from http://www.bouldercolorado.gov/files/PDS/boards/Section_4.pdf

City staff have proposed a subtle but important change to the policies governing the Planning Reserve.  Current rules require any development in the area to show that it meets a need that can’t be satisfied in the already-developed area of the city.  Staff’s proposal would, instead, require development to show that it achieves certain community goals.

The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan designates 680 acres on the northern edge of Boulder as “Area III – Planning Reserve.”  It was set aside in 1993 as a location for possible future development, and in 2005 the BVCP was amended to state that the area should only be developed in order to satisfy a “priority need that cannot be met within the existing service area.”  Planning staff are proposing to ease the process for developing the land, including possibly changing that criterion to require any new development in the Reserve to satisfy the BVCP’s sustainability and other goals, with the intention of both clarifying and lowering the threshold for development.

The BVCP partitions Boulder and its surroundings into three pieces.  Area I is the city; Area II is land outside the city but planned for annexation; and Area III is land to be preserved in its rural character.  Areas I and II make up the city’s service area.  Area III – Planning Reserve fits between Areas II and III in a sense, as the part of Area III that could, in the future, be designated for annexation.

The proposed policy changes are independent of any specific development proposals for the land.  Property owners have floated two possible projects recently: one for a multi-sport athletic training center, and another for a mixed housing and farming development termed “Agriburbia.”  Use of the land for a future Naropa University campus is also a recurring idea, but Naropa’s current financial straits make that unlikely in the near term.

Some city and county officials have expressed the desire to change the service area expansion process from a reactive approach, based on specific proposals made by developers as part of the BVCP update process, to a proactive one initiated by the community.  As a first step, staff have suggested conducting a baseline study of urban service requirements for the Planning Reserve.  The study would analyze the need for utility infrastructure, roads, parks, fire protection, and so on for various possible development scenarios.

That suggestion met some skepticism when pitched to the city’s Planning Board at its December 16, 2010 meeting.  Board members weren’t convinced that the scenarios would cover the kinds of unforeseen needs the Planning Reserve could be called upon to meet.  Board member Tim Plass wanted to be sure any study left flexibility for “truly visionary projects that we can’t even conceive of currently.”  Danica Powell suggested, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that the area might be needed as a mortuary, in which case it wouldn’t demand much in the way of services.  Andrew Shoemaker wasn’t convinced of the need for a change in approach.  “I don’t see why we’re shying away from this reactive process,” he said.

Under the current rules for service area expansion, there are three steps in the process that each require approval by the city’s Planning Board, the City Council, the county’s Planning Commission, and the County Commissioners — what’s called four-body approval.  Part of staff’s proposal includes allowing some steps to be approved just by the Planning Board and City Council, in order to streamline and speed the process.

Based on the (sometimes conflicting) guidance given by the Planning Board, staff will draw up a more specific briefing paper on the service area expansion process.  The intention is to convene a focus group of community members to study ideas, and then hold a public meeting on any proposed changes.  The results will then be incorporated into the BVCP update, which is scheduled for final approval next summer.

In the last few years, the weakness of the Plan has become evident. In 2005, that council decided to “keep the 5 Year Update open” for some years in case they wanted to annex land in Area III – Planning Reserve for a big box store. This was a clear violation of the Plan’s procedures. But the County Commissioners were silent about this abuse, in spite of significant prodding. Just a few years ago, the Council wanted to put more dense development on the Washington School site than the Plan allowed, so they simply amended the Plan. In addition to being an ad hoc change to the Plan, what they proposed would have amounted to an illegal spot zoning. Fortunately, the citizens who live in the area were able to gather signatures from throughout the city to refer the Council’s scheme to the ballot, and the next Council created a process to balance needs of the neighborhood with those of the developer. And just last year, a very similar process occurred with the Boulder Junior Academy site on Fourth Street. This time, faced with an election, the Council that was pushing the development backed off.

These incidents exposed the fundamental flaw in the Comp Plan – the citizens have no power to enforce it. To identify a couple of other policies that are in the Comp Plan but are not enforced, there is a requirement that “growth pay its own way” (in the Policy section) and another for “zero growth in vehicle miles traveled” (in the Transportation Master Plan that is attached to the Plan).  The Council has not bothered to implement these policies in any consistent or complete way.

The current Comprehensive Plan update is supposed to focus on “sustainability.”  The notion is to come up with measures of economic, social and environmental sustainability, and then see how various plans measure up. This all sounds great, but based on what I have observed in the past, various interest groups in the City will want their favorite measures included. Many of these measures will conflict with each other – that is, what is sustainable under one group’s idea would not be under another’s – and many will also conflict with the real notion of sustainability, which is, “Meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  And after all this , the city council will continue to make decisions based on a majority vote, irrespective of what the Plan says. So the Update process will have added nothing.

To make the Comprehensive Plan meaningful again, the Council should grant power to the citizens to enforce it, and grant neighborhoods and the community at large the power to set limits on development that they can live with.  Doing this will force the Council to consider what policies and zoning they really want to be bound by and what the citizens actually want. Hopefully, then the Comprehensive Plan will return to being a truly useful document on which the citizens can rely.