This was a public study session by the Commission, the first hearing of our Proposed Townsite Plan for the community of Gold Hill (the CPI mission statement and vision statement) for inclusion into the Boulder County Comprehensive Plan.  No action was requested at this meeting.  The next meeting, to formally adopt our plan, is scheduled for December 16, 2009.    

Garry Sanfacon, the County Planner who has helped facilitate our CPI committee process, presented the staff report (see https://goldhilltown.com/staff-report-for-planning-commission-hearing-nov-18/ for the full report).   He told them about our Town Meeting, that Gold Hill is the only community participating in the Townsite Planning Initiative (TPI) process that has a formal meeting structure, and outlined our work, beginning with the Oct. 13, 2008 Town Meeting discussion and vote of approval to participate in the TPI, our 2 day-long educational workshops to educate ourselves about current county regulations, through our mission statement formulation and then the meetings and community outreach through email and survey mailing to formulate our vision statement (see our website https://goldhilltown.com/proposed-cpi-text-for-boulder-county-comprehensive-plan/ for the text).

I then reported that we are very grateful for this opportunity.  We think that Garry and the staff did a wonderful job and the report is an excellent summation of the process we have gone through.  I also answered questions about how the Gold Hill Town Meeting works, informing them that it has been meeting since the mining days to address everything from dog problems, to paving, to land use issues.  We have generally had very good relations with the County, and appreciate this opportunity to have our community vision become a formal document to be taken into account whenever the County makes any plans that concern us.

Other input from community members included a letter from Lazlo and Ellen Pook who applauded the Town Meeting, but whose biggest concern was that there might be implied historic building regulations outside the Historic Townsite.   Dirk Arnold was there and was concerned about the fen out west or Mt. Alto being included, or any regulations applying to his property, and the answer was again no, but I also stated that if the County proposed to do something at the fen or along Switzerland Trail, for example, we would want to be aware of it, thus the original inclusion but current withdrawal of these historic/natural areas from our list in the Vision statement.  Karen Simmons spoke about her participation on our committee and our attempts to be as inclusive and responsive to community concerns as possible. She spoke of the Historic Zoning committee, which has long interacted successfully with the County, and that we recognize that on some issues we have two distinct areas of interest: the HZ in town and the outlying greater community.  Then she gave of the example of the vision statements’ water/sewer issues being pertinent within the HZ area but not in the general CPI area.

Johanna Hurley from 7000 Sunshine applauded Gold Hill for our work and supported our draft for inclusion in the Comprehensive Plan.

The Commissioners received the report very well and were complimentary about our whole process.  However, they were uncertain about the map, particularly the distinction between the entire Town Meeting/CPI area and the Townsite/Historical Zone.  In order to alleviate any confusion about implied historic building regulation outside the Historic Townsite, we are conferring by email and planning to revise the Vision Statement, possibly by adding “which applies to the Gold Hill platted townsite only” in parentheses after Historical Zoning in the 5^th bullet point of what we want to preserve and enhance.  We will also re-label the map for clarity and get this all out to everyone.  They were also interested in comments received from the community, which I have since sent on to them, along with our compiled data from the survey.

Gretchen Diefenderfer, CPI Committee Chair