The Summit Board of County Commissioners is set to vote on Tuesday, March 26, on a list of proposed changes to the county’s land-use code.

The revisions, which officials say are aimed at spurring more development of workforce housing, have been in discussions for months. If approved, the changes could expedite the review and approval process for affordable housing projects and make it easier to build accessory dwelling units, also known as granny flats. 

During a March 19 work session, commissioners and county planning officials discussed the code amendments, stressing the need to cut red tape for housing projects in order to meet both local need and statewide mandates. 

Senior Planner Simon Corsen said the goals of the project are to “support workforce housing development, reduce upfront costs and time” and incentivize “desirable development that will uphold the county’s high quality of life.” 

A core proposal is to expedite the timeline for reviewing and approving development proposals that are majority affordable housing. 

Site plans, which represent one of the final plans officials consider before a development can break ground, would no longer go to a public hearing before any of the basin planning commissions and instead would be approved by staff. This would only be for multifamily properties with four or more units. 

Subdivision reviews, which are for single-family properties, would no longer have to be approved by county commissioners as part of their consent agenda — which do not require a public hearing before being voted on. Instead, basin planning commissions and county staff would give final approval. 

Officials said streamlining the end of the approval process could save between three and six weeks of review time for multifamily units and between two and four weeks for single-family homes. 

Doing so is critical if the county is to receive funding from Proposition 123, the 2022 ballot initiative that created a roughly $300 million statewide affordable housing fund that renews each year. Approximately 60% of Summit County voters approved the measure. 

In order to receive a slice of the funding, local governments must meet a number of provisions, including an approval process of no more than 90 days for building permits.

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Commissioner Tamara Pogue asked if the estimated time savings from the proposed code changes “get us to that 90-day timeframe, or are we going to have to do other things to meet the public’s intent?”

Corson said the savings “make a big difference, because you essentially can save up to a month in general.” 

Pogue also said that while multifamily site plans would no longer receive a public hearing, those would be for projects that are going to be built on a parcel of land already zoned for affordable housing. 

Planning basins and county commissioners would still hold public hearings on rezoning requests, one of the initial steps for a development proposal that essentially dictates what is and isn’t legal to build in a given area. Officials added that site plan reviews are more technical than rezonings and often consider a much narrower set of criteria for approval. 

“So it’s not that we are decreasing public input, it’s that we’re shifting public input to a different point in the process,” Pogue said. “Because it does seem like there’s often a lot of frustration when folks do come to the planning commissions to testify on something like a road, when that’s not part of the technical review. 

While officials had proposed the changes for developments with 50% or more affordable housing, Commissioner Eric Mamula said he wanted to see that threshold higher, possibly at 80%. That change could be made later to the code as a future amendment, staff said. 

For now, other changes would add definitions to the land-use code for nontraditional affordable housing, such as tiny homes and shared-amenity housing, to support the development of those kinds of projects in the future. 

Officials are also seeking to make the rules for building ADUs more flexible. Changes include increasing the height limit for those units from 25 feet to 35 feet and allowing footprints to be as large as 1,000-square-feet on lots smaller than 5 acres — up from the current size limit of 550 square feet. 

The changes would also reduce minimums for setbacks — the space between detached dwelling units and primary homes — from 15 feet to 7.5 feet for lots zoned for duplexes. 

Officials are also recommending scaling back parking requirements from two spaces for all dwelling units to one space for studios or one-bedroom units. Units with two or more bedrooms would still be required to have two parking spaces. 

Any new ADUs constructed would need to be deed restricted, a current county policy that officials say helps ensure the homes are being used by long-term residents. 

Officials also considered whether the county met requirements to access funding under a new bill being considered by the state legislature to incentivize ADU development. 

The legislation, House Bill 1152, would be a mandate for Front Range cities but exempts mountain communities like Summit County — though those areas could still opt-in. If passed into law, the bill would provide $8 million in funding that could support ADU construction in various ways, including down payment and loan assistance.

Staff said the county meets the bill’s requirenmnts around ADUs except for parking since the bill prevents governments from enacting parking minimums. 

While Pogue said she supports some form of parking requirement, she added that she’d “like for us to figure this out.”

“It is a lot of money that potentially folks could access to build (ADUs), so I don’t think we should dismiss it out of hand,” Pogue said. 

Commissioners will hold a public hearing before voting on the proposed changes during their regular meeting beginning at 1:30 p.m. on March 26. The meeting will be held in the commissioners’ hearing room located at 208 E. Lincoln Avenue in Breckenridge.