Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — After hearing a vast array of comments and concerns from the community, City Council is embarking on a two-month series of meetings with the city's planning department to evaluate the fourth draft of the Community Development Code.

Both City Council and the Planning Commission have already begun to sift through reams of material, including a 99-page public comment matrix printed on legal-size paper, drawn up by the planning department.

Each Monday in March and April through April 23, City Council will sit down with the planning department to review the code point by point and discuss some of the more difficult decisions it will have to make.

"We've agreed to schedule every Monday from now until hell freezes over," said Councilman Ken Brenner.

Brenner said the first of those meetings went extremely well and he looks forward to hashing out some of the more contentious points before the city schedules another round of hearings to get more opinions from the public.

Council began the process of reviewing the code piece by piece on Feb. 26, when council members reviewed an idea to implement a "hearing examiner" and "zoning administrator" process to decide on development permits.

Tonight, council will be going over articles one and two, which cover such items as the general purpose of the code and provisions for appending it and will begin to delve into the phasing and vesting processes, said Planning Director Wendie Schulenberg.

After the council meetings, there will be more public hearings to gauge the community's reaction to the code, Schulenberg said.

Schulenberg said the city is now likely to adopt the code in June.