Posted on: October 17th, 2018

Here are some notes I took for myself from the recent IMA (InterMountain Alliance) meeting.  It occurred to me that if we share what goes on at the IMA more widely with the GH community, GH will understand better what IMA can (and can’t) do for our community and have a sense of being part of the larger P2P community.

Pam Sherman pamsher123@nullgmail.com

IMA Meeting October 12 at Ned Firehouse between IMA/P2P Housing and Human Services and County Reps

Hosts: IMA/P2P HHS (Peak toPeak Housing and Human Services)  component organizations and Boco Heads/Reps of county departments, eg. HHS, Land Use, AAA, EFAA, OEM (ESF 6).

Some Basic Stats

There are 5,649 households in the P2P region. We comprise 5% of the county population but live in 50% of the land base.

(No info on how stats derived–they are from county sources or research done by Amy’s intern when Amy was at Foothills United Way)

There are 21.4 people/square mile up here, 4,000/sq mi on the plains in the county (same)

13.43% of our pop. is 65+ . Senior citizens are moving to Ward. Gold Hill has the highest population of seniors of any community in the county.

And  GH also has a thriving elementary school.

Mountain Concerns

The first question raised, the elephant in the room, was: is the county trying to drive residents out of the mountains? The answer right away from the commissioners was: no!

Lack of public transportation can make getting places (doctor’s office, grocery etc.) difficult.

Housing used to be affordable up here; that was an attraction for new residents back in the day. Now lack of affordable housing is the biggest perceived problem. Young families can no longer afford to live up here. Just recently a couple of young families moved out of GH because they could not afford to stay here any longer.

It costs $400/sq. ft. to build in the mountains. There is low housing inventory. Many year-round rentals are now VRBO or so expensive they are not generally affordable. We are currently not allowed to rent out rooms or spaces outside the main house and many of those are taken up with Air BnBs anyway. Old cabins are falling down and for those that aren’t, it costs 25-30k to upgrade a septic alone to code, let alone all the other expenses to bring it up to code, making it too expensive to be viable for most.

Gentrification happens after disasters. Lyons voted not to rebuild affordable housing and Lyons is currently not the affordable place it was pre-flood.

Upshot: the fire departments in some areas don’t have enough people under 60 to be as strong as they need to be. Young families–parents work multiple jobs but most of their income goes to rent, so they  have to go to the food pantry to eat. The food pantry in Ned served over 4,200 meals to local, year-round residents (ie. not transients). Ned H.S. enrollment is down 40% over the past decade, Ned JHS by 17% and elementary by 11%. BVSD is thinking of closing Ned HS and busing the students down.

There is urgent care in Ned but nowhere else up here. There used to be gas stations along P2P, now none.

Another Land Use issue: one mountain resident (head of a P2P HHS organization) said she was thrilled to have been granted $3k, out of a $51k county solar energy appropriation to put up solar at her place, but then Land Use said, “NO you may not do that.” So she had to give the money back. Need more support for alternative energy.

Fire departments are burdened with heavy recreational impacts.  The USFS now has no law enforcement presence at all in our area (the previous employee retired and was not replaced). There is a big transient population with issues we have all heard about.

Indian Peaks Fire Dept in Ward and Allenspark FD fire fighters spoke out, saying they are way over-burdened. IP is responsible for hikers/visitors at Brainard and in July alone logged 242 person-hours there. 35% of calls to the fire departments are visitors, not residents  IP is all volunteer, the fire fighters/medics all have jobs, and the tax base is constricted by having lots of USFS land in the district. There is no funding from anywhere else for fire department supplies.  A member of this fire dept. said they find dead people in tents in the winter.

Allenspark’s tax base for funding a district with lots of USFS land, the southern part of RMNP and large private holdings comes from less than a quarter of the potential tax base, as there is a lot of USFS land and private churches with lots of land in their district: 21,000 A in their district are not taxable. 23% of the population there pays for Fire Dept. service for everyone. They are mandated to serve these lands which do not pay taxes for fire department upkeep. Fire fighters are volunteers there as well.

We don’t have better data cuz we don’t have GIS capability up here that the County has. Perhaps this can be remedied?

Someone said that because of low pop. density, it is more expensive to provide services up here. This is a factor in the above.

Upshot of the Meeting

Land Use (Dale Case, director) said that Land Use will adopt the International Building Codes in 2019. [What does this mean?]  There was a question on how Land Use fits into the Social Determinants Framework.

HHS voice concern over the concerns expressed and said they could either help or be advisors in trying to help. They said that the reason Ned got its 26 units of affordable housing so fast was that the community behind this move was so large, passionate, and strong. They said, “local voice is powerful.”

One of the county commissioners said we need to loop the County Assessor into these conversations and have more.

The County Sustainability Coordinator said she saw no problem with GH applying for a Sustainability Grant along with incorporated towns.

Landmark Agreement

The meeting as a whole agreed, pursuant to the fire department discussion, that mountain residents were the de facto stewards of the land here. Since the well-being of the mountain ecology is vital to the residents of the plains (think water for starters), everyone up here and down there needs to realize this. 5% of the population de facto stewarding 50% of the county land base.

Amy requested that a mountain resident be included on every board and committee in Boulder which makes policy, planning, and decisions concerning the mountains.

One of the county commissioners said she was concerned about the 800-pound gorilla in the room (as opposed to the previous elephant🙂), and asked how will climate change affect what we are trying to do here?

So a group is being convened to look at this.