Town of Bayfield and La Plata County officials met Thursday morning to discuss an agreement for joint planning for development on lands near the town.
“We want to get ahead of the game, manage growth before it happens, make sure there’s a good decision-making process, whatever that process ends up to be, workable for both the town and county,” Bayfield Mayor Rick Smith said. “I don’t want staff overburdened with extra steps that don’t make sense. We don’t want to be hasty, but we don’t want it to sit on the back burner, either.”
Town Manager Chris La May said, “In this area, we aren’t facing tremendous growth pressure, but we are expecting more activity, and we’d like to have our house in order.”
He stressed the desire to have commercial development in town, not nearby on unincorporated land. “We’d like to protect commercial property tax and sales tax. If it happens in the county, that’s detrimental to the town.”
County Commissioner Julie Westendorff said the county gets the same revenue from property taxes and sales taxes whether a commercial development is in town limits or not.
Another goal, La May said, is to avoid having properties develop near town with infrastructure that isn’t to town standards. When areas seek annexation, the town needs to ensure “we aren’t taking on a financial burden, that the infrastructure is quality,” he said.
Access to central water and sewer service is the main incentive for properties to annex. Gem Village and the Homestead Trails subdivision already have sewer service from a system the town took over from the now-defunct Bayfield Sanitation District.
