New amendments to La Plata County’s land-use code will provide greater clarity for businesses and developers as they work to follow the county’s regulations.
La Plata County commissioners passed the first significant update to the county’s new land-use code on Tuesday in a minor, but important development.
County staff members wrote 12 revisions spanning seven chapters of the code, tackling everything from water and sewer standards for RV parks to the definition of a driveway.
County commissioners portrayed the new amendments as meaningful but relatively inconsequential for most county residents.
“This is verbiage. It’s not the meat and potatoes of (the) land-use code,” said Commissioner Matt Salka.
While the changes won’t affect many county residents, they will impact businesses and developers.
“They’re important,” said Daniel Murray, principal planner with La Plata County. “They do matter to people who are wanting to do development.”
According to the new amendments, businesses with no water use, like a storage complex, do not need to prove they have sufficient water to meet demand, allowing them to streamline their land-use applications and avoid unnecessary regulations.
In the case of RV parks and other developed campgrounds, the county’s more stringent water and sewer standards now apply in addition to the state’s.
“We wanted to make sure that any campgrounds that did have water demand are subject to our rules as well,” said Aaron McKelvey, a planning engineer with the county, during the board’s meeting.
Another amendment clarified that driveways should not be considered roads, expediting lot subdivisions that would have previously triggered more standards for developers.
“These (changes) fall in the clarity and effectiveness of implementing the code category,” Murray said. “They make (the land-use code) more intuitive and more explicit in those 12 instances.”
Since Oct. 1, 2020, when La Plata County’s new land-use code first went into effect, the county has been finding passages that need further clarification or that necessitate minor adjustments as they apply the code.
The updates the commissioners passed were a response to some of those deficiencies, which county staff members expected.
“We knew that there would be a process of tweaking,” said Commissioner Marsha Porter-Norton.
Residents pushed back when the county first attempted to hire a consultant to rewrite the land-use code, forcing the county staff to write the code, County Manager Chuck Stevens said.
“A mid-sized or small government like La Plata County, you don’t write your own code,” he said. “It was a massive undertaking and our attorneys and our planners don’t write code for a living, so we knew ... that we were going to have to make some adjustments.”
More substantive land-use code changes that require greater public input will be coming later in 2022, Porter-Norton said.
The county’s planning department has identified 52 code revisions, Murray said. Tuesday’s update marks the first 12.
Future changes will likely alter the code for septic systems and operations that can show they have no wastewater demand, he said.
“This next round will just be bigger topics that warrant work sessions for feedback,” he said.
ahannon@durangoherald.com
