Basalt Town Council voted five to one Tuesday night to enact an emergency development moratorium that will last until March 10, 2009.
The adopted ordinance says the moratorium is necessary because “the curent rate and character of development activity in the Town of Basalt is having a negative impact upon the peace, health, safety, and the general well-being of the residents of Basalt.”
The moratorium took effect as of Tuesday night’s vote.
During the moratorium, Town Council wants to change the town’s land-use code to increase the amount of employee housing that developers have to build and puts in a place a growth management plan.
Projects that have “sketch plan,” or conceptual, approval are exempt from the nine-month moratorium, as are projects that are seeking annexation into the town of Basalt, projects with no more than two residential units and projects that include 100 percent affordable housing.
There are also other exemptions and an appeal process, which includes an appeal for financial relief.
Approving Ordinance No. 1 of 2008 is the first major action taken since three “slow-growth” candidates were elected to the board in April.
“We’re trying our best to do the things that the community surey and the master plan have directed the elected officials to do and this is the only way we are going to be able to do them,” said Jacque Whitsitt, who voters returned to Basalt Town Council in the spring after she called for tighter growth controls.
Whitsitt voted for the emergency ordinance along with Peter McBride and Katie Schwoerer, who are serving their first terms on the council, and along with sitting council members Amy Capron and Gary Tennenbaum.
Mayor Leroy Duroux voted against the ordinance.
“I was concerned about the unintended consequences and I didn’t think it was an emergency,” Duroux said.
The seventh seat on the Basalt Town Council is currently empty as council member Chris Seldin recently resigned.
The ordinance passed by the council stated that “land use applications seeking development approvals in various Town Zone Districts may not be consistent with the goals and visions as expressed by the 2007 Basalt Master Plan update,” including the provisions calling for “preservation of small-town character” and “providing sufficent mitigation of impacts on the availability of affordable housing.”
The master plan also called for “establishing measures to control growth and to promote quality growth.”
“The growth rate has been hovering around 5 percent, which means the population will double in 17 years,” Whitsitt said. “That’s a lot, that’s huge.”
Previous Basalt councils have adopted other moratoriums, including a shorter one related to historical designation and another other during preparation of the 1997 master plan, according to Susan Philp, planning director for Basalt.
Town Council has directed Philp to hire consultants to analyze the current land use code as it relates to housing mitigation and growth control and to prepare potential code changes.
The moratorium won’t affect projects that only need to obtain a building permit to proceed. And there are also 292 residential units currently in the approval process that are exempt from the moratorium, according to Philp.
Some of those potential 292 units are in projects that are outside of the town limit and are seeking approval and annexation into the town.
At its next meeting on June 24, Basalt Town Council plans to further discuss if projects seeking annexation should be allowed to proceed through the approval process, even though they are exempt from the moratorium.
Those projects include 105 residential units on the Stott’s Mill property across from Basalt High School, 40 units in the Basalt Design District, and 80 proposed units on the Jadwin parcel behind the Basalt post office.
Because those projects are seeking annexation, Town Council has greater latitude regarding their review.
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