Last November, San Miguel County launched a process to develop a new Master Plan for the east end of the County. Let’s just get right to the root questions at hand. Why is the existing Master Plan being overhauled by the County? Why now and with such speed?

The overhaul of the Telluride Regional Area Master Plan component of the Comprehensive Development Plan, rebranded as “the East End Master Plan,” may be cloaked in messaging that an overhaul is needed to accommodate a general priority for affordable housing, or that a revision is long overdue. Both may be true statements, and the former is a popular, troop-rallying declaration. However let’s be clear-eyed about the County’s ulterior motive.

As co-owners of a property for which significant money, time and energy have been invested, San Miguel County, and their real estate partner, the Town of Telluride, need another way to bring their Diamond Ridge rezoning objectives to fruition.

The Diamond Ridge rezone was proven to be an illegal case of spot zoning when the Court stated, “…rezoning of the Diamond Ridge Property to [Community Housing] conflicts with the Master Plan because the CH zone would allow for a much greater magnitude of high-density development than what is allowed by the Master Plan.” Revising the Master Plan to coincide with the rezoning goals of Diamond Ridge provides a run-around to accomplish these rezone aspirations.  Both the Town of Telluride Attorney and Town Manager have been honest enough to state this true ulterior motive when stating to the public that, “We got some direction out of the Court on some modifications to the process that would need to occur for Diamond Ridge to move forward.”

What is at stake here?  The simple, one-word answer is everything.

It is no secret that what makes Telluride unique from rivaling resort towns, if not anywhere on Earth, is the natural scenic landscape—one that has avoided sprawl, maintained high density mostly at the urban core, and kept the truly unique landscape of the surrounding area relatively free from high-density development. For all the imperfections that may exist in the current Master Plan and Land Use Code, we can thank those legislative documents for tempering unbridled and irreversible growth, and for essentially providing us the Telluride region we all enjoy and appreciate today.

Now, before the public is a Community Survey that we encourage you and every citizen to take before the March 3 deadline. We encourage you to answer each question with careful thought and to analyze the survey itself critically for its content and question type, as we generally believe the survey to be flawed and purposefully geared toward an end result. Accordingly, we encourage you to write to the Board of County Commissioners and Planning staff, masterplan@sanmiguelcountyco.gov,  with thoughts you cannot provide via the survey, including a critique of the survey itself if you agree.

Stay tuned for more posts and more information to be loaded on the Last Dollar Collective website related to the East End Master Plan process.

Recent letters to the editor

Two opinion pieces recently ran in the Telluride Daily Planet that we encourage you to read and share:

Our group of advocates still needs support. Please consider donating to help us keep addressing the collective concerns. Also, please consider writing a letter to the editor expressing your concerns and hopes regarding the future of Deep Creek Mesa, housing development and growth, and/or the East End Master Plan, editor@telluridenews.com.