If the La Plata County Planning Commissioners are doing their job well, you might never consider the work they do unless you yourself have a project before them.
“When we drive around the county looking at all the places that we have considered projects, because it’s accumulated over the years, if it’s new construction or big renovations, you can see it,” said Geri Malandra, the recently retired chair of the commission. “But for the most part, if you drive around, the county doesn’t really look all that different … because we have addressed our mandate, which is to ensure compatibility.”
It’s a thankless job, with no financial compensation, that often requires hours of preparation in advance of commission meetings, which are scheduled every other week.
At best, planning commissioners may revel in the knowledge that they applied county code appropriately and ensured development projects are as compatible as possible with the surrounding area. At worst, they are maligned as ill-informed bureaucrats responsible for either approving development that neighbors hate, or blocking development to which applicants feel entitled (sometimes regardless of applicable code).
People in this part of the country seem to have a sort of culturally imbued penchant for differences of an opinion, Malandra said. It’s something she likes about living in La Plata County.
Malandra and Charly Minkler both just retired from the planning commission after nine years (they are term-limited). Malandra spent the last three years as commission chair.
The body is appointed by the Board of County Commissioners to handle many of the lower level planning projects. The commission makes decisions on sketch plans and minor land use permits and approves comprehensive and district plans. On bigger projects, they make critical recommendations to the BOCC.
“Our role then is kind of like a mini group of formed citizens who look at all the evidence, look at comments, look at the statue. Say, Well, we think the recommendation to approve or disapprove or change is correct,” Malandra said.
She joined the commission after she saw her neighbors in Edgemont get worked up over some road blocks they had encountered in the land-use process. Malandra has what she calls a “messy mind map,” and the work appealed to her interdisciplinary sensibilities.
Minkler, a hay farmer in Ignacio, applied to the commission because he saw little representation of rural and agricultural interests.
“La Plata County is an anomaly in that 60% of its residents live outside the three municipalities, and that is not common in the state,” he said. “And what that indicates, is that people who have moved here want to have a rural lifestyle.”
During the course of their tenure, the two participated in several major undertakings, including the arduous code rewrite process, during which rules governing land use were overhauled for the first time in 40 years.
Save for the Animas Valley, La Plata County does not have traditional Euclidean zoning – a system against which residents vociferously objected when the land-use code was rewritten in 2019.
Everything comes down to compatibility, Minkler said. That doesn’t always make the planning commissioner’s job easy.
“You can do about anything you want in our county as long as you have water, sewer access and your neighbors are OK with it – that’s kind of the parameters,” Minkler said. “So, yeah, it’s always going to be a little bit clunky because of that, and a little bit subjective, which I wish it wasn’t.”
Meetings can get testy, and at times vitriolic.
Malandra is the only person in recent memory who has had to actually pound a gavel on the dais to quiet a room, County Manager Chuck Stevens delights to recall.
The incident came during a tense hearing when the commission considered a proposed draft of Chapter 90, the code section that contains natural gas and oil extraction regulations.
Both Minkler and Malandra said the Chapter 90 revision was one of the most difficult issues that came before them.
“Although they were challenging, I also think in many ways, they were some of the best meetings,” Malandra said.
Despite the recent code rewrite, the slow pace of development remains a needling concern for some (the issue was the central, if not dominant in Paul Black’s failed attempt to unseat Commissioner Matt Salka on the BOCC).
To the former commissioners, with their view on the inside, issues with the new code appear to be a form of growing pains.
The old code was “very broken,” Minkler said. The attempts to streamline the process have not worked as well as some had hoped, he acknowledged, although some of that is because of a period of high turnover within the planning department in late 2022 and early 2023. Malandra is well aware that some members of the public seem to prefer the old code, if for no reason other than that they were familiar with it.
“The good news is that the planning department is very willing to make changes to the new code as needed,” Minkler said.
To interrogate tension and preside in a simultaneously empathetic yet firm manner is no easy task. Malandra said the commission’s work is a “amazing human process.”
“I learned how to be a good listener (and) be compassionate,” Minkler said during a celebration of his and Malandra’s tenure hosted by the county on Jan. 30.
“I just think there’s something about this county that makes it possible for people who have very different points of view to work very well together, I hope, to the benefit of the county,” Malandra said.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
This story has been updated to reflect that the celebration of Charly Minkler and Geri Malandra was held Jan. 30.
