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.
It's a plan that has not been thought through IMHO. As the resolutions says it's one-size-fits all which does not work. It's also written so badly that if a bus route has two buses in a row 15 minutes apart, and only like that once a day, it is automatically considered a transit route. It's not specific enough. Plus bus routes change so they are asking for all this density in an area that is very different than one where there is a terminal or rails that would most likely not move.
What I didn't write about is the part of the bill that basically says hey, we spent all this money on infrastructure and people aren't using it enough so you need to build more housing near it. I think that's how they decided they could tie highway funding to this as a punishment.
Here's that part of the text from the bill, not the best format because of the numbering which begins from one on each new page but this is how it is written:
(d) COLORADO HAS INVESTED SIGNIFICANTLY IN PUBLIC TRANSIT
21 IN THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES, FUNDING OVER SIX BILLION DOLLARS
22 ACROSS EIGHTY-FIVE MILES OF NEW RAIL LINES. THE INVESTMENTS WILL
23 CONTINUE IN THE COMING YEARS WITH NEW BUS RAPID TRANSIT AND RAIL
24 SYSTEMS ALONG THE FRONT RANGE. DESPITE THESE INVESTMENTS,
25 TRANSIT RIDERSHIP LAGS BEHIND PEER AGENCIES AROUND THE COUNTRY,
26 DUE AT LEAST IN PART TO A LACK OF DENSITY NEAR THESE TRANSIT LINES.
27 BEFORE THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, THE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION
1 DISTRICT HAD TWO AND THREE-TENTHS RIDES PER VEHICLE REVENUE MILE
2 ON THEIR RAIL SYSTEM, COMPARED TO OVER FOUR RIDES PER VEHICLE
3 REVENUE MILE FOR AGENCIES IN MINNEAPOLIS AND PORTLAND AND OVER
4 EIGHT RIDES PER VEHICLE REVENUE MILE IN SEATTLE, ACCORDING TO
5 DATA FROM THE FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION'S NATIONAL TRANSIT
6 DATABASE.
7 (e) ALLOWING HIGHER DENSITY RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT NEAR
8 TRANSIT IS IMPORTANT FOR INCREASING TRANSIT RIDERSHIP AND
9 IMPROVING THE COST EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSIT SERVICES.
So, lemme see, public transit ridership isn't meeting the expectations of the public transportation proponents, so the answer is to do something like this?
"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master." attributed to George Washington. We are forgetting that at our peril.
Thank you Karen. When I first read the bill I thought these legislators do not know the area. With that type of density, there would need to be multi-story buildings built along these corridors and in any open space that the city currently has. Look at downtown Denver!! My niece lives 2 blocks from Union Station. Looking out the window (across the street) is another brick building with windows. It's a canyon of buildings. No green trees, no green space. Gov. Polis wants to increase the density and encourage everyone to build an ADU. Image every house in Lafayette having an ADU so we can double our current housing units. No one is thinking about senior citizens and how they will get to these buses and trains. It does not work to have to switch buses 2-3 routes, then walk a few blocks. Image having various Doctor's appointments to get to. Many procedures will not allow a patient to be picked up by Lift or Uber since they do not walk you into your house. The State keeps encouraging large corporations to come to Colorado and bring in more people. Karen is not exaggerating after reading through the bill. I thought I needed to read it again since that did not seem possible, but the State has been trying to change home rule in Colorado over the past couple of years. She is correct on what Lafayette has provided for lower income housing. There are many areas that are small communities to house low income seniors and working families. Lafayette has the most of this type of housing of all the communities in Boulder County.
They seem to have read a lot of books, the bill is full of titles, but they apparently haven't gone to any communities to find out the effects of what they are demanding.
They should talk to the land use planners. Our staff has done a great job of digging into each part of the bill and listing the outcome. We are lucky to have some great people in our planning department who can do this. I hope they can convince the authors that this is not workable.
Where are these people supposed to live? The city is so congested with structures as it is.
Not to mention the traffic congestion.At rush hour, as a senior with a bad knee I could park my car( if there was an open space), walk home to my house off of Public Rd faster than I could drive it.
There is really no charm to an area with buildings jammed into every possible open space. I personally can’t wait to put my home of 40 years up for sale.
Will this plan automatically displace the residents of the mobile home parks? I know one park was purchased by the residents, but most seem to still be owned by corporations. These corporations need only raise the lot rents so high that all residents have to leave, then the corporation can sell to developers. Is that the ultimate plan? I'm thinking specifically of Arbordale Acres.
I have been concerned about our mobile home parks for decades. I helped the residents of La Luna, (the park the residents purchased) to navigate the city process a bit and was there for their ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was amazing.
When I was on the comp plan update committee ( both updates) I advocated for the mobile home parks. The last comp plan update has a specific zone for mobile homes. The intent is to try and prevent them from being scraped.
In my last post I wrote about the update of the land use code happening right now. When that is complete there will be an official mobile home zone.
The comp plan says this about mobile homes
"The vision for the Mobile Home category is to preserve the existing stock of mobile homes in Lafayette and enhance mobile home communities to meet the same standards of quality set for all of Lafayette.
Mobile home and tiny home communities will receive the same quality of infrastructure, including the quality of streetscape, community gathering places, parks, and play areas, as other neighborhoods in Lafayette.
The city will explore amendments to its Development Code to permit tiny homes within existing mobile home communities."
Mobile homes are considered naturally occurring affordable housing. The city wants to
support them.
Your timing about this bill is perfect I am in the process of writing a follow-up to this post. I keep getting side-tracked but it is in the drafts folder and I hope to make it Iive soon. It's an update on what's been happening since the state passed this bill and how the city is
Thank you Karen. I guess I'll wait to make the purchase, or look elsewhere. I've been reading up on the Kingsley corporation that "manages" Arbordale Acres (owns the land) and it's pretty scary. I would be able to afford it now, but in 2 years, the potential land rent increases would make it more than I could manage. It makes me sad because otherwise it would be the perfect solution to my housing situation. Thank you for your continued advocacy.
Glad to hear developers can't pass on their bills for water rights to the citizens anymore. But yes, Karen, real drought - which has visited us many times here in CO - will be an emergency with these many potential new residents to our small city. This is crazy.
At each level of government, legislators and executives want to solve problems within their domain. The Federal Government does this to the states, and the states do it to communities within the state. In each case, action is proposed in near total ignorance of the impacts across the country or state. This is why I oppose the increasing accrual of power by the Federal Government and by the state government. We the People are the sovereigns -- not the state legislature & governor and not the President & Congress.
Withhold highway funds? The only highway around here in decent shape is 470 and guess what funds that.
Right, and not just water, but what about enough police, firefighters, health care providers, first responders, teachers, grocery stores, and the list goes on. Even just the influx of that many household pets will have a noticeable impact on a community of our size. And the cost to the city to support the resources and services that many residents will require, along with the cost of simply administrating this bill will be enormous. Have you seen the compliance requirements? Analysis, statistics, reports, accountability…. Just that part of it is going to consume a lot of city time and money. And for what? IMO this bill is about nothing more than housing production, probably in part as a means to push the problems of Denver out into the suburbs while still having access to these people they are pushing to come to Denver every day to work there. What they are trying to use us for is worker bee colonies.
Exactly. There is also the issue I always fall back on, balance. The main driver that pays the bills is sales taxes not property taxes. If we get out of balance with more housing, and therefore people, than the sales taxes can support then how do we pay for city services? The only other way would be an increase in property taxes on current residents many who are already struggling to afford to continue to live here. So more people on the lower end of the economic scale will get pushed out.
Yes the compliance part of the bill is crazy. It will put a burden on city staff big time.
They cite a lot of studies and books in the bill but have they talked to any city planners?
The bill even acknowledges that it will cause displacement in these communities. They don’t seem to care. It’s as though they are poised to throw people’s lives in the fire in these small communities to get all of their high rise worker bee colonies put up outside of Denver.
A previous council did that already! Developers have to bring water rights now. The real problem is bigger than that though. There isn't an unlimited amount of water available. That's one of the points city staff is making about this bill.
The bill's authors haven't done the part of their homework which would be visiting communities in the state to see what effect this would have. It's all on paper, but it seems they haven't talked to many city planners.
Just wrote to Rep Brown and Sen Lewis. Thank you for the contacts and for the heads up about this terrible bill.
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.
It's a plan that has not been thought through IMHO. As the resolutions says it's one-size-fits all which does not work. It's also written so badly that if a bus route has two buses in a row 15 minutes apart, and only like that once a day, it is automatically considered a transit route. It's not specific enough. Plus bus routes change so they are asking for all this density in an area that is very different than one where there is a terminal or rails that would most likely not move.
What I didn't write about is the part of the bill that basically says hey, we spent all this money on infrastructure and people aren't using it enough so you need to build more housing near it. I think that's how they decided they could tie highway funding to this as a punishment.
Here's that part of the text from the bill, not the best format because of the numbering which begins from one on each new page but this is how it is written:
(d) COLORADO HAS INVESTED SIGNIFICANTLY IN PUBLIC TRANSIT
21 IN THE LAST SEVERAL DECADES, FUNDING OVER SIX BILLION DOLLARS
22 ACROSS EIGHTY-FIVE MILES OF NEW RAIL LINES. THE INVESTMENTS WILL
23 CONTINUE IN THE COMING YEARS WITH NEW BUS RAPID TRANSIT AND RAIL
24 SYSTEMS ALONG THE FRONT RANGE. DESPITE THESE INVESTMENTS,
25 TRANSIT RIDERSHIP LAGS BEHIND PEER AGENCIES AROUND THE COUNTRY,
26 DUE AT LEAST IN PART TO A LACK OF DENSITY NEAR THESE TRANSIT LINES.
27 BEFORE THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, THE REGIONAL TRANSPORTATION
1 DISTRICT HAD TWO AND THREE-TENTHS RIDES PER VEHICLE REVENUE MILE
2 ON THEIR RAIL SYSTEM, COMPARED TO OVER FOUR RIDES PER VEHICLE
3 REVENUE MILE FOR AGENCIES IN MINNEAPOLIS AND PORTLAND AND OVER
4 EIGHT RIDES PER VEHICLE REVENUE MILE IN SEATTLE, ACCORDING TO
5 DATA FROM THE FEDERAL TRANSIT ADMINISTRATION'S NATIONAL TRANSIT
6 DATABASE.
7 (e) ALLOWING HIGHER DENSITY RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT NEAR
8 TRANSIT IS IMPORTANT FOR INCREASING TRANSIT RIDERSHIP AND
9 IMPROVING THE COST EFFECTIVENESS OF TRANSIT SERVICES.
So, lemme see, public transit ridership isn't meeting the expectations of the public transportation proponents, so the answer is to do something like this?
"Government, like fire, is a dangerous servant and a terrible master." attributed to George Washington. We are forgetting that at our peril.
Thank you Karen. When I first read the bill I thought these legislators do not know the area. With that type of density, there would need to be multi-story buildings built along these corridors and in any open space that the city currently has. Look at downtown Denver!! My niece lives 2 blocks from Union Station. Looking out the window (across the street) is another brick building with windows. It's a canyon of buildings. No green trees, no green space. Gov. Polis wants to increase the density and encourage everyone to build an ADU. Image every house in Lafayette having an ADU so we can double our current housing units. No one is thinking about senior citizens and how they will get to these buses and trains. It does not work to have to switch buses 2-3 routes, then walk a few blocks. Image having various Doctor's appointments to get to. Many procedures will not allow a patient to be picked up by Lift or Uber since they do not walk you into your house. The State keeps encouraging large corporations to come to Colorado and bring in more people. Karen is not exaggerating after reading through the bill. I thought I needed to read it again since that did not seem possible, but the State has been trying to change home rule in Colorado over the past couple of years. She is correct on what Lafayette has provided for lower income housing. There are many areas that are small communities to house low income seniors and working families. Lafayette has the most of this type of housing of all the communities in Boulder County.
They seem to have read a lot of books, the bill is full of titles, but they apparently haven't gone to any communities to find out the effects of what they are demanding.
They should talk to the land use planners. Our staff has done a great job of digging into each part of the bill and listing the outcome. We are lucky to have some great people in our planning department who can do this. I hope they can convince the authors that this is not workable.
Where are these people supposed to live? The city is so congested with structures as it is.
Not to mention the traffic congestion.At rush hour, as a senior with a bad knee I could park my car( if there was an open space), walk home to my house off of Public Rd faster than I could drive it.
There is really no charm to an area with buildings jammed into every possible open space. I personally can’t wait to put my home of 40 years up for sale.
They will live in one of the new 72,000 units we are supposed to build!
Will this plan automatically displace the residents of the mobile home parks? I know one park was purchased by the residents, but most seem to still be owned by corporations. These corporations need only raise the lot rents so high that all residents have to leave, then the corporation can sell to developers. Is that the ultimate plan? I'm thinking specifically of Arbordale Acres.
I have been concerned about our mobile home parks for decades. I helped the residents of La Luna, (the park the residents purchased) to navigate the city process a bit and was there for their ribbon-cutting ceremony. It was amazing.
When I was on the comp plan update committee ( both updates) I advocated for the mobile home parks. The last comp plan update has a specific zone for mobile homes. The intent is to try and prevent them from being scraped.
In my last post I wrote about the update of the land use code happening right now. When that is complete there will be an official mobile home zone.
The comp plan says this about mobile homes
"The vision for the Mobile Home category is to preserve the existing stock of mobile homes in Lafayette and enhance mobile home communities to meet the same standards of quality set for all of Lafayette.
Mobile home and tiny home communities will receive the same quality of infrastructure, including the quality of streetscape, community gathering places, parks, and play areas, as other neighborhoods in Lafayette.
The city will explore amendments to its Development Code to permit tiny homes within existing mobile home communities."
Mobile homes are considered naturally occurring affordable housing. The city wants to
support them.
Your timing about this bill is perfect I am in the process of writing a follow-up to this post. I keep getting side-tracked but it is in the drafts folder and I hope to make it Iive soon. It's an update on what's been happening since the state passed this bill and how the city is
handling it.
My comment was cut off and I can't seem to edit it. That should be "how the city is handling it"
Thank you Karen. I guess I'll wait to make the purchase, or look elsewhere. I've been reading up on the Kingsley corporation that "manages" Arbordale Acres (owns the land) and it's pretty scary. I would be able to afford it now, but in 2 years, the potential land rent increases would make it more than I could manage. It makes me sad because otherwise it would be the perfect solution to my housing situation. Thank you for your continued advocacy.
I've only heard negative comments about Arbordale and the managing corporation. For a while residents were going to the council asking for help.
There were changes made at the state level a couple of years back that seemed like they were helpful.
Glad to hear developers can't pass on their bills for water rights to the citizens anymore. But yes, Karen, real drought - which has visited us many times here in CO - will be an emergency with these many potential new residents to our small city. This is crazy.
Yes this is a plan that has not been thought through, at all.
At each level of government, legislators and executives want to solve problems within their domain. The Federal Government does this to the states, and the states do it to communities within the state. In each case, action is proposed in near total ignorance of the impacts across the country or state. This is why I oppose the increasing accrual of power by the Federal Government and by the state government. We the People are the sovereigns -- not the state legislature & governor and not the President & Congress.
Withhold highway funds? The only highway around here in decent shape is 470 and guess what funds that.
If no water, developers can't develop. That aspect needs to be in this legislation for fail safe.
Totally agree
Right, and not just water, but what about enough police, firefighters, health care providers, first responders, teachers, grocery stores, and the list goes on. Even just the influx of that many household pets will have a noticeable impact on a community of our size. And the cost to the city to support the resources and services that many residents will require, along with the cost of simply administrating this bill will be enormous. Have you seen the compliance requirements? Analysis, statistics, reports, accountability…. Just that part of it is going to consume a lot of city time and money. And for what? IMO this bill is about nothing more than housing production, probably in part as a means to push the problems of Denver out into the suburbs while still having access to these people they are pushing to come to Denver every day to work there. What they are trying to use us for is worker bee colonies.
Exactly. There is also the issue I always fall back on, balance. The main driver that pays the bills is sales taxes not property taxes. If we get out of balance with more housing, and therefore people, than the sales taxes can support then how do we pay for city services? The only other way would be an increase in property taxes on current residents many who are already struggling to afford to continue to live here. So more people on the lower end of the economic scale will get pushed out.
Yes the compliance part of the bill is crazy. It will put a burden on city staff big time.
They cite a lot of studies and books in the bill but have they talked to any city planners?
The bill even acknowledges that it will cause displacement in these communities. They don’t seem to care. It’s as though they are poised to throw people’s lives in the fire in these small communities to get all of their high rise worker bee colonies put up outside of Denver.
It's just not well thought out at all~
The question is do our city council have the cojones to make development pay for the water needed for all the additional households?
A previous council did that already! Developers have to bring water rights now. The real problem is bigger than that though. There isn't an unlimited amount of water available. That's one of the points city staff is making about this bill.
My comment was tongue in cheek when I said, where are they supposed to live .
Obviously in the new homes. Point being where are they going to put the homes. We are already packed in like sardines.
The bill's authors haven't done the part of their homework which would be visiting communities in the state to see what effect this would have. It's all on paper, but it seems they haven't talked to many city planners.
Once again, Karen, thank you for being the watchdog on these things. I will pass this information along in the Indian Peaks Newsletter.
It's quite a situation, residents should know about it. Thanks for spreading the word!