauge in Hayden Pond so that we could measure how full or how empty the pond was. Did you do any other physical infrastructure on that?

Um, we just did uh as built surveying. Had to do an asbuilt survey of the Hayden pond to get an actual scientific measurement of how much water could go in and out of it. And that's also because, [clears throat] you know, every reservoir has a dead pool, which is the amount of water that's below the intake or outlet device that you just can't get rid of. And Hayden Reservoir was actually designed with a larger than necessary deadpool to give fish refuge if the pond ever was drained to this, you know, that extent. There's a what's called a fish refugeio on the bottom. That's an actual deep trench that's just meant to give the fish a few more days of life until more water comes into the pond. [clears throat]

We board the water projects enterprise which is the state statute thing and allows us to you know [clears throat] uh collect more money every year than we give back. It's debru not subject to tab rules. So that's essential right for an enterprise that's meant to gather money to then invest in huge capital projects we have to be able to gather money and keep it from year to year. And then to this point, our current uses of Lake County water, what we're working on getting, you know, adding to those uses, but right now we irrigate the Mount Massive Golf Course. That takes about 40 to 45 acre feet a year of our um portfolio. And then we also um pay for the evaporation off of Hayden Recreation Pond. So Hayden Recreation Pond, the evaporation alone takes about 25% of our total water every year. And that's to me crazy seeing how small it is and that it's frozen six months a year. That's how much evaporation there is. So you think about the reservoirs down further in the valley towards PBLO. Just think about how much they're losing to evaporation that they have to account for before they can even think about delivery. But now we have this ability to augment to all kinds of other uses. So we're replacing water. You know this is

you can have water you can use your water in. its original place in time and otherwise you have to store it and re release it when you use it to make the river whole is essentially what you're trying to do, right? You're trying to give the water to the river that was already allocated to it by the original ranch being irrigated or whatever. A lot of that water that goes into the ranch, not all of it stays with the grass and goes to the grass, right? A lot of it returns to the river or the stream flow. When you change your water rate to be used for something else, you still owe all that extra water that wasn't consumed by the grass or now consumed by wells. You still owe all that back to the river called return flow obligations. So, we can augment though, you know, throughout the year. The examples of things we can augment now that are new would be wells, you know, new wells throughout the service area. We can augment new stream diversions and we can also augment loss to ground absorption or evaporation. We can augment irrigation to fields. Um but the big part is that any natural augmentation or you know surface augmentation because of groundwater loss and evaporation. It's just a lot more intensive of a water use. Wells because you have a tiny little straw. you're only sucking up what you need off the faucet at that given time. They're a pretty efficient way to use water, right, volumewise. So 1/10enth of an acre foot we've been assured by our engineers is sufficient to provide the amount of water that one house needs or an EQR. An EQR that's actually defined in our decree. So, it's it's not any single family residence. It's a single family residence up to a certain size. It's it's roughly equivalent to what the

sanitation district says is an EQR 42, right? It covers up to a 42. Anything above that, you might be using more water and you would need an additional augmentation unit. Um, so with our augmentation units, this is what we've decided to do. I'm sorry this is an old presentation so I'm kind of backtracking on myself but because we have such a limited amount of water we can't entertain every single use because certain uses if I were to irrigate an acre of ranch land that would probably take up the majority of our water for a given year right so we have to be really careful with yes we have a water portfolio yes we have this new ability what can we use it for what's most efficient to use it for. And so the county commissioners and part of our water marketing policy is that it was decided to limit our water portfolio for now for use in in-house domestic wells for livestock watering and then for commercial use. And that's kind of open-ended, but those are all case by case. Every single commercial use that would use this water would more than likely come in front of this board for a land use application as well. So commercial use is was kind of left open-ended. There are some limits to what a you know the maximum amount of water a commercial operation could use. Um but it was left open-ended intentionally because this policy was designed for the future and we just didn't know nor could we predict what applications are going to come in front of you and whether they'll be worthy of using our water or not. So by limiting it to in-house domestic wells, livestock and commercial use, you're limiting it to only those well uses which are the most efficient water uses. I would like to open it up to

other uses eventually when we have more water is enterprise operations. This is yeah just what are what are other uses besides like irrigating land? Other uses would be environmental uses like for instance like um a ornamental reflective pond like I want to put a pond in. Yeah. Like there's like a really scenic barn that people want to preserve the view of. There's a pond in front of it. Right. They need a view, but that pond is actually an artificial structure. So they need a source of water for it.

We like the barn pond discussion in Twin Lakes. the county just doesn't have the amount of water necessary to supply that ornamental. So that's basically what I'm saying is environmental and ornamental uses of that water are kind of off limits for now. Yeah. Just trying to think of what else isn't.

But like eventually like I want to be able to give Ray Dawson a source of water to irrigate his small hay field. you know, that's something that takes way more water than we have, but you know, might be a is a there's an environmental benefit. There's an agricultural heritage benefit to that, and there's a landowner that's been trying for 20 years to get water that can't. So, um, that's another thing, you know, we could look at.

Um, Bryce, would like someone just wanting to augment an existing well for landscaping, their residential home, is that off the table as well? It's a good question. Um, no, it's it's not because it's limited to in-house domestic well use. There is the livestock well use and that was allowed because if you look at our decree, it actually defines how much water a head of cattle or a head of livestock would use and it's really small. It's 11 gallons per head per day. So, does the in-house use go towards ADUs? Yes. Okay.

Yes. That was this was also this plan was designed to allow a pathway for ADUs in places that don't have that ability right now. Yep. This is I just wanted to get into this though because this was definitely formulated based on planning commission discussions which is that like I think there was a concern among the planning commission and planning staff that okay we have this new uh service available. we can augment and we can have new wells everywhere. And there was a fear that that would either be [clears throat] taken up speculatively by developers or something and held on to and then you know sold third party for more money. And so we actually put uh regulations in to limit. You you have to put your augmentation unit into service within a certain amount of time. So you can't sit on it speculatively. But also, we don't know what areas of the county are going to have the most demand for this new service. And so, we put in a phased availability of even though that there's a very limited amount of water, only a certain portion of that limited amount of water is going to be available for the first three years. This says year 1, year 2, year 3, 25, you know, you can just move this up. Year 1 is actually going to be 2026. Um, [clears throat] so this is just basically saying that in our first year we're not going to sell more than 39 augmentation units. So there can't be more than 39 homes, 39 ADUs, 39 livestock wells going in more, you know, in year one. Year two, a little bit more becomes available. So you have 46. Year three, 54. And in year four, the remainder of whatever is left would be available for contracting. And the reason this is a four-year schedule or four-year phase in is to give staff, the county planning commission,

commissioners time to weigh in if we do see in year one and year two this service being used in a way that was maybe not the way that we want to see it being used. um there's a chance to catch it and to adjust the regulations before all the water's gone

because until we acquire more water rights, once we're done with this, we're done, right? There's there's a limit to this new service. It's going to be great and then we hit our upper limit and we're kind of back to where we are or we're we're back then. We'll be back to where we are now, which is just in a constrained environment. So you have 74 acre feet now about would you say 48 40 of that goes to the golf course and 25 30% 17 acre feet goes to Haven Pond. Yep. Okay. So then that leaves you you're you're accounting for the balance with this approach.

We're accounting for the balance with the buffer. Yeah. Cuz that's only 5.4 4 acre feet on 54 ADUs, right? An an AU is a 0.1 acre foot. Yes, correct. So, exactly 5.4. So, this is cumulative, too. But this is saying that in year one, we'll have 13 acre feet total available that we know are secure firm yield for the enterprise, [clears throat] but we're only going to use a third of that. Okay? And the numbers don't all add up because we have a buffer, too. Because in these first three years of learning, we want to make sure we have a reserve of water if we are over or under anywhere else. Yeah. Is that 74 firm? Is that what they call?

It's not. No, it's 40 acre firm and then the 34 acre feet on the dairy 3 is variable. 34 is our 20-year average yield. Okay. And when you say until we acquire more water rights, if you if the county ever, this is just cuz I'm fascinated. Um, if the county acquires more water rights, do we start over with that whole like 20-year court process or can it just [clears throat] right now?

If the county acquires more water rights, we will have to go back to water court. We will have to get the water right in question adjudicated. So, our augmentation plan as it exists is just for the water we own. And there's a tiny little buffer where we can add some Twin Lake shares to it without re going back to court. But anything else, we're going to have to go back to court. We're currently um party to a few court cases and we'll get into that and then I want to end with like the future plan of the county even if we don't acquire more water rights we got to go back to court so

so if we were to um so there could be an opportunity for for um a individual who owns a twin lake share who's not using um all of that to come in under our a plan we could help administer their water we could add to it. So, there is a certain amount that we could [clears throat] and it's very small. I believe it's it's it's only up to like 6 or 8 acre feet. It's it's not like a subdivision can come in and give us a bunch of water and we can do that. It's it's just that we have a little bit of flexibility, you could say.

Okay. Well, I I think you know what what a property owner developer looks at is if they go out to to acquire an augmentation plan, they've got a year and a half or two years in water court, you know, with over $100,000 worth of fees to do it. So, it's a huge benefit to them to [snorts] come under this program. You know, the other side of that is I think the the question of where do we want to use that precious water? Not just the types of uses, but the types of projects that really benefit our community the most. And thinking through all that, right?

Yeah. And I can go through because we do I want to be clear that this is a new ability. It's going to offer some new service for the county, but there are regulations that limit the amount that can be used in any one application, which basically was meant to preclude it being used for subdivisions. This is meant to be like, for lack of a better term, this is meant for more of like the everyday user in Lake County, the person that already owns a property and wants to build an ADU or the person that already owns a property and wants to split it in two so they can build their children a home. That's all kind of allowed within the plan. But if a big developer comes in and says, "I want to buy 30 shares." We just don't have the ability to do that and it's not even allowed in our regulations. But yes, there is the benefit of, you know, for those smaller users that have their own Twin Lake share, they would still have to go to court and they'd have to go through the entire court process to adjudicate a tiny little share to get it all squared away. And this could skip that process.

Skip that process and they'd still pay us. a fair amount of money. So, this fee schedule, you know, I just want to touch on this briefly, but it's but you guys need to know that the inclusion fee is $9,000 per augmentation unit. So, if you need two, it' be 9,000 times two. And then you have [clears throat] all the application fees and everything like that. The inclusion fee is based, it's not um out of thin air. It was based on two data points. It was based on Parkville tap fees and Twin Lakes water shares. So, it's meant to be and it has to be market derived. It doesn't have to be perfect, but it has to have market justification. So, our engineers actually did a study to, you know, justify this price for the inclusion fee. And then the operations and maintenance fee that's uh meant to match Parkville's monthly service rate. So, you know, it's not going to be um super cheap, but I just heard that what Leville Sands charging $18,000 or something now for a tax fee. So, it's still um incred, you know, it's still very affordable. And this is also, you got to think, this is also going to places where they can't get Leadville sanitation and park water service. So, it's equivalent, but it's it's their option. And you know this is meant to make the county money. This is meant to be a revenue positive development. Sarah

it's not meant to it's meant to be like a landfill. It's meant to be a positive development or you know [clears throat] not a uh not operating in the red every year and and it covers the cost of staff.

Correct. Yes. So, so the way we've budgeted is that the inclusion fees as we build this, the inclusion fees will cover staff and then at full buildout the O andM will cover a full staff or at least the majority of it. Um, it'll at least be able to cover our engineering and lawyer fees. So, maybe if I go away, we'll still be able to get the the people doing all the the right regulatory and administrative things. This is the meat of it, though. This is the maximum use per allocation. Can I hide this? You can just like move it to the side and I think it's under more and I think you can

It's okay. We're just we're skipping in-house and domestic livestock. So, um, if you have an existing parcel, right, most of the existing parcels in Lake County, if they existed before 1972, they have an in-house exempt well. That's how we've operated to this point. That's how we've been able to muddle through is that they're exempt. They have a really limited well right, but they can still develop a home on that lot. This would allow up to three units per lot. And so three units is very intentional. That's either, you know, that's enough to cover a duplex or a large home and an ADU. the one out of those three units for any given lot is reserved for an ADU because this was also, [clears throat] you know, it was a priority of the prior board and the current board to increase our housing stock and to lower the barriers to ADUs. And so, one of those units per lot is reserved for that purpose. We're allowing hot tubs. A [clears throat] lot of water districts don't. Um, lot splits in commercial use. This is where we really had a lot of in-depth discussion because a minor subdivision would allow you to what is a minor sub up to four up to four times three then you're talking 12 units on one application which is a lot and so you can use this with a minor subdivision of one lot into two and those two lots then have three units on each. So a total of six max you know six augmentation units on any single application is the maximum that 6 AU maximum is then what was applied to the commercial uses as well right so that's the maximum you're ever going to see on any one application you know incentivizing less than that um but

that's a manageable amount you know it's a it's a large chunk at once but it's not the whole baby at once. So, this is where it gets a little complicated and this is where like the angel view discussion comes in because I'm sure if you haven't heard about it yet, Angel 2, the second part of that subdivision, they want to come in under the augment. They need more than six AUS, right? So, there's also an option built into the water marketing policy for subdivisions that if they dedicate 50% or more of desired use of outside water rights, um, basically if you give us over 50% of what you're require, what you're asking from the enterprise, we will entertain the application. Not to say we'll approve it, but we would entertain it if you were compensating the enterprise with water for and you're at that point you' basically be coming into the enterprise to skip the legal court process and the savings would come from the court process and the timeline

because they have water rights. They're giving us the they're going to give us their water rights to skip that process and we administer it under our plan for them. Does that make sense? But you gave them the water rights to begin with. We No, we won't until they they have to dedicate their water to us before we adjudicate their plan, you know, because it's it's not one to one because they might be giving us outside water rights that aren't usable in our plan. Oh, okay. But it's still a water rights resource that we can use elsewhere, right? And start to, you know, compensate ourselves somehow. Yeah, it's a lot of moving parts.

I confused myself even talking about So people have expressed interest already in this program. I would say my day one demand is at least 10 augmentation units and that's not new growth. That's a lot of people just trying to, you know, like your neighbors Ross 2 subdivision, they're day one demand. There's another fellow um a little on the other side of the neighborhood. He's day one demand. He his name is Mark Nun. he's been trying to build for years. He's been in watercourt a long time now.

Yeah. And he hasn't had the ability. This will give him that ability. So, there's a lot of day one demand that we already know about because it's just people that have been in the queue. They've been talking to an for years about this. We've had subdivision developers express interest. Um, so that's another reason we want to limit it, right? like once that day the day one demand is great for me because it makes my budget pencil out next year. But it's also any amount we give up

is water we don't have in the future. Right? And that's the thing is that we can lease water year to year and any amount we want and we can put conditions on that lease that say if the water doesn't come, you don't get the water. The second we contract water for a well in a house, that has to be the most firm water supply there is because we don't ever want to take it back where we're telling people they don't have the water in their well said.

So if I'm sorry I just need to a clarifying question. So based on having to go back in um to water court, if we receive that water dedication, we it could potentially trigger us then to have to go back and if we wanted to use it in our bucket augmentation. So actually put it to use, right? But we could be in a position where they use six augmentation units and they give us twin lake shares for that and then we use that twin lake shares to for our golf course lease and so that even though it's not part of our blanket augmentation then we can still use that water as part of our overall water resources. And so then that puts more back into our Yeah.

I see. So Okay. And then you know the the I know. My gosh. It's like Yeah. Yeah. And then like the the the theory would be that if we can entice enough people to dedicate enough water to us then then it makes sense. We have a critical mass to go back to water court, right? But if we only have a few acre feet, we can move our system around and make that work forever. Oh, that's great. That's good. Okay.

Oh, look at this. I didn't even change this step. But um this is important.

This is this was what I I just pulled the one that I presented to the town hall before we had the water marketing policy. Um and but I can go through this and just update you, right? We we passed our water marketing policy. New Aurora IGA. Okay, I really want to touch on this because I've been working on this. Sarah started working on this in 2022. I took over ownership of it in summer 2024. Me and Aurora have been done negotiating staff to staff since spring 2025. It's entirely a legal process now and we've had some legal challenges. So, that's been a huge delay for me and it's been honestly a point of frustration. But, this is my number one priority is get the IG across the line. the Aurora IGA because they give us over half of our water every year or provide us half of our water. They don't really give it to us, but it's um it comes from their system. And the other thing we need I really want to emphasize is that when Aurora signed on to give us that 40 acre feet, it was because our entire water system, we hitched our ride to Box Creek Reservoir where the gravel mining application is right now. That is the site of the future Box Creek Reservoir owned and planned by Aurora. Um their original timeline when they were doing all this was 2025. Now they're saying 2050 at least, right? There's a lot more to be done before that. But to sign on to that plan, Lake County owns 20% of the future Fox Creek reservoir. So, we own 20% of the space in that reservoir and not, you know, the physical footprint. At 25,000 acret, which was the last design for Box Creek, that's 5,000 acret of storage in Box Creek that Lake County owns. And it's, you know, even though it's not built, it's one of our largest

assets in the water rights portfolio is this theoretical 5,000 acret. And if I'm talking about 74 acre feet and dividing that up and our uses 5,000 acre feet honestly is just way more than the county will ever need. And that's intentional because that 5,000 acre feet we can just lease it back to Aurora and it's a big cash cow. And that was that's kind of the promise there is that we're going to have this incredible revenue resource once the reservoir is online. We just got to muddle through until we get to that reservoir. And that made a lot more sense in 2000 when they were saying 2025. It's harder to swallow in 2025 than they're saying 2050 now. And so, you know, it's just an ongoing point of um discussion with Aurora is okay, if we're not going to get if Lake Countyy's future continued on your plans for Box Creek, which keep getting extended out, we need a solution in the meantime that makes sense for us. Um, and so Aurora and this new IGA, they're kind of being nice to us and they're allowing us, we're putting in some provisions that make our

water resources a lot more flexible with Aurora's help. And the biggest aspect of that is what I call the parking agreement in Hayden Reservoir. So Hayden Reservoir is the only storage vessel Lake County owns. You know, there's Twin Lakes and Turquoise Lakes. Those are already fully accounted for by bigger players, Colorado Springs, Aurora, PBLO, Bureau of Reclamation. We don't have any ability to get into those reservoirs even though they're here. And so we have the big thing to expand our flexibility is we have to have some storage and Hayden is [clears throat] it as far as what we have available now. It was built in 2001 with uh Colorado or Goko money which is like an outdoor recreation funding source and they put a regulation that we couldn't use it for water storage for 20 years. So 2021 that um provision expired. We can use it for storage now. But in the meantime it's become the most important recreational resource in that part of the county. You know just one of our shining jewels I think. And so if we were to use it for water storage, we would be the water level would be going way down and way up and it would kill the fish basically. And so one of the big things I worked with Aurora on is how to find a way to keep the reservoir level the same as it ever was. No one will ever know. But now Lake County and Aurora will be exchanging water in Haven

for storage. And so as Lake County needs to release water from our storage, Aurora will backfill that water into storage and vice versa. So the public won't even know because there won't ever be a change in the reservoir. But me and Aurora will be fighting back and forth on a spreadsheet every month just making sure um you know who owns on a monthto month who owns what percentage of Hayden reservoir water. And the other big benefit of that is that we can use it for storage. so that if we don't use all 40 acre feet from Aurora every year, we can bank the extras. We can have the Aurora deliver us our 40 acre feet and we'll um put the extra in Hayden and store it for ourselves.

The other thing is if Aurora has 50% of the water in in Hayden, they're going to make 50% of the evaporation. And so we get the immediate gain of clawing back some of that that evaporative loss that we pay out every year. I'd give them the water on top. You keep the bottom water. Yeah, that's right. We're only interested in the bottom 50%. [laughter] Ours doesn't evaporate. Yeah, you guys count for that.

Big thing I have to work on is getting the upper river ditch functional. Now, the upper river ditch is a beaver complex nightmare. The upper river ditch comes off of the Arkansas main stem on the Smith ranch and kind of hugs the river and um goes by that ranch. I can't even describe it to you their name, but it goes by ranch before it hits Hayden and it's just gotten destroyed by beavers. And so we have to go in and do some big work because we need to be able to accurately measure the water going in and the water going out of that reservoir even if we're replacing it one to one with other water, right? we still need to be able to um account for it properly, but we do have division engineer approval. Um that's the other thing, you know, we have everything lined up. It's when the IGA with Aurora is done, the next day I can start um accepting applications for augmentation. The one last thing we're adding the Aurora G2 is we're adding more points of diversion. So, we're basically allowing Aurora to deliver their Aurora is allowing us to request our water to be delivered at several more spots throughout the county, which gives us a lot more flexibility. You know, we can call for a certain amount of water to go to Hayden and a certain amount of water to go to Twin Lakes or a certain amount of water to go to Lake Fork. And before it was pretty limited to like one or two or three diversion points. Now, it's going to be five or six. So, it's all just in the we got to make this as flexible as possible because we need to be able to augment people's water 365 days a year. It can't be um tied to the the way the water flows off the mountain anymore.

And now just to end it, that's just like the basics. I really want to talk to the more specific.

I got to pull up that accessory map. [clears throat] layers. Okay, this is

the area to go. Sorry, you'll have to go to Zoom and unshare the pro the past. I've been using it for years. I still use

the area shaded in blue is the augmentation area. So, we can augment everywhere in the county. And then if you really look, you know, especially with the parcels underneath it, vast portions of the augmentation area are in public land and east side planning district. So functionally, this area is going to get the most demand from the Twin Lakes area. It's going to get the most demand in Lost Canyon, right, where you have those larger lots and then as well as the hill [clears throat] area. Panarch is its own thing. They've actually had some improvements in their water system. So, I'm feeling more confident about them.

Um, but you know, you have Angel over here, Gordon Acres, established wells. I really think this is the area we're going to see the most demand from this. And so that's what I want you guys to be aware of. Um there's a current application. We have a few court case applications, right? We have the barn pond. Barn Pond's in court right now. They have a special water supply plan or substitute water supply plan rather. So, they have a lease of PBLO water and they have a temporary plan that they can use for up to five years to use that PBLO water going through the Twin Lakes ditch system and the barn pond system. But that's a temporary plan. So, to make that permit, they have to go back to court to get a an adjudication. And so, they're doing that process right now. Um, Lake County has not signed on as an opposer or uh we haven't signed on anything yet. We have the Ericson Wellfield case, which I think I've talked to both of you guys about. Yeah. On the phone.

Um, this one Lake County has signed on um as an opposer. And that's not to say that we're opposed to the application. It's just that in water court you have to sign on as an opposer to have standing in court and to make sure that our water rights concerns are are heard. And so, you know, we're we're taking this just our engineers have submitted their analysis. Um, and our concern is that the math is too per too too perfect on the Ericson Wellfield case. Um, you know, he has one twin lake share and his math turns out to be using exactly one twin lake share. I think you know in reality we like to see a little bit more buffer and yeah grace for [snorts] changes in in the natural environment. So we have that court case and I don't think you guys have heard it from a land use perspective either.

So um you guys are familiar with it but I'll just say it for the record. Yeah. There's I believe he's applying for up to 13 wells. Correct?

Yeah. So, we will see how that one goes. Um, and then I don't want to get into the specifics because I know this is an application that's being heard by you guys right now, but Titan Gold has also applied and they are in water court now to turn their SWSPs into a permanent decree. And that was um requested by the state division of water resources to go to court. And Lake County has signed on as an opposer to this application and the state of Colorado has as well. And like I said, that's not to say they're opposed. That's just to make sure that they are in the room when the negotiations are going on. I found a study just this last week that took the Forest Service 3 years of wandering around in this area of the county to try to figure out what the water rights really are. So, it's easy for us to look back with hindsight and be like, man, Lake County made some crazy decisions. We got rid of some water. The water rights were not known or defined in this area until Lake County bought them and started adjudicating them. There was a, you know, the Forest Service owns a ton of water rights back there that they didn't even know about that they weren't administering. Um, and so there's a lot of history back there and a lot of places that [clears throat] I'm going to go explore next summer because I found all this cool historical documentation about where this stuff was originally being um, diverted from into. But this all these beaver ponds back here, lily pond, everything like that, that's all artificial. Those are all man-made reservoirs and they were made back in the 19s and just and breached in the 50s, but they were made for the um historical dredging operation on that parcel that happened in the teens and they were running out of water this time of year. So, they started building reservoirs. So, yeah, those are the three court case

applications we have going on. And then I just want to point out a brief thing so that you guys know where I'm at and what I'm working on because the barn pond discussion is incredibly complicated right there. It's there's no part of it that's straightforward. The water flowed that way through Twin Lakes Village for decades at least partially and then it you know at this point it doesn't matter if it was natural or not. It was a big change when the state came when the state did determine that barrier creek is actually barrier ditch going through Twin Lakes. Um so the Twin Lakes residents wanted to requested the county to designate these or at least the Markham pond as fire suppression ponds. Fire suppression pond designation is a new thing in Colorado water law and it's really unique because it supersedes and is exempt from Colorado water law as it existed to that point. And so it causes in a place like this, it's just it makes more headaches than it solves probably because then we're designating an artificial pond as a fire suppression pond that then needs water all the time. And how do you do that when other senior water rights holders upstream of them can cut that branch of water off legally? You know, it just it it gets really complicated. And so Rachel Zenanella, the division engineer, she's an incredibly brilliant woman and she's so busy, but she made time to come up here to Leadville to talk to the commissioners and all of us about this fire suppression pond issue. And out of that discussion, we came up with the idea of maybe we could turn these little ponds into storage vessels. and they're really small and they're not going to be, you know, significant. But for how small

our portfolio is and how storage constrained we are, anything is [clears throat] significant. Anything will help. You know, this is most likely like a third of an acre flip, literally. But if we can measure the water going in and we can measure the water going out, we could potentially turn that into a small storage vessel. And then if they needed it for fire suppression, by all means, come take it. But that way it's within existing water law. It's giving a benefit to the county's water resources and it's giving the Twinx residents that fire suppression that they were looking for. And so if we're going to go back into court because this is going to require a court change. I want to get this as a fire suppression pond. I want to make this a fire suppression pond. None of this. This is natural beaver ponds, but this portion could be another potentially halfacre foot. And then we don't have any twin lake shares. What if we had triple lake? So this is the old highway. And when they built the new highway, they started filling up. And so they've breached it right here, which the beavers have since reclaimed. And they've made this into a very robust reservoir that's there now. And the state has analyzed it and says it doesn't have a legal right to exist. Right. It's an it's an artificially created beaver pond by an artificial dam of the old road. But if we made it into a storage vessel, we could give it a legal right to exist. We just need to be able to measure the water coming into and out of it. And so I've talked to Pat Mercer at the Forest Service, and he seems very on board with issuing us the special use permit we need to install a measurement device at the outlet of this pond. And this could be 5 acre feet, right? I mean, so we could get six acre feet out of these three, right? Let's just go back to court, let's get them all taken care of at once, is is my opinion. And the other thing we're going to do, since we're going to go to court once, we're going to get it all done. The golf course,

for the last year, I've been working on a grant project that's been studying the Dilap ditch. Then the lap ditch comes off the Arkansas main stem, goes behind the Sugarloaf and campground, and it used to historically irrigate the golf course lands and um parts of the Colorado outbound and everything like that. But now it it ends at the golf course, and the golf course has these two headgates, head stabilization ponds is really what they are. There are several water rightites that use that dilap ditch, but the dilap ditch is dilapidated. So you can't use the left ditch for physical conveyance of water for those really valuable water rights. And as I'm looking to claw back augmentation water from the golf course which uses over 50% of our water, any and every water right available to them needs to come in to play. Parkville owns a water right that comes off the dilap that can irrigate the golf course and then the state has told us that there's an existing water right with the land. Um, our lawyer lawyers have not found it, but the division engineer telling us it's there is good enough for us to move forward on exploring it a little bit more. So, we could potentially irrigate up to 50 more than 50% of the golf course with these two other water sources if we had the dilap. Since we don't what we want to do is when we go to court we want to adjudicate instead of taking it from the dilap ditch headgate we take it from the well at the golf course which they already do with our augmentation water and then we don't need to touch the ditch.

It's still dilap ditch water. It's you know we pay for the loss the 1.4 mile transit loss because we changed the point of diversion but that's like not that's really insignificant compared to the water gain we're going to get from putting it into play. So that's the the five things I want to touch on in our court case is the Parkville Dilap County DAP and then those three storage vessels and if we start now we'll get in two years.

Who owns the land where those ponds are at the Twin Lakes? Is that state land or no the So one is on the Markham property so they call it the Markham pond and then this is on forest service land. Okay. Yeah. And then the big long one you all on forest service. Forest service y. Okay.

And so we already have an existing because of our augmentation station up on Mount Albert. We have an existing special use permit with the forest service. So, um, we have an existing relationship with them. Pat was kind of taking a step back until the barn pond issue got a little bit more resolved before he was, you know, going to go gung-ho on a big plan. But this plan is like, I'm presenting in something that's a win-win for everyone. So, okay, we can maybe work with that. So, he just didn't want to give any bias to one party or another because it's really contentious down there right now, right? There's two parties that are both well healed and they're both dug in and yeah, button heads. [clears throat]

But yeah, I call I call that Triple Lake or at least Josh, the new deputy director, he made that up when I saw Triple Lake. Triple Lake.

Um, but I wanted to open up for more specific questions if you had any. So I think to Melissa's point about kind of determining the priority of the use of the water um that was really managed in establishing the uses and kind of that slow phase roll out. I mean, those were some out outcomes of um really looking at the priority and I know that not everybody that's on the planning commission now um was part of that discussion, but that was something that you did in lock step with the planning commission. Mhm. I don't know if there's anything else you want to share on that, but it was very intentional about how um you know, we we have some trepidation about the um EEL properties just by the nature of how those properties were created and lack of infrastructure. So, we are working on that. you know, we're working with um um new the new county attorney and and just trying to come up with some ways to deal with the the lack of infrastructure and planning that went into the partition of that land. But that will be an area that'll be highly impacted by this additional ability to use the water. So, we have some challenges um you know from an energy standpoint in those areas that we'll be

working on and this this u resource um may complicated a little bit. Yeah. like there's a without saying too much there's a pending land use applications coming your way and that application wants to be on the water plan and so I've let them know from the very beginning that they will be the guinea pig and that you know they're going to kind of be forging a new path and so just to expect an extra level of scrutiny for that what's holding up the IG unbelievable

just they need to review the language kind of yeah we have to fire a lawyer so we're it's it's literally been like yeah um it shouldn't it yeah it's it's really said the terms have sort of been agreed the terms have been agreed on me and Aurora went back and forth for a year just you know like is this a good idea can this work And so I haven't heard it from them directly, but I know anything that got to me from Aurora has already been through their legal too, right? These all all been signed off. It's it's in our ball court. And

for a long time it was me pushing Aurora, please give me something back and we're in the opposite where they're like, "Hey, where are we with that?" Um to kind of summarize the advantages of the new IGA, it's it's really um the the ability for Aurora to account for the evaporative loss, the additional [clears throat] storage. That's correct. So it's the it's that agreement with Aurora will make it so that we can use Hayden for storage so that we have any storage,

you know, and then if we get the other places, that's great. But that's what we have for right now without any court cases. Um yeah, the the advantages are 365 day a year delivery so that you know they can deliver it whenever we needed to. More flexibility in the pointed versions and the Hayden Reservoir parking agreement and that's really as significant as it is. Everything else is pretty much similar to the way that we've been operating with them in the past. But it also increases like our our overall um capacity under because it it'll cover that 25% of the total evaporation that we're at Hayden right now. That's right. Also,

so I'll start being able to build that as we get the plant up and running. It would probably take two years to to actually get running and working correctly. So then I'll be able to take whatever evaporative loss I'm saving and build that into the reserve or the um enterprise allocation. Yep. And so that's you know as we and then you get park or you get the golf course more water then that water that they were using then that comes back and so it's like we have a small location that I continue you know to want to grow but as we're growing it we're also contracting parts of that out

and it helped me to hear you explain and know we had talked about this kind of um previously but that reminder that the three augmentation units on um an individual parcel accounts for a large home that's going to the QR is going to exceed um a duplex. You can't have an ADU with a duplex, but you can a single family home, but the other um unit could be outside irrigation. So, [clears throat] like if you're Oh, it can't be Oh, I thought I saw that. Livestock. Livestock. Livestock. That's good. So, it's like you can have a duplex and an ADU, a big house and an ADU, or sorry, you can have a duplex and a live, you know what I'm saying?

Duplex and you can have a combination of those, but one of those is for an ADU. Okay? So, if you want a livestock, well, you can't have a house that exceeds one EQR in size. Okay? And just for the planning commission clarity, um the zoning code won't allow any US duplex, but you'd have the you'd have the livestock for the additional. So you'd have the two for the duplex and then the livestock. I have to check to make sure that the duplex doesn't preclude livestock if there's one allocated because I think I mean the regulation was one is tied to a okay duplex you okay that's

no cows for you no cows for no cows with the duplex I'm sorry but so right now you delivers you 40 acre feet and they There's an existing agreement for that. That's correct. But water court will modify how that agreement gets exercised with the details of it. So you can store it or take it at multiple locations and no that's all covered by our IG. Oh the water court case is settled. Okay. And the water court case gives us they're working out right now.

Yes. Sorry. the IGA that covers how we agree how we the the mechanisms of working with Aurora and the mechanisms of how they deliver that 40 acre feet but the 40 acre feet and the source of that 40acre feet is defined by the decree. Okay. And that was yeah it was originally done in the IG with the city of Aurora when they acquired the two ranches. Right. Mhm. So, the city of Aurora, and this is where the history gets so convoluted, but as far as I can tell, Lake County owned the Holland Beck Ranch. Do we own the Hayden as well?

I think Lane County owned the Hayden Ranch, the Halenbeck Ranch here. And we bought the dairy one, dairy two, and dairy number three water rights with it. Aurora bought the land and the dairy one and dairy 2 water rights. We kept the dairy 3 water right and the dairy 2 ditch. And we kept the dairy 2 ditch without any water because the point of diversion is underneath the damn footprint. So it gives us leverage. I think that was a brilliant move. Yeah. What the county did longterm 5,000 acre feet. Wow. And that's at that, you know, if they expand this design of the reservoir, it could be more than that. It could be less. But

it's um what I heard is that they were going pretty good on it until they got further along with Wild Horse Reservoir, which is a much larger reservoir project than the South Plat. Yeah. And so Aurora has told me and they're like, "We're not even talking about Fox Creek right now because we don't want them to get conflated. You know, we're under Nepa on that one. We don't want to confuse the two.

And I think they it was also I was it was like an Aurora City Council meeting was like these people don't know anything about the mountains. Like don't don't tell them, you know, don't get into the super nitty-gritty because we're just trying to paint the broad picture. These guys are managing a $500 million budget, you know, like let's not get into the details 25 years from now. Um, but yeah, so they're they're developing Wild Horse and once that's done, I expect them to fully pivot towards getting Box Creek done. But, you know, there's a lot going on in Box Creek, too. And they they need to study the viability of the dam, let alone anything else. So,

well, thank you. That was awesome. It's really I love that learning about blocking your view. Oh, no. You weren't at all. No, it was great. I can't. And and Bryce shares my deck with us and we can share it out if you want it. Cool. No, it was awesome information. It's always great to I I love that because I can always go back and refer to it and I Please let me know if you have any more specific questions and everything. I get so bogged down because I deal with this every day that like sometimes I forget what's complicated and what's not and I'm just like it's all part of it. complicated

and it's all moving parts and there's also just a lot up in the air right now as we negotiate the IG as we get a new water attorney online as we deal with you know concerned citizens that need water needs that we have to figure out how they work with this really complicated water law we got in Colorado but that I I got to say like coming to the conclusion of turning the fire suppression ponds into storage was like a revelation for me you you know, like yes, this is the way that we can make this work for both parties, for all parties, not just there many parties down there, and this is going to make it make sense for everyone so that we get something and we're not giving something up to get something, right? I believe that this is a positive sum game we're playing.

Will it actually get used? Hopefully not. [clears throat] The answer is hopefully not. That's right. But it the availability would be there if they could figure out the pumping and the Yeah, there's a dry hygiene already in it. Yeah. And the Dan came to that meeting and Dan was very insistent on fire suppression. Um the need [clears throat] the need and the support and he's just all for it. And so, you know, just how do we make this work? They get the benefit of the storage. They get the benefit of the Yeah. And then if they ever need it and we give up a third of an acre foot for them to put out a fire, like great,

right? That's a good compromise. Cool. Thank you, Bryce. Awesome. Okay, moving on. I think we were going to if um spend like the next 45 minutes just um we've got two more goals and strategies that we identified. Um we're going to pass out. Are we okay with that?

Are you okay with that? Okay. And who? We've got Jason online, Elsa and Kathy with us. And then so we can just do those two. And I think instead of kind of the painstakingly way that reading each one, um I kind I was wondering um if you all think it's a little more efficient to go ahead and and read through them and do those two choices. is the one that you think is really lowhanging fruit. Um, and which one it would be a big win? Real quick, just so I know which.

So, we're specifically thinking that we would be we um jumped off at I got through three. So, delivering housing locals can access and afford, I think, were uh where we landed last time. And so tonight we would just be looking at doing four and five and giving everyone just a little bit of time to read through four says how long a good plan wasn't going through and read like we're reading the um the the strategy potential. Yeah. So the fourth goal I made the goal and then um if you all want to just look at the strategies identify

what our top two would be. Yeah. the top two, one that feels very attainable, um, and one that would really make a significant change in the community. And then just we wanted to kind of share out what you think those are. So goal number four is help locals stay by premitting displacement, preserving attainable housing, and making existing homes safe, healthy, and affordable for the long term. So, if you want to just look at the strategies that are listed and we'll take a few minutes to do that and then share out. Do you think it would be worth identifying anything I think that isn't working here?

I think after Yeah, I think we could I think that's a good um question to ask if there's anything in here. So let's start with the first two items and then after that we can circle back and just say is there anything in here that doesn't resonate that isn't tracking you know and then maybe we can also talk about if there's something missing CLTs what is that

uh uh community land trust so where the development owns the land and um the cost is just associated with the improvements Oops. Jason. Yeah. Go ahead.

I just wanted to see if we have some kind of a definition for what is considered long-term housing. Is that like a minimum of usually? Right. Right. Um Yes. So in the context of long-term affordable housing, so um Oh, I see.

That would just be um basically putting on like a feed restriction in perpetuity, some different mechanisms. So long-term meaning um making sure that it's not just affordable for um a one-time opportunity, but that it has a longer term ability for remaining affordable un so these are strategies associated with um ensuring longterm isn't in reference to how long somebody would be living there, but if there was turnover that it would continue to be affordable for subsequent locals.

Exactly. Making our um housing stock have some long-term affordability throughout the community. out of place.

GD. Um I think that's Gunnison Valley Housing um authority. Yeah, I think so. other than they're just saying maybe safe for something. But yeah, burned down and there's less [clears throat] housing.

Yeah, I would I would say that there might be a few super important things missing from this list that I have admittedly not been at some point. And I would just mention, you know, these are these strategies have really been created through um the both stakeholder groups and uh community um resident comments. So they're um they've really been co-created. They're not just our um stakeholders or staff or um you know planning commissioners. or they they've really been all co-created. So, some of them may need, you know, some further uh information and details associated with

Yeah. And if we're missing something. Yeah. Absolutely. Really important, right?

So, I think first we're looking to test them. So, we'll start with that first exercise. Then we can go into um you know, what's missing or what's not working. a couple more minutes just everybody kind of ready to Sheriff, does somebody want to share something on the list that you think is kind of an obvious um easy attainable strategy? See any that you think are Elsa has her hand up?

No, it's just the little the little zoom thing is the little cursor now. [laughter] That's okay. I can go if you want, but I was like, I don't have anything. [laughter]

Um, 8B is one that makes sense to me just as far as potential acquisition or covenant programs. And really, I would lean more on the covenant programs protecting attainable housing. And I think, and obviously I'm going to have a lot of opinions about this subject, but I think the um the thing that I find really interesting is that um there, you know, a lot of this is about home ownership, it feels like, and not a whole lot about Um, and maybe it's not supposed to be for this particular one cuz it's help locals stay here and the goal is later on they're home owners. But I just um, you know, I can't like the in this went along with my second one explore acquisition also went along with the protecting manufactured home parks. I would further that with also multifamily, current multif family or apartment complexes because we already lost the one on Mount Massive and I think that was a really big mistake on our part to allow that to be bought and turned into condos to be sold. Um, I I can't stress how much I think that we're going to lose long-term housing very very quickly in this community because we're relying on that all to be mom and pop owned properties and the landlord protection rules along with the pricing of homes like makes that [snorts] not as desirable anymore. So, it's really really tough to find investors who are renting out their homes long term and so we're losing those fairly quickly. um and they're not being replenished by new new owners. And so if you're only relying on something like Eagle's Nest to support your

long-term rental housing, we're in trouble. And we allowed that unit to be sold. And I think that there should be protections just like that on manufactured housing parks. It's like similarly, I think we need to really look at what the regulations would be on allowing any kind because I know there's been how many developers in the past have come to us and wanted to do the same thing with Eagles Nest. Like I think I've talked to six people over the last 15 years that have been like, "Oh, we're going to buy Eagles Nest and turn them into condos." And I mean that would be devastating for the I mean that's why Climax went and bought a motel because [clears throat] they can't depend on there to be rental units. And I think that's a really big piece. So that's a big one for me. Um and I would love to extend that protection to manufactured home parks to also include rental units and then the covenant programs to protect locals. Um, those would be my two.

Heather, do you want to kind of educate us a little bit? I mean, just generally, you don't have to give us all of this, but when you talk about the landlord rules and how difficult it is now to own, um, rental property, can you just expand on that just a little, how it

Yeah. So, um, you know, it's just what in my opinion happens when you overregulate things. It's like you have these really great intentions to protect a bunch of tenants, but um in the long term it may not have that effect. There's a lot of unintended consequences. So the new regulations of state, as soon as a tenants's been in your unit for more than 12 months, if they could be a terrible tenant, as long as they are not egregiously violating the lease, you have to renew your lease with them. Um, so you have a troubled tenant that calls you every week for something and maybe you know is doing all of these things, you're going to deal with them the whole time. Um, so we've had people give up their rentals for that. That's the only way you can not renew the lease with them is if you're not going to rent it anymore or you sell it, something like that. Um, the other piece to that is it used to be that after 10 days of non-payment for rent, you could start the eviction process and you could typically plan to have somebody evicted through the court process here within 30 to 45 days. That process now is probably at least 90 days. Um, I forget what exactly the new regulation to start eviction process is, but that's 90 days of a mom and pop owned, individualowned, investor real property that they're covering the bills on. The tenants doing who knows what inside the house for those 90 days before they can even get them evicted. Then they're going to take back the house, fix it up, and try to do it all over again. Nope, you've lost that that unit. You know, so those there's just a lot of those kind of things now. that have made it really difficult for landlords to say, "Yeah, we're going to keep doing this and it makes sense to do it." When they could just cash out and get the price for the house, but again, they're not going to resell it to an investor because the purchase price right now um is too high and to match our rental rates. So, your return isn't there. or it would be just purely a

labor of love or I want to own a Leadville real estate property in order to be doing that because you're not going to make enough money to cover that price tag. So, if that helps helps me for sure to better understand that challenge of why we're losing some of our um rental properties because it's it's very difficult. there's a lot of unintended consequences associated with some of those protections that were put in place and and and so it attributes to us losing our multifamily rental housing stuff. So that's really good too. [clears throat]

I think that was definitely Thanks for the um need and and also what's missing [laughter] kind of covered both. Anybody want to share out something else that they see in there that really resonates as something that seems like um a strategy that you think that would make a lot of sense to enact sooner than later?

I agree with Heather on what the most impactful thing would be which the attainment maintaining properties that are available. I just don't see anything higher than that for me right now on that list. Okay, [clears throat] great. So, really maintaining and preserving what we have. I mean, outside of rentals, you have property owners, you know, property taxes are going to be a continue to be a problem, but I always see the only way to offset that with uh industry. Mhm. [clears throat] Taxing industry. Yeah,

if you're not if you're going to rely on tourism and you're not going to put a tourism tax on or you got to be able to make these um existing properties affordable or they're just going to leave. So that kind of opens up that um let's see also support home safety and energy efficiency improvements or identify funding mechanisms for incentives financial assistance to homeowners to make improvements to meet the safety code or improvements or property I mean the biggest problem is going to be property taxes really but to me but you know they they've got to make that that payment u in order to do that you've got to offset it with something else in the budget

right absolutely And Ann, are we um looking at this as a whole community or just where our purview in the county is? I think that you can have on your I think both hats, whatever tonight you want to have. I think it's really valuable for us to have your planning commission county perspective. Um but if you'd like to share something as a resident that just is is communitywide, I think both. So I would say both.

Yeah. Because in that vein, you know, number 10 with um the costs of like not only the text, but if if there are um people that were somehow able to make the dollars work and buy a house here um and then now to try to fix it up um it's not a huge secret, but I have a lot of opposition against what the Historic Preservation Commission's regulations are unintended consequences are having on people to have to get roof roof material approved to have to decide what kind of front door they're putting on their house, you know, can it be this one that looks just like the the olden days or it has to be this $4,000 front door, you know? I mean, that's just going to make it really impossible for people to continue to fix up their homes and so they'll choose not to and that creates that unsafe environment either landlords or homeowners, right? like they'll just keep their family in these homes and not do the improvements because the barrier is so high and it's pretty expensive, you know, and that and then the contractors are having to add on the fact that they have to deal with the city and, you know, that's increasing the cost to get that stuff done. So, I think it's really important to both the county and the city. I mean, right now I can point to the city has something actively causing that problem, but if we if the county, you know, if we're creating a comprehensive plan that we're going to work off in the future is to always be really mindful of our regulations that like, yeah, this sounds really great because that would make it really pretty here and it would have these things and it would protect these things, but what else is it affecting? And I think it's just really important that we have something written in there that's mindful of that if we're going to create preservation type requirements that we're doing it in a way that's sustainable for our actual residents to comply with because right now it doesn't feel like that's the direction it's going.

So longterm affordability could preservation is potentially in conflict with historic preservation. Yeah. And it's like historic or anything, right? If they're like, "Oh, [clears throat] well, we really want this to be in line with nature. We don't want purple houses in the middle of the woods." That's fine. That probably not a big thing. But if you're like, "But it all has to be this really super fancy type of sighting," then that's a problem, you know? And so I think it's the it's the making sure that when we're creating regulations, whether it's county or city, that it's in a way that's sustainable or weighing the value of it because I don't I don't see that weighing out at the moment

or, you know, the worst outcome of that is gentrifications. I think it's the inevitable outcome. Okay. Well, good. That's really good. of this great information. I think that's getting expressed quite a bit. I think that we're hearing that. I see like thumbs up. You have a thumbs up. Jason's gonna second that. And Jason, you have your hand up, too.

Yeah. I was just wondering if there's a way like for incentive wise if you could go by a standard like like the lead standards that would then you could you know if somebody were to to get those standards when they're building if there could be some kind of a long longer term tax incentive or tax break on the property taxes so you're not having to say well you put a the sighting on your house. Great. We're going to give you a t that that might be kind of hard to track, but if you could get a lead certification or or something similar in the residential space that would make it easier to track for then a builder to get some kind of property tax incentive over like a 10-year period or something. um might make it easier for both the building official to track, you know, I I don't know that that's just [clears throat] kind of just throwing out some thoughts there.

Yeah, I think incentivizing what we're looking for without burdening it on those who can't, I think that's what we should definitely be doing. It's and and and I feel that way along the lines of preservation also. It's like incentivize what you [clears throat] want, but be careful about how you're requiring it. And so if you're able to make a nice big fat [clears throat] incentive for somebody to do it, then you're offsetting by things like property tax or something like that, then that's fantastic because then they can potentially afford to do it. But, you know, leaving the option for Yeah, I think it's I think that's a great idea if it was doable. Elsa,

go ahead, Elsa.

Thanks. Yeah, sorry. Trying to unmute. Um, I just I maybe this isn't the right place. I um I have loved everything that's been said. I fully agree. And um like the rentals, the rentals are so needed in this community, will continue to be needed and there's a lot of pressure on rentals going away. So, and the people who are in rentals, those prices just continue to go up. And I I just wonder if there's also a place where we can create some sort of capping of rental increases. Maybe that's too radical, but like right now there's no regulation about how much you can charge somebody. And even if your property tax goes down in the next, you know, assessment or valuation session, I just

no that I mean that is that is one that passed with the new state stuff. I I don't know that it was by a certain number, but that quite like quite honestly in my opinion that's one of the ones that's also caused a problem because it's not because it's not matching. So like if you if you have that tenant that stays in your house if you've had them in there. So a lot of landlords right now are doing 11 month leases so they can make sure that they like the tenant not a problem. But as soon as they're in for 12 months, yeah,

then you can you can raise their rent, but it's only by a certain amount and before it's considered unreasonable and it's not matching some of the expenditures or the or there were in in our case in this town, we had a lot of people that for a lot of years were offering really super reasonable um rental rates and then with the recent tax increase and stuff lately um like too much information, but I own a rental house that I paid $175,000 for. That's how much is mortgaged right now. And we break even on that.

We can't I can't rent it for enough money to make any money any over the month. Like that's like people aren't really in tune with how much money taxes and if you have any kind of financing on it whatsoever. like there's no way to make any money on it. So, you're just in it for like the equity build let down the road, which a lot of people aren't cashing out aren't able to do it. And so, they're going to cash out, but there it's not a monthly income generator. So, if you were to cap me on how much I could go up on that, then I would have to sell that rental. What are what are some of the other levers you think we could

we could be manipulating to help with because like I I get the market forces that are pushing all of the rental prices up and I'm wondering if there's anything we can actually do locally that relieves any of that upward trajectory. If it's not through rental capping, totally respect that, but like I think that that burden is just putting pressure on the whole people's entire systems, you know. So,

yeah. Well, and so where the where the money makes sense or where people So, it's probably not sustainable for there to continue to be individual homeowners offering these long-term rentals is where I'm going. Like, that's just not going to continue to be sustainable. So the answer for this county is to be in my opinion advocating for more rental units to be built than affordable houses to be built. I totally agree. Yes. seeing the focus should should be on multif family apartment complexes or incentivizing ADUs out the

and and getting all of that type of really easy like ADUs are such a low hanging fruit and we've only just recently started incentivizing those again and it was like for so long like the city for a while there was like no way to use and so I think it's stuff like that that that's the only way it becomes affordable like an apartment complex also if there's somebody who manages 50 units, they can afford a little bit more of that like, oh, this unit has to be tied up in eviction for 90 days, but these other units are all rented, right? Like, they can afford those those waves more than an individual homeowner. So to me, the the county needs to be focusing on figuring out who maybe not the county, but the county, how we can incentivize somebody to come here and and build multifamily and then protect the stuff we already have from getting sold to be turned into condos. So grant programs and things like that, if developers can access grant programs, if we could offer some sort of incentive on the land that we've got.

So we just um recently did a a presentation uh to the board of county commissioners, which I think that they felt um was really beneficial and that's public private partnerships. A lot of times there are grant opportunities to help with the capital stack for developers that want to bring in multif family. Um and and one of those is like a land banking grant where we can apply for the grant to offset the cost of the land. Um we can there's there's several different opportunities but those grant opportunities are only available to cities and counties. Um and so exactly to your point, um the public private partnership may be a really powerful tool to be able to use.

Yeah. Just to protect the that rental level. Um because I don't think the individual's individual housing stock is sustainable other than for like a higher class of renters, you know, that have more money. It's just not going to be the affordable option. And unfortunately, programs like lowinccome tax credit um um lite tech projects like 8 and 4% litech projects as well um would be a really good way to that's our lower incomes the public private partnerships might look at more our middle um different but those will all be tied to

go ahead no sorry I was going to put my hand down my bad [laughter] I was like you just keep talking this is all really great and taking notes and adding those in to um some strategies that we can take back. So So what are the timelines on things like public private partnerships and grant programs because it seems like this is an urgent need but those things take years. Mhm. They do. So is that

right? So you know this is this is our comp plan. This is our 10y year um kind of outlook and so I think these strategies will be important now. They'll be important over the next 10 years to continue to look at things. So, but there's there's work being done right now. So, I think it's continuing on. Yeah. you know, with the work that's doing, but keeping that, you know, our north um really our our guiding light on on what kind of strategies and like when we get those development applications and you get that very first finding is whatever this proposal in line with comp plan, you know, we can come back you can always easily find out.

I think it's important also kind of bring in the timeline and mark successful people. I mean there's there's communities that have been successful. It's a [clears throat] lot of successful people benchmark. They've got some development that's taken place over the last four years down there by 50 heading into Canyon City that I think it's remarkable on how they achieved it, but we ought to go benchmark it.

Well, and to that point, there's a lot of creative and so I feel like what we're even speaking about now are like the typical, right? But like Salida RV Park, I was my parents happened to stay there this last month and it was kind of cool to see what they've done with that place in the way that and it may be a little harder because our climate's different, but I think there's some mitigation efforts you could do there, but what they decided to do there is it's not just the RV park. You can you can rent a space for your RV longterm and tiny homes

or they have tiny homes that you can buy and they're really cheap and then you just pay similar to a manufactured home park. Um but it creates this space where you know we have a lot of people talking about like people are living in their cars or people are living in in whatever because they can't afford XYZ. Well, if we created um or if we incentivize somebody to create a similar um park situation, then somebody can live in their van, but they're now living it here in this place where they have to meet certain standards to make sure that it's safe and all of those things. But at least then we're providing a safe place for them to be living in their van if they choose to do that with their heater all winter and dump station at the RV park and yeah, you do all those things. But travelers,

it's just a way to like So Salida has approved that because it's hitting a lot of different um income and affordability as well as being a place you can just pull your RV up for the weekend and stay there. So it's kind of like those kind of creative ideas I think are something else we should consider. The other one is what Climax has done with the bank building and the motel is like do we incentivize maybe not existing structures as much but do we incentivize or offer incentives for companies who want to provide employee housing because the way my brain works is the most important locals to keep here are our workforce locals. And so if I were to prioritize them that's the that's the top of the tier. So, if we have employers who are willing to provide or are eager to provide their employees housing, how do we create um systems that allow them or incentive programs or something like that that allow them to do it in an affordable and quick way?

So, it's just kind of trying to keep come up with some of those like and I don't know how you word that for this, but I think it's being and that's the movement nowadays too. People aren't I mean the shift is [snorts] away from home ownership. people wanting to have flexible living conditions. Oh yeah. Tiny homes and and uh you know RVs or whatever you want to call them traveling. That is an acceptable means for a lot of people who are on who like to have six seven jobs a year and go to different places in the country. But um that's an incentive that's an option and but we ought to be benchmarking these communities. I mean another example which is probably not the best example is South Dakota.

I mean oil and gas exploration. Yeah. I mean, but I mean, you say it, but I mean, they had to come up with an approach and make it compatible with the environment they were putting those things in and with the community that they were going to be in. Yeah. Um, it's just worth benchmarking these communities just to figure out how they did it. Yeah, I would say that's definitely some of, you know, some of the work that's happening already, but making sure that absolutely wherever we can um gain momentum or or see it in real time, how it's working in a community that's always tremendous benefit.

Does security have the ability to react quickly if an opportunity pops up, a property becomes available or develop? you will be getting a code amendment on November 10th. Uh we have a public hearing scheduled for November 10th. Our next public hearing will be an expedited [clears throat]

um review um for affordable projects. So yes, we're changing our code. We're looking for expedited streamlined reviews for projects that that hit the benchmark of affordability. We just got our AMI petition um granted for Proposition 123. um where we um participate in. We we made a housing commitment to increase our housing stock under that. And so for the 102 project, we received additional funding in the amount of $980,000. Um and so this will uh this expedited review is a standard that is um meant to support more affordable housing and and less turnaround time, more less processing time. Um, so that amendment we're bringing forward um to you for integrative production into the code um and and in exchange for getting that done before the end of the year or by the end of the year, we'll get another $50,000 um back

[clears throat] um from Prop 123 to put back into our housing projects. So, yes, we're making big strides on trying to do that. um it all is a little daunting um for a planning department of two [laughter] sometimes to to do those things. So we're trying to be very mindful about how we can um ensure that we've got that kind of turnaround time, but that will be ours to to ensure that that happens. I want to do a time check of like 20 minutes to say

Yeah. Yeah. Great. But this is you guys are really on a roll, so we can do a time check. probably need to um end in about seven minutes. But I love this. This is a we're capturing so much that really isn't within um is much more specific than in if anybody has you kind of hit all of those points. You kind of hit like what looks like it could be done pretty quick. Um what would be a big win? What's missing? What we wanted to do is kind of think of that in our wrapping up. Is there anybody that hasn't spoken that would like to or something additional we'd like to capture another strategy that really helps preserve what we have housing staffwise or make our um locals have more opportunity. And no,

you know, there's I I've I realize there is no onesizefits-all solution. Um, it's going to be a multiaceted approach for the whole housing subject, but I mean, I've been on the tiny home train for a long time, and I think anything that we can do to keep that conversation going is worth talking about. So, that's just uh my two cents right there.

Yeah. I do have a quick question for you all or just say on the tiny home conversation. Um do we think that communities of tiny homes um you know of creating that as like you said it's a multifaceted approach. they're going to appeal to um a certain demographic within our community that that really is supportive. But but introducing tiny homes through um like certain sites like this site specific makes more sense than introducing tiny homes throughout the community and neighborhoods that may be a little concerned about property values. Yeah, that's kind of a hard topic right now to think that you have to preserve those as much, but zoning by its nature is one of its main goals is preservation of of values. So

well I think the problem with blanketing the the allowance all over um is that it if I am correct it would be either we just reduce the square footage size to allow for them anywhere as long as they meet full building code and they are attached to a foundation but most people who are looking to do a tiny home thing still want them to be mobile and not attach them to a foundation. So to me that would mean that we leave the code the way we have it, but instead we have more allowances in our use table that somebody could do a conditional use permit for like a a community, a tiny home community such as this light RV park or something like um some of those um communities that people have created with a bunch of tiny homes and we just allow that to be an option in the use table. that would make the most sense to me because otherwise if you allow temporary structures you're going to get into the mess of is it a tiny home or is it a trailer and it yeah it just be a nightmare. So I would think you would have to do it in the way of like you're creating a community um unless you're attaching it to a full building code. Of

course then we got to worry about you know water [clears throat] rights too at that point. Yeah. So we're kind of restricted on two ends. Yeah. Andy,

I agree with Heather. I think if we did a a blanket change across the county or large areas, it would be really hard to keep a handle on sort of once you open that that bottle up, um, how are you really going to enforce the new rules that are in place? how you going to make sure everyone's adhering to whatever type of guidelines we need to put in place to make sure these structures, these these um trailers, whatever they're using are safe. I think keeping this in a specific area would allow a better, you know, the the county, city, anyone to have a better handle on how this is working and make sure people are safe. Yeah.

Great. Thank you. So, more like our manufacturing home.

Jason, go ahead. I was just going to add the uh Tiger Run Resort in Breen Ridge. The way theirs is structured, I believe, is that owners can purchase lots, but they can only stay on it for a certain amount of time per year. And when it's not in use, then that time is rented out to other travelers for certain periods of time. Um, and so it allows others to use that, but the essentially the land is paid for by whoever owns that lot, and then they get a percentage of the fees when other people stay there, say, you know, months at a time or whatever, but it's still capped. And so I don't know if that's like the Salida Park that you're talking about if they if they do something similar, but it offsets the cost for a developer to have to own all the land and it it pushes it off in little mini parcels to the individual owners of those lots, per se. Yeah, I think the I mean I think the Salida one is just um owned out owned and then but I want to say the county I don't know they did something to help the developer create that because it was but I think the Tiger Run is is the way they have it set up. My understanding is it is more geared towards your like seasonal vacation secondhomy type people, which I'm not sure that's our goal, but you could do something similar to what you're saying, Jason, and like still say that a developer could still sell the lots and it's part of a community. Like I think back to when um there was somebody looking at that parcel that Jack was going to do once and he was going to do a cluster home community, but then somebody else was

like, "Well, could you do the same thing with tiny homes?" And so if you allowed somebody to do a tiny home subdivision and that was allowed in our code as long as it met certain requirements, then you could be similar. You're selling off the lots for people to park their tiny home on or, you know, so I think you could do something similar and have it still still appeal more towards your primary occupant rather than second home. What what is the the demographic of tiny home occupants? Is it singles? Because I I can't imagine it's families with kids. It's crazy though. There are some. I mean,

yeah, there are some. I uh Yeah, there's quite a few. I would say mostly it's one to two people in them. But I [clears throat] will also say that that's the majority. Like that's the most common tenant we have is a one or two person. Um that's the why ADUs are so important because your your most common common rental demographic is that one or two party and I think you can put constraints on these communities probably slide has you know you could have ownership of it you've got to occupy it I don't know nine months out you make it up but it's whatever the constraints are to gauge it towards what you need in your community

you're not looking for anti- snowbirds that would come up here and That's not what you want. You have to gauge the rental on the lease agreement so they, you know, you're not incentivizing those people to come up and have second homes unless you rent them out. Yeah. To your point, the tiger run space is like $400,000 for an RV spot, you know, $500,000. I mean, we we'd have to drop that price, but yeah. [laughter] Yeah. That doesn't give us anywhere. But that's Well, yeah, that doesn't. But if you were to incentivize developers then cap the price on a lot. There's ways to do it. Sure. You can even have it as a common interest community. Yeah.

So that the property is Yeah. You know that you're only it's only the improvement or you're only renting the improvement. You don't have to own the land to take that cost out to make it more affordable. Could a could an ADU be a duplex? Would that be helpful if that was an option? An ADU be a duplex. Yeah. Explain. Accessory dwelling unit is just a unit that's accessory to a main primary, right? But could that be essentially as a standalone? Could it be a duplex even though it's an ADU to offer more space? So ADUs.

Yeah. No, I think you would just be building a duplex. Yeah, because ADU is typically just one accessory unit. Beyond that, you're just putting a bunch of units on a lot. Our code specifically right now disallows an ADU in a duplex. Well, you're saying But you're saying a duplex that also has an ADU, but what he's saying is the ADU is a duplex. Oh.

And you Yeah. Yeah. I think an ADO is just a one unit thing and especially when we get into tricky things like water and infrastructure and parking and all our build impacts or I mean our business zoning we did an amendment to allow more than one accessory dwelling unit as long as it serves our affordable housing needs [clears throat] or it has um an environmental um benefit like in the village of Twin Lakes when we had one septic system for three drawing units. So that's the only zone district that we allow more than one currently. But

yeah, but in you know uh incentivizing or loosening, you know, uh to to to develop duplexes or multiplexes is a great Yeah, that that makes tons of sense to me. Um the ADUs are just really nice for the individual homeowner that's like, hey, I can offset my own a little bit, but also provide a rental unit for somebody. I think that's the ADU is meant as more of a smaller we shouldn't limit ourselves either to tiny homes. Thinking too much container container homes. Yeah, just in general those like communities that maybe are less than a normal. Yeah,

I'm going to have to move on. So, I'll let you guys do adjournment and take any other notes. Okay. I just have to kill kiddos before 6. So, this is great. I don't It's the interview is full. I got six minutes. [laughter] Okay. Thank you all so so much. Really, really great in Bye. Yeah. Byebye. Thank you. Anybody have anything else they want to say before we cut you off forever on this topic? Nothing for me. Thanks. All right. Everybody feel productive enough for the evening? I think so. Smarter. A little smarter.

A little smarter. I definitely feel smarter after his speech. Um, all right. Well, do I have a motion to adjurnn? I make a motion to adjourn. I second. All right. All in favor? I. I. I. Thanks, everybody. Thank you.