City needs more leverage in land use

Editor’s note: The following letter was originally sent to Aspen City Council.

Dear Editor:

Your recent laments about having a weak starting position when negotiating with developers does not resonate since you alone, as our elected officials, hold the power to change the starting point from which you negotiate simply by rolling back the land-use code to pre-infill requirements prior to receiving the next application.

The Klanderud administration weakened your starting position by voting for the infill code. The infill code promotes development. The infill code reduced open space requirements, reduced parking requirements, increased height and increased the floor-area ratio among other development incentives.

Certainly your goal should be to write code that will establish a clear baseline to avoid making every development a “shoot the puppy” or “get our butts kicked” negotiation. Before you begin the lengthy process of writing concise code, I urge you to simply roll back the land-use code to pre-infill requirements in all the areas identified above. In the interim this will provide you (and the community) a stronger starting position from which to negotiate and avoid irreversible “monstrous” and “humongous” mistakes.

Roll the code back to pre-infill requirements ASAP and promise the community you will work quickly to write code with a happy middle ground if you find the pre-infill numbers too restrictive.

Bert Myrin

Aspen