____________ County Planning Commission P. O. Box 21 - 111 Jensen Road No Place, CO 80000 Re: Planning Commission Workshop, March 18, 2008, 7:15 PM, Revisions to Land Use Code, Section 6 - - - Also Loghill Village Unit 2, Lot 35 Subdivision Dear Planning Commission Members: Our non-profit organization represents rural landowners throughout America against the onslaught of ever-tightening land use and draconian environmental regulations. We find that big-city land use codes are being re-invented in rural areas, that are totally out of proportion to rural settings and largely based on UN Agenda 21 social and environmental policies that fly in the face of American constitutionally protected property rights. Your county would be considered as quite rural, if not almost remote from large cities. With a population of around 5,000 citizens, that works out to about 10 people per square mile. Many areas of America would be ecstatic to have such low densities. And yet, your land use code represents what very large cities do to control and manipulate growth, for reasons that are largely un-American. The desire to maintain a rural or agricultural character unfairly restricts rural property owners and subjects a rural minority to the tyranny of an urban majority. It is anything but equal protection under the law. By what rule of constitutional law is a majority allowed to dictate land use policy to a minority, without due process or just compensation? We would like to address two issues with this communication. First, it has been brought to our attention that a Mr. Craig Smith and his wife Renee of No Place, CO have made application to divide Lot 35 of Log Village Unit 3, into two smaller tracts and one larger tract. And the reason for their application is so that they can deed the two smaller tracts to their two daughters; a very reasonable request. Their property is part of a larger Planned Unit Development Subdivision, purportedly known as Log Village Unit 3. Our review of the elements of this case is that their application for subdivision falls well within the zoning requirements for the area and is serviced by all the necessary roads and utilities. The proposed lot sizes are no smaller than existing lot sizes in the unit. However, we find two glaring concerns. The first is a land use code requirement that two thirds of the adjacent property owners and two thirds of the owners in Unit 3 must grant their approval before the Smith's can receive county approval for their subdivision. We find this requirement to not only be almost impossible to obtain, but patently punitive, if not unconstitutional. As you well know, it is hard to get 50% approval of anything, much less two thirds. Just ask the U. S. Congress. It also leaves the door open for retribution by one or more property owners, against an applicant. It further subjects the applicant to blackmail for one or more approval votes. If adjacent property owners have so much control over a single neighbor's property, it would seem fair that the neighbors with the control pick up a portion, if not all, of the applicant's property taxes. The other issue that we find particularly curious is the fact that one of the adjoining property owners to the Smith proposed subdivision is none other than your land use administrator himself, one Douglas Cann. This begs the question of the appearance of fairness doctrine, if not a direct conflict of interest. We also find it highly questionable that the staff, under which Mr. Cann oversees, is now proposing changes to the County Land Use Code, Section 6, by what the Commission agenda describes as "housekeeping changes" only. We have read the annotated copy of Section 6 showing those changes and they are anything but "housekeeping". In fact, these changes beg the appearance of an outright, blatant attempt by planning staff and perhaps Mr. Cann, to stop the Smith' from subdividing their property at all. |