Casey Brown will have Coffee with a Councilor this morning at 10, courtesy of our hosts, Tom and Alice Atkins. There are a lot of issues under discussion right now. Some residents are concerned about redevelopment pressure on our older neighborhoods. Other want to build new housing to accommodate the seemingly endless demand. Many are concerned about the School of Mines’ growth plans and their effects on surrounding neighborhoods. Others think they’re an asset to the community and we should just be grateful to have them.
There’s Affordable Housing: we recently added goals to our comprehensive plan to ensure that 45% of our housing would be affordable to low, moderate, or middle income households. How will we do that? Will we help our current low-income residents stay in their homes, or focus on building new low-income housing? The comp. plan also says that the low-income housing will be distributed around the city. Where will the Beverly Heights housing project go? Which part of Stonebridge will have low-income housing? Or will we put it all in the central core of the city, where we can scrape off small single family houses and replace them with three-story apartment buildings?
And then there’s the short term rental issue…. Some people would like to use part of their house to host AirBnB/VRBO guests, as a way to make money. Others own multiple houses in town and want to rent those to visitors. The new ordinance that Council will decide on May 24th says short term rentals must be owner-occupied…you can’t keep a whole house as an AirBnB. Some people already own rental houses and depend on them for income. Is it a “taking” to make an existing business illegal? We aggressively market Golden to tourists, so should we encourage additional tourist housing? Or do businesses just not belong in residential neighborhoods? Some say those houses should only be rented with yearly leases, because the town needs affordable housing. But can we force the owners to rent them at “affordable” rates? Some say a neighborhood full of AirBnB’s is not a neighborhood–it’s a multi-building hotel. Others say at least AirBnB’s tend to be better maintained than many year-round rental properties.
And there’s the spending task force. The City will finish paying off the debt for the golf course, water park, and community center in 2021, so at that point our annual debt repayments will be $2.4 million less. The spending task force is looking at a long list of other things we might want to buy–more parks, more trails, road improvements, a new history museum, open space, a rec center expansion, affordable housing. Opinions vary as to which things we want to fund. Some people say we shouldn’t fund any of it–that Golden is nice enough already, and we should just maintain what we have.
(By the way–have you taken the task force survey yet, to say how you want the City to spend your future tax dollars? DO IT NOW–the survey closes soon!)
And a new item is entering the discussion: what is the “small town look” that we keep saying we want to retain? Councilor Paul Haseman has suggested that we should define it–and put it into our municipal code–so that developers can see what we’ll allow and the Planning Commission can enforce it in new buildings. So how do you define a small town? Is it single family homes or multi-family homes? (Some of the Planning Commission members have well-defined views on this subject…!)
Do you have opinions on any of these topics? Do you have questions? Start talking to your City Council representatives. Start this morning at 10, at Casey’s Coffee with a Councilor. The address is 1110 12th St. (map).
Today’s other events
Check the Goldentoday.com calendar for the details:
8-12 Stonebridge and Mountain Ridge garage sales
9-3 Dinosaur Discovery Day at Dinosaur Ridge
9-4 Spring Fling Demo Day at Pedal Pushers Cyclery
10 Coffee with Councilor Casey Brown
10-11:30 Interior Paint and Drywall Class at Home Depot
10-4 Steampunk at the Station at the Railroad Museum
10-2 Paper Mosaics class at Foothills Art Center
10:15 Family Time at the Library
11-11:30 Wee DIY: Bubble Snakes at the Library
12-3 Greener Golden–pick up pre-ordered Gardens in a Box
(Note: there will be no tours of the Community Garden)
12-1 Health by Chocolate – Indulge and Be Well at Natural Grocers
2-4 Steampunk Tea Party at the RR Museum
3-4:30 Meet & Greet State House Candidate Kris Teegardin
5-9:30 Jeffco 4-H Barn Dance
6-11 Maypole Dance at the Denver Kickers Club
7-9 Drum Circle at PranaTonic Yoga Studio
Live Music
ACE HI TAVERN – Karaoke at 9PM
DIRTY DOGS ROADHOUSE – Kenny Perkins Band, 12-4PM and Tommy Knoxville, 5-9PM
GOLDEN MOON SPEAKEASY – Half Pint & the Growlers, 7-10PM
WRIGLEY’S CHICAGO BAR & GRILL – Willie & the Po Boys, 4-8PM
