"It's going to stir up some controversy, and some people might think it's heavy-handed," says Peter Fogg, a county land-use planner, regarding the potential regulations limiting homes to 4000/2600 sq. ft.
From the Camera today: As part of the county's transfer development rights program, a homeowner who wanted to build big would have to pay tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars into a bank set up to buy conservation easements and make open space purchases elsewhere in the county. The bigger the house, the bigger the payment into the transfer development rights program. "There's a price to everyone of land impacts, energy use and construction materials, and there should be offsets for doing those things," Fogg said.
What additional absolutes should the county pursue? number of vehicles per person? number of children per family? This arbitrary limitation is based on what "feels right" and comes from a place of envy and disgust at the blatant excess of others. It is not the kind of mindset that should be the basis of public land use policy.
What is the problem trying to be solved? And what makes 4000 sq ft the magic cut-off point to address those "problems"?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
OMG, Dan, you're correct, what's next?
However, looking selfishly at this, maybe this is good for all of us who currently live in the county.
Boulder has restricted residential growth for years, and one outcome from this are home prices way above the state average. Imagine the immediate bump in home price of any home over 4,000 sf if this idea is implemented. It'll push home prices up all over the county.
Then, at some time in the future, we can cash out, move to a county that doesn't limit size and build our McMansions for half the price of our homes in Boulder County. Afterall, we'll have to move, we won't be able to afford the resulting property taxes.
When you artificially try to control the marketplace, you have unintended consequences in the marketplace. Land use planners have no clue what impacts these things have on the marketplace.
Nor do I have all the answers. The article says there are other entities that have imposed similar restrictions. Would be interesting to see the impacts, if any yet. I tried to Google this, but only found that Marin County, CA, is proposing a similar restriction (6,000sf).
Let's make Boulder County a gated community and one giant HOA.
Indeed, out from behind the curtain comes the arbitrary house size limit.
That I can tell, it's not tied to the County's sustainability initiative. Instead, there's a pay-to-play TDR scheme.
The link to TDR is interesting, because this type of exactions program would increase the County's open space purchasing power (maybe only nominally if it is so pricey that it deters large homes; maybe substantially if people who are buying land in the County determine, as has been noted, that the market essentially dictates investment in larger houses at the going price for rural property, so they just go ahead and pay the exaction).
That bonus to existing County residents, along with those mentioned by Doktorbombay, might prompt some support from the public. I do find that much appealing about the proposed regulation, in a way that is not based at all on "envy and digust at the blatant excess of others."
However, there is a constituency out there in Boulder County - maybe the majority who support this - that will think of the proposed regulation as some form of environmental justice. But how is this regulation designed to address actual impacts of large homes? The quantification seems intended simply to maintain the average house size as a bulk limit, when the derivation of that average speaks as much to the outliers, the giant mansions, as it does to any aesthetic norm in the County. And that's just one critique.
With the mask now off the process, I'm disappointed to say that there seems to be almost no concern for justification at all. There are so many different ways to configure 4,000 SF, as an architect pointed out in the Camera's blog on this topic, even the purely aesthetic argument is on shaky ground.
Let's get all those folks to build in Weld County or Broomfield. They can spend their money out there. Those counties can get the motor vehicle uses fees too.
On a more seriously note, if cities have a 6 single-family homes to an acre mentality. And the average family is around 3. That's 18 people, 6 homes, 2 cars, electricity, water, natural gas, et all for 18, how is that better?
Interesting parties would like to know.
Didn't we already go over this before? If you put 18 people per acre, as opposed to 1 person per acre, you save 17 acres. you also don't have to extend utilities for extra miles to get it to them. I think in an ideal community, you would have a centralized population, where enough people live within an area that the city can easily provide services at minimal expense. New York is tightly packed and too much for my taste, but many cities in the west are more spread out, because we like our space. I'm not saying one extreme is particularly better than the other, but for environmental concerns, you really want to keep the development closer than farther apart. If only we lived in an ideal world.
I'm hearing some behind the scenes discussions will remove the arbitrary sq footage and focus more so on the actual emmissions/pollution/energy use created by a home. Technology is available that can make a new 5000 sq ft structure that uses as much energy as an old school 2500 sq footer.
Granted, such regulations would be onerous and expensive, however this at least shows more creative thinking is involved in pursuing the carbon emmissions reduction sentiment by the Commissioners.
Dan,
I believe you're on target. The older homes don't often have the right insulation, windows, doors, lighting, heat pumps, solar panels, energy and water saving applicances, thermostats, etc. that newer homes can have. And folks who can afford the big homes can afford this stuff. Plus they usually have septic systems and wells too. Whole different ball game.
Kerry, I won't bore the rest with an explanation, go to the library and check out a book on the subject of new urbanism. It is a planning concept.
Dan, you are dead on. Not sure where the pay to play concept came from, but the original idea was motivated by energy conservation.
So let's see. Go after the new homes to be built in a slow and managed growth county to be energy efficient. But ignore all the existing older homes with larger energy foot prints that are in the huge majority.
Yup, focusing on the .1% really changes things, doesn't it.
Lafayette has around 8000 living units. EP = 60 or .75%. Rounding error in the big scheme of things.
This is not a short term fix but a long term strategy. From a planning/ ordinance perspective you get into legal trouble when you even think about trying to pass anything retroactively. Therefore any change typically grandfathers what already exists or what has passed preliminary planning stages and focuses on what has not been built/proposed yet. Then as the old buildings get replaced what is built new must pass the new code. Planning 101.....
Energy conservation 101: provide existing homeowners with incentives to improve energy efficiency. For example, a package of 12 energy saving light bulbs that use 75% less energy cost $12. Instead of rebating the Eagles Place developers $120,000, omaging what kind of incentive programe could have been put in place.
Or use that $7000 saved from not doing the revenue sharing study to start. Publicize the tax credit programs already in place.
Waiting for homes to be scraped off and rebuilt will take 50 to 100 years.
Post a Comment