Westcliffe awarded grant for water and sewer to expand housing options

The Westcliffe Board of Trustees (BOT) held their regular meeting on May 20. Two agenda items were tabled until the June meeting: an IT report from Complete Business Solutions, and consideration of rezoning a lot in the Shadow Ridge subdivision from highway commercial to single-family residential.

The other three items under New Business were: consideration of filling a vacancy on the town’s Planning Commission (PC); an update on the activities of the county’s Workforce Housing Committee (WHC); and a discussion led by representatives of Dark Skies, Inc., on needed improvements and maintenance to the Smokey Jack Observatory (SJO) at Bluff Park.

The BOT discussed the qualifications of the three candidates who had applied for the open PC position: Brian Clince, owner of Antler Liquor, and a former Westcliffe Trustee; Leslie Parkes, currently serving as an alternate; and Nicole Petersen. After this discussion, Mayor Paul Wenke made a motion to appoint Clince, keeping Parkes as an alternate and adding Petersen as a second alternate. The motion passed unanimously.

Wenke introduced the topic of workforce housing by announcing that the town had been awarded a grant from the Colorado Department of Local Affairs (DOLA) to finance water and sewer infrastructure for town-owned lots, allowing for their eventual development. “We are working with CHFA (Colorado Housing and Finance Authority),” Wenke said, “outlining steps we need to take to get to a completed project – I want to jump on it and get it finished this year. What we need to do next is get together with Dave Schneider at Round Mountain and then get an engineer. We need to put an RFP together for construction after the engineer’s findings. We probably need a survey as well. We have probably three contractors in town who could do this. I like the idea of local businesses doing the work.

“The Housing Needs Assessment will be done in June; we will know better what our [housing stock] need is at that time,” Wenke concluded, before introducing Barry Keene of the WHC. Keene explained the process of putting a Housing Authority together. The problem facing Custer County, Keene said, was that none of the governmental bodies – towns or county – wanted to take ownership of the properties proposed for workforce housing development. Hence, the need for a separate Housing Authority in order to own and manage the properties once they are developed and, most critically, for the initial phases of development, to be the responsible party for administering grants and loans to get the housing stock built.

Keene outlined the steps that the WHC had taken towards getting a Housing Authority established in Custer County, which included approaching both UAACOG and the Chaffee Housing Trust as potential fiscal agents. However, he concluded, a solution closer to hand was possible: the Custer County Community Development Corporation, a separate nonprofit organization “spun off from the Custer County Economic Development Council,” could serve as the local Housing Authority. “Charles Bogle [President of the EDC] gifted [the Community Development Corporation] to workforce housing,” Keene said. “It now needs a separate board of directors. DOLA has a local capacity planning grant to develop something like this. I am working on a grant application for a consultant.”

He went on to explain that the grant, which is due May 30, would be an 80/20 match grant, and proposed that the three governmental bodies – the two towns and the county – that had collaborated on financing the match for the Housing Needs Assessment should also collaborate on funding the new match. “The county has said they would put in half of the match,” Keene said, calling Westcliffe the “anchor entity” for the grant, even though the first project will likely be development of 12 county-owned lots in Silver Cliff: “The members of the WHC would support the consultant and determine what we actually need them to do.”

“What is the money going to be used for?” Wenke asked. “We have to set up a whole nonprofit – setting up the office, training people to handle the work,” Keene replied. “The Chaffee Housing Trust will be temporary fiscal agent through the [Silver Cliff] project development period, then we take over. They are willing to do this but can’t stretch themselves administratively – handling paperwork for grants, loans, etc….this is the only way we are going to get any kind of affordable housing in place by the end of 2026.”

After further discussion, Wenke said, “I think we need to have more time with you – a workshop? The sooner the better.” He also called on County Commissioner Lucas Epp, who was present at the meeting, to confirm that the county had agreed to pay a share of the grant match, “The county has $10,000 in WHC funds to put towards it,” Epp responded. (The workshop date has been set for Friday May 30, at 9:30 a.m.)

The BOT then heard from Erick Messick, Vice President of Dark Skies, Inc., on the need for various upgrades and improvements to the SJO area, including maintenance of the access road and adding fencing to extend to the drainage area, to discourage people from climbing over the rocks to the observatory, which was cited as a safety hazard. “I don’t know what the next steps are,” Messick said: “Have a contractor look it over and price it out?”

After discussion of funding, which included speculation as to whether or not the property transfer agreement from the Land Conservancy to the town included maintenance monies, whether or not there existed a written agreement that the town actually owned the SJO and was responsible for maintaining it, and how much responsibility for repairs and improvements ought to be shared between the town and Dark Skies, Wenke concluded by saying, “We need to find all this documentation, and go down and take a look at the work that needs to be done, and we will do that before the next BOT meeting.”

During public comment, Dark Skies came up again in the context of a complaint that the Saddle Club has been turning on their outdoor lights without a special use permit for their Thursday roping events.

“None of those lights are in compliance with our Dark Skies ordinance,” said Trustee Chuck Jagow, who also serves as President of Dark Skies Inc. “If you include those parking lot lights being on, we are in danger of losing our Dark Skies certification. The light trespass from those lights reaches all the way to the hay fields.”

“My understanding was that they were allowed to have those lights on for 11 nights per year – it would cover rodeo and gymkhana,” said Wenke. The BOT agreed that the Saddle Club was supposed to come to them for a special event permit to cover the extended light use.

Finally, Trustee Christy Patterson brought up the subject of lawsuits against the town for Open Meeting violations, leveling some criticisms against Town Attorney Clay Buchner in the process. Trustee Randy Wilhelm put a stop to the discussion by pointing out that discussion of items not on the agenda was part of what had got them in trouble in the first place.

“I think we need to have a tutorial on Open Meetings Law,” was Trustee Mark Dembosky’s conclusion.

– Elliot Jackson