Pitkin County candidates talk school district housing

The question

This is the second installment of a five-part questionnaire with the six candidates seeking three spots on the Pitkin Board of County Commissioners in the November elections. Today’s question is: How do you feel about the Aspen School District’s idea of adding more housing units to the existing West Ranch subdivision in lower Woody Creek, which is outside Aspen’s Urban Growth Boundary?

George Newman

I believe in the concept of “smart growth,” locating development where it is convenient to public transportation and basic services like schools, grocery stores and employment. The purpose of an urban growth boundary is to establish where dense development should occur. It protects our environment, our rural character and our landscape. It prevents urban sprawl, which I believe residents of Pitkin County oppose.

We as a community are constantly struggling with the issue of how to provide affordable housing for our teachers, our emergency care responders, our hospital and public safety employees and our employees in general. However, to allow a property outside the Urban Growth Boundary to be up zoned for affordable housing is to contradict all that we are trying to do to protect and preserve our rural character and sets a dangerous precedent for the next request down the line with a similar need. The lack of regular bus service is already a problem for residents in Woody Creek, one that RFTA has yet to resolve.

I support the current Urban Growth Boundary and am opposed to building more affordable housing in rural areas. The school district's proposed site at West Ranch is currently zoned for one free-market unit. It could be sold, and the moneys put toward a public/private partnership or some other creative approach. As County Commissioner, I will work with the school district and explore solutions to help better address their needs.

Dee Malone

I do not support adding more units to the existing West Ranch Subdivision. However, I believe that affordable housing is essential to a healthy community and I am strongly supportive of affordable housing that enhances community and environmental sustainability. I believe that while affordable housing projects within the Urban Growth Boundary (UGB) accomplish sustainability, projects outside of the UGB undermine sustainability, and that numerous opportunities for affordable housing still exist within the UGB. Projects within the UGB contribute to community integration, and promote the use of alternative transportation — especially bicycling, walking and buses. Conversely, projects outside the UGB promote automobile use, increase gas consumption and travel time to work, traffic congestion and air pollution, and fragment the community and contribute to urban sprawl. Sprawl results in loss of farmland, wildlife habitat and increased taxes and destroys the landscape qualities that attract tourists. Sprawl also results in land conversion that contributes to climate change by eliminating carbon-absorbing vegetation and disturbing carbon-storing soil, and degrades water resources by increasing impermeable surfaces that increase runoff and pollution and decrease water infiltration into the soil.

Regardless of where additional housing units are located, I believe that affordable housing projects must be “Green”; the county has a responsibility to make a contribution towards combating climate change by requiring the use of alternative energy, using renewable or recycled and non-toxic building materials, and insisting on landscaping with native plants that don't require irrigation, pesticides or fertilizers.

Responsibility for County affordable housing ultimately rests with the BOCC, who must ensure that existing affordable housing developments are adequate. For instance, problems with leach fields at the Pitkin Iron affordable housing development should be resolved to the satisfaction of the residents. Additionally, the ratio of owner and rental housing units should be appropriate to the needs of the community.

Jack Hatfield

As an incumbent county commissioner, I will address this question from a policy standpoint, since a formal land-use application might come before the BOCC. I do not want to predict where I might stand until I’ve had a chance to evaluate the facts of an application.

Pitkin County policy, dating back to my early years on the BOCC, is one that would direct housing to be built within urban growth boundaries. Several reasons dictate this policy, including the lack of infrastructure (i.e., water/sewer), traffic generation, the distance from transit routes, environmental degradation and the increased need for public safety, fire, environmental health personnel.

Having referred to very real concerns and costs related to infrastructure, there is an equally compelling reason why BOCC policy prohibits (with minor exceptions) urban housing densities outside the UGB. This is the rural character issue. Does Pitkin County want to look and feel like Eagle and Garfield counties — with sprawl everywhere? Have we not spent millions of dollars for the preservation of our rural character by the purchase of open space? In 2000, I ran for a seat on the BOCC with the promise to preserve and protect our rural areas. I have not seen significant outcry by the public to consider, much less change, that perspective. As a matter of fact, continual feedback, including several formal surveys, reinforce the fact that rural character, quality of life, protection of the environment and continued purchase of open space are of paramount importance.

At issue are competing community values … rural character vs. the need for housing. I believe we can achieve both without comprising our values. As I’ve stated before, cooperating with other entities, we can collectively build housing in the appropriate locations by pooling dollars, thus investing in the economies of scale.

Bruce Anderson

The Aspen Urban Growth Boundary was established in light of a strong consensus that the rural character here is very valuable and needs to be preserved.

As a staunch supporter of the Aspen school system, I understand it is essential to develop targeted housing in order to attract and retain the teacher quality level my children were so fortunate to have. We need to pursue creating that housing within the goals established for the community. Just as it was not appropriate for Rocky Mountain Institute to build tens of thousands of square feet of office space at Windstar, neither is it appropriate for the school system to build more high density housing in Woody Creek.

That the goals of both organizations are lofty is indisputable. Both organizations, however, are part of the larger community that has collectively established the Urban Growth Boundary, and that their goals are lofty does not justify bending the rules. We have already heard that the total acreage of the school campus is smaller than is often the case, but both the geography and the high land values here would predict that. Perhaps we should recognize that having teacher housing within walking distance of the schools is a good thing. To achieve that, we must reevaluate some of the current uses of land at the campus. The bus parking and maintenance facility could be located elsewhere, perhaps in the RFTA area. (An added benefit would be that a number of those employees would stop adding to the daily clog approaching the roundabout, since they already live downvalley.) Additionally, at some point we will likely have to recognize that large parking lots represent a resource better used for housing, and the Aspen school campus must take strides toward becoming much more of a mass transit (only) accessible campus.

Shellie Roy

The concerns expressed by Woody Creek and the BOCC regarding the importance of an Urban Growth Boundary are legitimate. Density in town and protecting rural lands in between makes sense on every level.

But blocking the school’s proposal to build more homes on school-owned property smacks of the same ideological paralysis that has frozen Washington. Ideological standoffs don’t belong in local politics.

Issue in front of us: The affordable and free market housing purchased by local employees in the 1970s and 1980s is retiring out of the housing pool as their owners retire. We are and will lose a thousand baby boom employees and business people and their housing. A town with no firemen, peace officers, nurses, teachers, chefs, managers, small business proprietors and so on isn’t much of a town, and definitely isn’t the town we all were drawn to.

The politically correct talk “UGB” and “Infill” as though it is the end all, be all. But they don’t identify exactly where infill housing is going to be built. Aspen has denied or tabled all the ‘infill’ projects put to them in the last year and half.

“Infill” usually means a studio or 1 bedroom — which works fine for entry level workers but gets real old as people mature or start families.

We have real problems coming down the pike and we can’t hide behind clever terms that push the problems elsewhere. We have to discuss honestly the growth and density necessary in Aspen, Basalt and Snowmass to make an Urban Growth Boundary work.

The school’s proposal works because it will create density in an already developed area improving transit options and adding enough homes to make a community. Approve the proposal and start thinking bigger picture.

Michael M. Owsley

Aspen’s Urban Growth Boundary surrounds the city of Aspen, extending to the beginning of the Shale Bluffs. Adopted in 2004, its purpose is to have a clear separation of urban density, activity, and necessary services, from the rural parts of the county that have river valleys, greenery, and the open lands of former ranches.

Whenever we leave Pitkin County, we see the effects of mixing urban centers with rural ones. All of us come from places that have allowed sprawl to overtake the citrus orchards or the corn fields, the dairy lands, the wetlands, or the forests. Imagine if North Star Preserve had been drained, instead of conserved, to make room for development.

The beneficiaries of this policy are the people who live in the urban areas. A short walk or ride can carry city dwellers out into the country. Although their backyards in town may not be large, their backyard in the county is huge.

To change the policy of the Urban Growth Boundary would eventually lead to a solid urban corridor from Aspen to El Jebel, creeping up all the valleys and former agricultural lands. It would mean the end of Aspen as a resort, a unique and historical town, no different from the sprawl you see in Rifle and Eagle.

Making exceptions in the balance of urban development and rural preservation, such as changing the density of the West Ranch subdivision, add up to the destruction of what makes Pitkin County unique.