P&z Meeting - Regular Meeting

Okay, we're going to get this started. Welcome to the regularly scheduled meeting of the Monizuma County Planning and Zoning Commission. It's being held in the commissioner's meeting room in Monizuma County Administrative offices, 109 West Maine, room 2550, Cortez, Colorado. We're going to open with a pledge of allegiance and a moment of silence. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands nation indivisible and justice for all.

Thank you, John. You're welcome. Okay. Can we have roll call down? Commissioner Hernandez here. Commissioner Saunders here. Commissioner Neargard here. Commissioner Doyle here.

Okay. Absent are Jason Armstrong and Mike Lynch. Also present, Don Haley and Jane Duncan of the County Planning Department. So Mike's absent and Jason's absent. Okay. Please silence your cell phones and meet any calls you can take out in the foyer. Has the planning and zoning commission reviewed both the September minutes? Yes. Yes. I will entertain a motion to approve or disapprove. I make a motion to approve the minutes. I can second that.

Okay. We have a motion and a second. Can we have a call to the vote? Commissioner Hernandez. Hi. Commissioner Saunders abstain. Commissioner Neargard. Hi. Commissioner Doyle. Hi.

Okay. Motion carried. It was uh three to one abstension. Okay. The Monizuma County Planning Commission welcomes you to this meeting. The board is comprised of members who are tasked to make recommendations to the board of county commissioners. We are not the decision makers. We encourage public comment after each permit. Per persons speaking during the public comment will be limited to three minutes or depending on the number of people wishing to speak, it may be reduced at the discretion of the planning commission to allow all members of the public public the opportunity to address their thoughts and concerns. When addressing the commission, please come to the podium. State your name and address for the record prior to providing comments. Comments to individual applicants are not permitted. Participants may not yield their time to others. I will be voting tonight.

Okay. Roll call on. Commissioner Hernandez here. Commissioner Saunders here. Commissioner Nurgard here. Commissioner Doyle

here. Okay. Number one, notice is hereby given that the Monizuma County Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing for the purpose of reviewing and determining recommendations to be made to the Board of County Commissioners regarding a proposed subdivision amendment application to lots 17 and 18 of the Butler subdivision submitted by Scott and Gail May Mabberry on property located at 23 3950 Road 37 Dolores, Colorado consisting of 0.63 acres more or less and Darren and Candela Jaml on property located at 23 962 Road 37 Dolores, Colorado consisting of 2.09 acres more or less. both located east of Highway 145 situated in township I mean excuse me situated in section 14 township 38 north range 14 west of the New Mexico prime meridian this is a public hearing was the public notice published

yes sir was evidence of letters to the adjoining neighbors and mineral owners submitted yes sir was a sign posted yes sir okay we have the applicant Let's come on down.

Okay. Can we have the planning department findings, please?

Sure. Um, the uh property owners of the two parcels are siblings and uh seek to adjust the property line to better reflect long-term family use and existing on-site conditions. for example, trees, driveways, etc. Um, the surrounding properties consist of residential and agricultural uses along with the US Forest Service land. Um, both properties are accessed off of Redside non-county maintained road 37. Um all the infrastructure is in um the um water to the properties uh is personal water wells. Um and that's basically it. And this is um just a boundary line adjustment, but because the two properties are within a subdivision, they have to go through the permitting process to amend the subdivision.

Okay. Thank you, Jane. You have anything to add to that? Not much to add. Uh, I believe our property owners, sorry, Gail Mabberry and Scott Mabber. My brother Darren and his wife Candy own lot 18 and we loan own lot 17. Um, our neighboring property owners are our parents and the and the state of Colorado has the fish ponds and uh so you have any questions we'd be happy to answer them. Commissioners questions, comments?

None here. None. Could you put up that picture, Don? So, the only question I had was, is this the yellow line is 37? Is that right here? No. This line right here? Okay. So, this is driveway to access. Is that an Is there an easement on that driveway? Yes, that's already there. Yes. I have no other questions.

Okay. I just have one concern and that was regarding the go back to that plat if you would, Don. That that lot line is going the lot line adjustment, the new lot line is going to miss that slab. Okay. Um there is a requirement of 30 feet from a structure. I know it's only a slab, but you put a building on it, now it's a structure. Okay. So, that's going to be a condition we'll put in there. And that's Sure. We're we're completely aware of that. In fact, the two we moved the two sheds that were on that slab to the new location,

right? in anticipation of adjusting the lot line and we drew that line so that those sheds now are 30 feet a little over 30 feet and meet the setback and we know that there can't be anything built on the slab because it doesn't meet the 30 foot setback requirement. Yeah, maybe a pickle ball court before it's over with but I don't know if we have to come back for that. One never knows. Okay, any uh nothing else commissioners? So, I'll entertain a motion. I can make a motion. Okay.

To recommend to the board of county commissioners to approve a proposed subdivision amendment application to lots 17 and 18 of Butler subdivision submitted by Scott and Gail Mabberry and Darren and Candy Gimmel based on the following. The proposed use is in conformity with the code. The proposed use shall not not generate any significant adverse impacts on other property in the area and public utilities and services are available or can be made available to support uses consistent with the proposed zoning. Um and I don't remember the details of your condition.

Okay. Condition would be that the that the setback the min the 30 foot setback will be um maintained from the slab and structures. Okay. All right. Okay. Second. I'll second. Okay, we have a motion and a second. No further discussion. We'll call for the vote. Commissioner Hernandez. I. Commissioner Saunders. I. Commissioner Negard. I. Commissioner Doyle. I. Okay. The motion carried. It was four to zero. That's it. Thank you, sir.

I'll be in touch with you, D. We have roll call. Commissioner Hernandez here. Commissioner Saunders here. Commissioner Negard here. Commissioner Doyle here.

Okay, that takes care of our Michael Lynch is absent. our applications. Okay. I don't know if the other commissioners um viewed the workshop. That was what, two weeks ago? Two weeks ago that we that Mike Lynch and I were present. Yeah. Two weeks ago.

Two weeks ago. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. We made our proposal that we had all agreed on to for the solar and immediately said, "What about the other stuff, the alternative energies?"

So, that's why we're back. We need to discuss all alternative energy sources um make conditions to the land use code. I guess for the most part what we did for the solar just could be tweaked a little bit to fit the other ones except for the what do they call it? Where's Where's my Where's my notes? Where's my notes? The SMRs, small micro reactors. So, we're talking nuclear.

Um, that's probably going to have to be addressed separately. I I don't feel prepared to make a decision on anything nuclear this evening. Exactly. It's there. It's not my area of expertise.

The It's not what we think anymore. They're small. You can actually fit the nuclear device in a truck in a in a semi-truck. the the structure that it's going to be encased is probably the size of the room. They're small. They're tiny. And with that said, there's only two in existence right now. One in Russia and one in France. In 2023, the NRC, the National Regulatory Commission, approved a company to start one in 2023. To date, they have done nothing.

It's supposed to be online in 2029. I doubt that'll happen. There's still a lot of regulations and a lot of um just things they have to come come up with ideas and so forth. So, I mean, for us to try to put something out there, it's going to be really speculative. Yeah. Basically, we're following federal and state regulations. Yeah. Well, the NRC is going to be the one that governs it, right? And so, if if I mean, we have to put something in the land use code.

So, this is the carton horse if somebody comes to us and says, "Okay, I got a property owner that's willing to allow us to put this the this SMR on 60 acres." Um, how can we approve or disapprove without the government? It would have it would have to go through channels before it ever got to us. So, we would hope for to get that first. Okay, that's important, right? So, what what are the alternative energies? We're really talking about wind. Wind. Um, geothermal. Geothermal. Anything and everything. Yeah.

So, geothermal. What's the issue with geothermal? I have geothermal on my property. I don't think there's an issue. We just need to address it on the land use code. That's all they want. The commissioners want something in there that speaks to geothermal, wind, solar. We got the solar.

So, I don't think it's going to have to be specific regulations. I mean, wind might account for something, but it's all basically falling under high impact permits, special use permits as utilities, and a high impact permit. [Music] We are um the attorney's redoing our thoughts that we put down. So, he's kind of massaging them. So, I think we need to That's going to be be next week. We're gonna have it next week. I think he's supposed to have something. Okay. Can we get to us?

Yeah. If there's ever something in writing. Well, hopefully it's in writing. Yeah. So that we can we can massage that so that the geothermal and maybe the wind will fit in those requirements. Okay. And the new I think we're going to have to do on its own. Yeah. Or do a morator special paragraph. That's the thing is that, you know, how many of those are actually ever going to come into Monzuma County? I mean, but if they do, then we got to be prepared.

Wouldn't have that um what's their name on tea? Wasn't that like some sort of alternative energy? Weren't they burning wood or they're making charcoal? Yeah, they make charcoal. That's not an energy. That was that was they're creating biochar. Biochar. Biochar fortration systems and things like that. So that's not really energy. That's okay. Creating a product. Yeah.

It's not a bofuel. So, the plan right now whenever the county attorney gets to a point of what he's decided is is where he's at on the the documents. We'll then put a public notice out for a public hearing. I think he said it's going to have to be at least a three-week notice and at that point it will be a public hearing to adopt or discuss regulation or continue the moratorum or create another moratorum because the other one expires Wednesday

and there's no public notice to address something new right now. So it's just going to expire but there is a provision some law legal something or other that any applications turned in after the moratorum because we are developing new criteria would still fall under the new criteria. Okay, you know unless we extend it out for a year and don't do anything right. So, I you know I I don't think that's going to happen. But, um just depends on when we get get to have the public hearing and get some documents and I'll share with you whatever I get.

Okay. I did send out they he did uh present to the commissioners his view and take on the whole part of it just being under high impact permits and special use permits. not a special chapter or a separate chapter. Um, so you can listen to that from Monday's meeting. Okay. So, it's just a a heads up that we're going to be working on that, but I don't think we can move forward until we have that attorney's [Music] input. Correct. Okay. So, maybe just do a little research on

some of the items. The nuke's going to be tough. Guarantee that one's going to be hard. They they talk about they talk about a an emergency planning zone. They that's if something happens, right? And on a full big unit, it's 50 miles. It's within 10 miles. There has to be nothing within 10 miles. So, no animals, no no growing, any crops. Yeah, that sounds like that's a full nuclear one. That sounds like bears ears.

No. So, ours is going to be much smaller, but they're going to still have to be that emergency planning zone, right? Maybe a couple hundred yards. Probably be more. Yeah, there could be I mean, there's still going to be residences there, right? I mean, I I lived it can be I lived in Lake Wy, South Carolina. Lived five miles from a big nuclear plant. Big. I mean, I'm not talking about these mini things we're talking about here. Big one. A big one. Yeah. Emergency planting zone. And they didn't. But what does that mean? They didn't talk about people. They talked about animals and and crops growing. And that's what they talked about. People are animals, too.

Seems like Bratlin would want to weigh in on that. Yeah, I don't want to get into the emergency management element of that. Well, see, that's that's going to be the problem because this is all kind of new technology and stuff and who really knows what regulations do we need, you know? It's like it's I'm not a real smart person, but it's like I don't I don't know that I need to be involved in something like that because I I mean I have no clue. I would think there'd be federal regulations on those. I mean surely there are. I mean there will be. Well, there will be. Yeah.

There will be the state the state of Arkansas in particular Pulk County. Um this is a good they have actually um commissioned a um requirement for information. So they they've hired a contractor to figure out the dos, the don'ts, and so forth. So maybe they want to be first, huh? Yeah, they want to be the first. Poke pound Arkansas. Yeah. Bleeding edge. That's what that's called. Sorry. That's called bleeding edge. Bleeding edge. Okay. Yeah. They want to be they want to be first. Good. So

good for them. Well, that's, you know, that's the other problem is that our county doesn't have the funds to hire somebody to come do all this. It's like I know they I know they want us to do it, but like I said, it's it's beyond my concept of of even figuring this out, but you know, and and that may I don't know how long it's going to take, Don, how long that um that county before they get that information. But it'll be 20 years planning requirements or maybe we can get like we've got the other things for the solar. Yeah, we'll have to track that.

Okay. Good. Anything else? Just on geothermal. So when we're talking about geothermal, you're talking about trying to generate power from geothermal. Like seriously, I built a house and the option was given to me. Oh, you put in this heating unit or we can do geothermal and you'll have heating and air conditioning. It cost a little bit more. It didn't cost that much more to be honest with you. And we've dug I think 10 foot trenches and we've got lines running over a mile

that circulate and essentially prime the system at I forget the temperature 52 degrees or whatever it is 10 ft down and it eases the the cost of heating it and it eases the cost of cooling it. That's a system we put in a heat. We didn't go to anybody for permission to do that. Are we trying to address that? That's geothermal. This would be utility scale power utility scale geothermal where you'd have a mega what you would see in Yuma where they're doing that, right? Yeah. It would be, you know, some kind of steam. It's just a matter of drilling and tapping into this.

They went deep in Yuma. Yeah. I mean, they ended up hitting mercury, all kinds of stuff down there. I mean, it is a source of energy. We've got geothermal in our parking lot, too. Oh, really? Yeah. No, they made money on it as it turned out. Yeah. When they remodeled this, there's geothermal in the west parking lot. Rod's wet in the parking lot. Okay. They put probably 40 holes out there.

I mean, it goes to show you how little people really know about it. originally went, "Oh, you know, we had guys up there with drill. I got 110 acres. We could we don't need you don't you don't gain anything by going down 300 ft." Actually, you don't gain much after about 8 feet. It's the same temperature for the if you have the proper I mean, if you're in town, you would have to drill. Yeah. If you had a half acre, you'd have to drill. But the high schools got it, too, in their parking lot. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of places around here that have it, I would think. Yeah, it's the area we live in. Yeah, it's it's a good solution.

I was supposed to build a couple houses up north of Durango and they went in to do the foundations and got down about three or four feet and hit the uh hit it, you know. So, now they got hot water coming out of the ground. Now, they can't build the houses because they can't shut it off once they broke through. So, they went in One of them they moved the house over about 10 feet. Now they got it, you know, doing a hot tub. All kinds of stuff goes into the river. You know, it's pretty cool out there, but it's like I mean, I get it. They don't have to heat their houses because they hooked into it, you know, eat the house.

But then again, it's like, okay, so who actually owns that, you know? Is that a mineral right or is that a, you know, I've never had that discussion with anyone? I don't know. Yeah. Is it water right or mineral right? I don't know what the answer. Good question. Answer a good question. That is a good one. Yeah. So, like I said, I think, you know, I thought a lot about it because I watched, you know, watched you guys' meeting on YouTube. Soon as they started talking that I'm like, "Oh, we're screwed." Because I have no clue. You're not. Okay. Anything else?

All right, we'll make it to the floor. I know. We hurry. We need a motion. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion to adjourn this meeting. Okay, motion. Second. Second. Time is 627. [Music] It says it's jurisdictional and specific definitions deter