Does Jefferson County want growth? What should it look like, and how do we get there?
These questions came to mind a couple weeks back as I listened in on the Jefferson County Commission meeting, hoping to take in public reaction to the county’s new, two-decades-in-the-making growth policy.
This is the first significant revision of the policy since 2003, and it’s a piece of work. I mean that literally: The Planning Department and Planning Board spent 18 months crafting a document that runs to 84 pages.
“We all know that our county has grown and changed a lot in that time, so it was way beyond time for an update,” Planning Director LaDana Hintz, who led this effort, told the Commission. “This is a full-blown new version.”
After commissioners congratulated Hintz and her team on the considerable labor that went into this final draft, Commission Chair Dan Hagerty invited public comment on the policy. And… crickets. With that, the Commission took up a motion to approve the new policy. Hagerty again opened the floor for discussion — and again, there was none. The motion passed unanimously.
And just like that, the document that bills itself as the county’s defining “vision for its future,” got rubber-stamped and packed off to the lawyers to be prepared for formal adoption.
Before that happens, let’s take a moment to appraise this process. The new growth policy is undeniably a valuable resource. “It’s a foundational document,” says County Commissioner Cory Kirsch. Yet it’s also a conservative one, informed by statute and grant requirements as much as by a collective, far-sighted vision of what we’d like our community to become.
Much of the policy is consumed by a cataloguing of the present. It notes the 10% increase in the county’s population since 2010, as well as the dramatic swing toward older people in that time. The number of jobs has increased, yet as of 2022, according to Census data cited in the document, 56% of employed residents work in neighboring communities. Housing is 22% more expensive relative to income here than in the rest of the state, pointing to “a need for additional housing options.”
The new policy highlights key challenges – notably, the tension between growth and lagging infrastructure. The cost of building and maintaining roads, it notes, will keep rising. Solid waste capacity is limited. Care and services for the aging are increasingly inadequate. Emergency medical service can be “unpredictable and uncertain.”
But the document is short on meaningful forecasts of need and demand. Reading it, I wondered: Will the county’s population continue to grow at its current rate, and will the median age continue to rise? What is the county’s capacity for new housing, and how many affordable units will be needed to attract the workers needed to sustain local businesses?
The policy provides consistency for land use decisions, reaffirming the logic for zoning and supporting the county’s new subdivision regulations, which are expected to be completed later this year. You can’t build in a gulch, for instance, and dead-end streets are prohibited. “This helps us say, ‘this is the road map, this is what we follow’,” Kirsch said.
But that approach is mostly defensive. The policy says, more or less: Growth is probably coming and here’s how we should prepare. That’s a reasonable approach, but it’s not as powerful as asking whether we actually want growth and, if so, how it ought to happen.
I don’t think the county knows the answers to these questions. The growth policy says its views and values have been gleaned from public survey data — but that questionnaire, which attracted just 184 responses, asked folks questions like whether they thought Jefferson County was a good place to live, and whether the county was doing a good job of planning for growth. It barely explored the prospect and quality of growth itself, and the tensions between growth, land use, infrastructure, and quality of life.
The long-ago 2003 growth policy focused on three core, interlocking priorities: sustaining and strengthening citizens’ economic well-being; protecting the county’s rural character; and preserving a “rural, friendly and independent lifestyle.”
Informed by a study showing that new housing generated far less revenue for the county than the cost of its required services, and by a “build-out analysis” that estimated the land’s capacity for future housing, the old policy doc encouraged clustering new homes near towns and called for economic development in agriculture, mining, timber, manufacturing, wholesale and retail.
The new policy, in contrast, is more open-ended and process-oriented. Its implementation strategy keys on five broad goals: strengthening and diversifying the economy; maintaining infrastructure; promoting fair and responsible land use; providing effective law enforcement, fire protection and other services; and supporting housing options for all residents. It envisions a host of “ongoing” efforts, many with distant or no deadlines and vague accountability, pointing toward various meetings, updates assessments, and the like.
(This may or may not be the nature of the beast. I reviewed the current growth policies of Madison and Broadwater Counties, which are reasonable comparisons. Both hew to more or less the same approach and structure as ours, likely informed by the same consulting firm, Great West Engineering. Broadwater’s resulting document has a rote and gauzy quality, while Madison’s, which enjoyed broader public participation, seems more concrete and forward-looking.)
All of the County’s work over the last year and a half could provide a sound basis for future planning. But we need to better understand what we mean when we talk about “growth,” and what sort of community we want to become.
Boulder’s Community Heart & Soul initiative is working to get at this, urging residents to imagine their future and establish long-term goals and action plans. Also, at its annual meeting next month the Jefferson Local Development Corporation plans to unveil a draft strategic plan anchored in economic development insights from county residents and officials.
I hope those efforts will start a broader discussion. I also hope they’ll build on and connect to the growth policy, filling in the gaps and pointing us more clearly and purposefully toward a better future.
