La Plata County Community Development Services update - March 2019

This blog was originally started because I wanted to help expose the malicious tactics of a few ruthless individuals were engaging in during their contrived war of dirty tricks against our local Board of County Commissioners and the Land Use Planning process.  They were intent on stirring up trouble rather than resolving issues.

In any event, that was then and this is now.  Today I received the following in an email and figure I might at well document it here.  Let folks know that our local government is functioning.  Perhaps not as good as it could, but improvement would require greater public awareness and involvement in the process, boring and mundane though it might be.

Megan Graham  |  Public Affairs Officer  |  megan.graham@co.laplata.co.us  |  www.co.laplata.co.us

La Plata County Community Development Services update

March 2019

Subscribe to Planning Department updates

Greetings from the La Plata County Planning Department! Below you will find a news update on the projects, plans and processes afoot in our department, at the Planning Commission, and at the Board of County Commissioners. Thank you for your interest in La Plata County!

Click below to go directly to a topic:

• District Plan Updates: Animas Valley, Florida Mesa, Fort Lewis Mesa, Bayfield kickoff meeting
• Land Use Code revision process overview
• Land Use Code policy topic update: Areas of state interest ("1041 powers"); zoning
• Planning Commission meetings
• Board of County Commissioner meetings
• Joint Planning Commission meetings

District Plan Updates

The Planning Commission is working with community residents to update the county's area/district plans, which build off of the goals, objectives, and policies that were developed in the Comprehensive Plan that the Planning Commission adopted in April 2017.

There are 12 district (area) plans that have been revised as recently as 2012, while some have never been developed. In order to ensure that the growth management goals for each area/district are current, the Planning Commission has begun a district-by-district update of the plans, with county planning staff convening citizens from each district to weigh in on their area/district plans.

The Planning Commission discusses district plan updates at its meeting on the first Thursday of each month from 6-8 p.m. in the Board Room of the County Administration Building, 1101 E. 2nd Ave. in Durango. On March 7, the Planning Commission will discuss the District Plan update process, and specifically:

1. Clarifying district plan update processes & functions
2. Florida Mesa District Plan update
3. Animas Valley Land Use Plan update
4. Fort Lewis Mesa District Plan update

¶ What voters need to know - David Cay Johnston - 2018

Time to turn away from Americans for Prosperity for a moment and think about ourselves and what to do with such information.  Where can concerned progressives and enlightened individuals go from here?  {One suggestion: Durango's www.indivisible.org - check out their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Indivisible-Durango-127909224381637/}  David Cay Johnston gives a good talk about confronting the radical libertarian take over, and I had no idea what I was getting myself into this afternoon when I started listening to his video.

See, I’m a self taught kinda guy, and thanks to the internet age, I’ve come quite a ways since the days when helpful Research Librarians were amongst my favorite patron saints.  These days thanks to the internet, I can sit in our cabin, listen to a talk, be it science, or history, or politics and when something catches my curiosity, I stop the show.  Open up a new window and go off to do some judicious cyber-surfing for further information.

In this talk, David refers to many things worth understanding in more detail, those folds within folds of cumulative complexity.  That’s why as I was listening and taking notes, I found myself going off many times to see what I could find regarding the rest of the story.  

Considering this isn’t about me, it’s about sharing as much important information as I can and hoping others will find it and digest it for themselves.  Perhaps in emulation of those wonderfully helpful Reference Librarians back in my younger days, I decided to keep track of my various excursions with links to the best of those articles (some 35 in all) along with many highlights of David Johnston's interesting talk itself.

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Politics and Prose  |  Published on Jan 27, 2018  |  48:17 min

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y70q0mjujWk

David Cay Johnston discusses his book, "It's Even Worse Than You Think  - What the Trump Administration is doing to America” at Politics and Prose on 1/24/18.