The Frisco Town Council passed a resolution at its June 24 regular meeting opposing Senate Republicans’ proposal to sell between 2 million and 3 million acres of public land in the West, a figure that has since decreased. It stated the Frisco community depends on public lands for recreation, tourism, environmental health and quality of life.

Summit County Commissioners expressed similar sentiments at their June 24 work session. Commissioner Tamara Pogue said she would be willing to pass a similar resolution, and commissioner Eric Mamula said he would vote for it.

Pogue said the proposal, which would require sold land to be used for housing development or associated infrastructure, would not be as effective of a way to build housing on federal lands as the provision in the 2018 Farm Bill that allowed the U.S. Forest Service to lease land for housing projects. The provision was not renewed in the latest Farm Bill, but a nearly identical provision was added to a public lands bill in December 2024.

“There are lots of barriers to us making that (Farm Bill provision) become a reality,” Pogue said. “Could we please have some help with those barriers, rather than going off on this new tangent that is devastating, potentially, to the mountain West?”

The Senate parliamentarian ruled June 23 that the original budget bill proposal violated a legislative rule, but Senate Republicans later introduced a new version that would require the sale of less acreage and only allow the sale of Bureau of Land Management land, not any managed by the U.S. Forest Service.

Frisco recognized the change in a post on its website recapping its meeting June 25, and the resolution opposes provisions that would require the sale of any public lands in Colorado or across the west, not just ones managed by the Forest Service.

Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, chairs the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee, which made the proposal. He posted June 23 on X that he would not give up trying to sell public lands for housing, outlining the changes Senate Republicans later made official.

Pogue said June 25 she believed Lee would keep trying and that the Senate parliamentarian’s ruling did not mean an end to the threat of public lands in Summit County being sold.

“I think it’s just the beginning,” Pogue said. “They just do not understand what it takes to move an affordable housing project forward.”

Building affordable housing in the mountains, Pogue said, requires easy access to utility infrastructure like water, sewer and electric, or else utilities become cost prohibitive.

Pogue pointed to Lake Hill, a property the county bought from the Forest Service in 2016 with the intention of building affordable housing for workers and seniors. She said the biggest obstacle to developing the land has been the area not having easy water and sewer access. 

“That’s gonna be a $30 million, $40 million cost,” Pogue said.

The county introduced a plan in 2023 to build workforce housing on Forest Service land through the 2018 Farm Bill provision, and although it has hit roadblocks since, Pogue believes that bill’s strategy — allowing long-term leasing of National Forest land — is better than the Senate Republicans’ plan.

The now-lapsed Farm Bill provision allowed the Forest Service to lease specific kinds of land — qualifying administrative sites — in exchange for cash or non-cash considerations. The location of the planned development near Dillon is an administrative site that local Forest Service officials identified as needing redevelopment, Pogue said.

“They had employees living here,” Pogue said. “The housing had been built in the 1950s. It really wasn’t adequate for their needs. They also had a boneyard where they stored all their stuff, and it wasn’t adequate.”

The county has a 50-year lease on the land and intended to break ground on the project near Dillon this summer, but Pogue said issues arose when President Donald Trump’s policies decreased Forest Service staffing.

“We had to delay the groundbreaking,” Pogue said, “hopefully not a massive amount of time, but at least enough for the Forest Service to get sort of reestablished and get new attorneys on board.” 

Increased building costs have also posed issues for the project, Pogue said. The original bid to develop the project was for $50 million, but Pogue said the county bid the project again in March and it came back at $85 million.

Pogue criticized the Senate Republicans’ plan for not being as specific about what type of land could be sold for housing development and for requiring the sale of a certain amount of land. The 2018 Farm Bill allowed, but did not require, the Forest Service to lease land for housing, and Pogue said that translated to more input from local Forest Service officials and governments.

Environmental concerns

Karn Stiegelmeier, a member of Eagle Summit Wilderness Alliance’s board of directors, said the group has encouraged its members to contact their senators and voice opposition to the Senate Republicans’ plan.

Stiegelmeier said she was horrified to see the original proposal, which she said came from politicians who do not “have any sense of public lands or environment.”

“For us, locally, that’s why we’re here in Summit County,” Stiegelmeier said about public lands. “That’s why people keep moving to Colorado, and that’s why tourists come.”

The alliance specifically protects wilderness areas in Eagle and Summit counties, like Ptarmigan Peak and Eagles Nest, which Stiegelmeier said were exempted from the original proposal. She said the sale of land around those areas would still affect the wildlife and environment within, though.

“These wilderness areas can’t just stand isolated islands on their own,” Stiegelmeier said. “They’re connected to all the surrounding land.”

Stiegelmeier said it feels like there are new attacks on public lands every other day, and wilderness areas not being included in the original proposal did not give her confidence they would never be targeted.