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Robin's avatar

Just wrote to Rep Brown and Sen Lewis. Thank you for the contacts and for the heads up about this terrible bill.

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Langley, Stuart's avatar

I don't doubt your reporting for a second, but at first blush my thought is that something must be wrong with the numbers. I am surprised that Lafayette, which is only about 6000 acres total area, has 2100 acres of developable land. Or that any reasonable plan would suggest 73,000 new housing units in a town that has built less than 13,000 units since 1888. At 2.5 residents per HU, we would add nearly 200,000 residents...more than half of the total population of Boulder County today.

But a fundamental issue that I don't see raised is that the plan to withhold infrastructure dollars BEFORE the dense development is underway is a classic cart-before-the-horse problem faced by communities like Lafayette. Infrastructure must come first. 40 HU per acre along the cobblestone path that is Arapahoe road is not plausible. And I seriously doubt that the suggested but not yet funded improvements to HWY 7 take into account that level of density.

Withholding $1M in roadway maintenance is trivial in comparison to the increased costs to the City of providing services to that level of new development. It's not a plan that has even a chance to succeed.

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