Providing flexibility to keep local farms economically viable was emphasized by La Plata County planning commissioners Thursday night as they continued work on an updated comprehensive plan.
Thursday night’s meeting at the La Plata County Courthouse looked at updating the agriculture part of the comprehensive plan, which is aimed at guiding land-use decisions on projects before the planning commissioners. The hope is to call it good at their June 4 meeting and move on to the comprehensive plan’s section on infrastructure.
Right-to-farm got a lot of discussion Thursday night. Audience members and commissioners called for an emphasis on that right even though it’s in state statute.
Comments also emphasized the need to make it easier for small- or large-scale farmers and ranchers to pursue other activities on their land for economic viability. The question was how broad should that be or how closely related to agriculture.
“Leave some creativity in all this,” audience member Brian Kimmel said. “The Planning Department should be the county’s economic-development department as well as planning.” Kimmel represents clients going through the land-use permit process.
Several planning commissioners also want to leave the opportunity for creativity and flexibility.
Planning Commissioner Frank Lockwood wanted to insert the word “sustainable” in one of the objectives. Commission Chairman Jim Tencza said, “That may be a prohibited word.” He was on the commission in 2011, when that word became toxic, and a completely new comp plan ended up being scrapped.
The comp plan is an advisory document.
Commissioner Tom Gorton said good things were brought up.
“Anything we do in this comp plan, my vote will be to word things to implement changes in the code. Otherwise, it’s a wasted effort. We need a vision of what we want, but a vision in the absence of action has little value.”
Planning commissioners, assisted by county planning staff members, are updating the county’s 2001 Comprehensive Plan. Previous sessions, which began in February, dealt with the plan introduction and growth trends.
Work is expected to continue into 2017. The comp-plan meetings are the first Thursday each month.
Much of the comp-plan work is done between meetings, with planning commissioners and residents submitting ideas by mid month. Then, county planning staff members make draft changes based on those submissions and comments from the previous meeting for consideration at the next monthly meeting.
Planning staff member Jason Meininger said of the past month’s work, “We did a thorough scrubbing of the plan,” cleaning outdated items like a misspelled reference to Gov. Roy “Romero.” Gov. Romer held office in the 1990s.
Other changes listed for the ag chapter were:
‰ Add “right to farm” language and include the relevant state statute.
‰ Add policies to expand right-to-farm protections.
‰ Add a water component.
‰ Add a policy on economic diversification.
‰ Add “value added” language.
‰ Add language about expanding ag operations or re-establishing ag operations.
Marijuana cultivation isn’t included because the state and county don’t consider that to be agriculture. Meininger said that could be included in the land-use section.
