Gold Hill has begun a Community Planning Initiative in response to Boulder County’s Townsite Planning Initiative process. This process is being offered to historic communities in Boulder County so that they can choose to take more control of their future in terms of County regulations such as land use planning and building codes and not be subject to County-level, one-size-fits-all planning guidelines and regulations. The opportunity is for Gold Hill to propose changes to the County’s Comprehensive Plan and/or to County Land Use Code regulations such as Site Plan Review, and BuildSmart (green building), transportation planning, and the historic zoning process. We can also have a greater influence on Parks and Open Space development in and around Gold Hill by participating in this process.

At a Gold Hill town meeting last fall, a vote was taken to enter into this process with the following general goals:

1. 1. Get educated about the current County regulations (or lack thereof) as they apply to Gold Hill.
2. 2. Understand how current regulations either do or do not protect what we care about in Gold Hill.
3. 3. Understand our opportunities to affect the County Comprehensive Plan and/or County Land Use Code regulations.
4. 4. Decide if we want to propose changes to the County Comprehensive Plan and/or County Land Use Code regulations affecting Gold Hill.

To address goal 1, we held two, day-long educational sessions in February during which county staff made presentations on the following topics:

• Building/addition size restrictions (there are none now in the historic townsite)
• Site Plan Review and Transferable Development Credits program
• Historic Zoning
• Septic requirements
• Boulder County Comprehensive Plan (there is nothing specific about Gold Hill in the current plan)
• Green building requirements
• Sustainability goals
• Parks and open space
• Demographics and census data

These sessions provided us with a huge amount of information to digest. Before moving forward as a committee on goals 2-4 focusing on particular issues, we decided we should try to reach a broad community consensus on a vision for the future of Gold Hill.  The CPI process is currently proposed to include residents within the area defined by the [intlink id=”939″ type=”post”]Gold Hill Town Meeting[/intlink].

Reasons to have a vision statement and participate in the Community Planning Initiative.

“Reaching consensus on our vision statement gives us the opportunity to have our ideals, goals, and objectives for the future adopted as part of the County Comprehensive Plan. The Comp Plan is an advisory document for residents, landowners, and decisions makers, which outlines broad-based goals and policies that apply to future needs and issues. This is a great opportunity to act proactively in guiding county planners, the public, and landowners in making future land use decisions that will be in line with our collective vision.”

“Participating in CPI with the County gives us the chance to formalize Gold Hill historic zoning objectives for the historic townsite into the land use code, do away with historic zoning, or something in-between. Do you think the current historic zoning process is acceptable or should we try to make it better? Should we do away with it?”

“Over the next 10-20 years, Boulder County Parks and Open Space intends to buy or achieve through land swaps all the public, non-USFS land surrounding Gold Hill to create a contiguous swath of open space to the north, south and east of town. Effectively, this means that almost all the non-private land north, east, and south of Gold Hill will be owned by the County. The County will be required to “improve” a good portion of this land with trails, parking, etc. This could mean more traffic, more dust, more bikes, more people and dogs, more fire risk, and more damage to the landscape. CPI gives us the chance to have an official say in the goals for this land and requires the County to address those goals in the development of this land. Do you want to have some control over the development of open space around Gold Hill?”

“Last summer the County adopted regulations providing more predictability in defining neighborhood size compatibility. The presumptive compatible size is the larger number of either 125% of the median residential floor area for the defined neighborhood or 2,500 square feet everywhere else. A neighborhood is defined as a platted subdivision with more than 7 lots, a townsite, or the area within 1,500 feet of the subject parcel (excluding parcels in a townsite or subdivision). The one exception is the Gold Hill Townsite. Because Site Plan Review is not required in Historic Zoning, there are no neighborhood size compatibility requirements in the townsite. For the Gold Run Subdivision, the presumed maximum residential floor area size limit is 3,619 square feet. In order to build an addition or build a new house above this size you would have to overcome the presumptions such as being minimally visible. Do you think there should be house size limits in the townsite? In the subdivision? In other areas?”