Steamboat Pilot & Today

Steamboat Springs — The Steamboat Springs City Council and Routt County commissioners will work on prioritizing action items in the Steamboat Springs Area Community Plan today.

When the plan was adopted in May, more than 80 of the 200 action items were given top priorities. Since then, the council has gone back through the list to indicate which action items it believes to be urgent or important. That list will be reviewed at a joint meeting between the council and the commissioners. In the updated list, three or more council members marked almost 40 items as urgent or important.

Some of the action items will be costly and take years to complete, while others require staff time and could be completed within three months.

Deputy City Manager Wendy DuBord said part of the reason the city and county are looking at the prioritization process now is to help direct the 2005 and 2006 budgets.

"It gives us some idea of how important and how quickly they would like to address some of these items in the community plan update," she said.

The city staff has been working on a different list that estimates the difficulty, time and money it will take to accomplish each of the items.

With six votes, prioritizing projects in the capital improvement plan had the highest support among the council members as an urgent or important item.

Six other action items received votes from five council members as being urgent or important. They included developing a community-wide sidewalk and trails plan, appointing a growth management advisory group, assessing residential design standards, establishing maximum size limits in residential zones, developing wetlands protection standards and reevaluating affordable housing incentives.

The more expensive items on the high priority list include constructing a trail system in commercial areas and continuing to include land acquisition as a component to the capital improvement plan.

Some of the more controversial items receiving high prioritization were establishing a program that linked the amount of housing to the amount of jobs and exploring funding options for Old Town such as a Business Improvement District.

DuBord noted that the county could have a very different list than the city, and the timeline for other items hinges on other agencies, such as money from CDOT for widening U.S. Highway 40.

The county has been given a list of the city's action items.

"This is kind of the first step in looking at the action items together and having the discussions," DuBord said.

-- To reach Christine Metz call 871-4229

or e-mail cmetz@steamboatpilot.com