Gold Rush Next Season, Hoffman crew tears up Colorado (Literally) Options

[Crusty]

GOLD RUSH Todd Hoffman’s Colorado gold mine facing thousands in fines

[Gene Kooper]

Third Installment.

This post includes the Board of County Commissioners' July 27, 2017 meeting. I've included both a web link and PDF of the agenda, along with PDFs of the additional information (hot links to the fourteen documents are also available in the agenda).

July 27, 2017 Board of County Commissioners Meeting Agenda.
[attachment=11342:Board_of...7_Agenda.pdf]
Public Hearing(s) item .IV. Rezoning Case #17Zon-04 (last agenda item).

Rezoning case documents included in the agenda.

Rezoning application (appears to be identical to the application included in the July 11, 2017 Planning Commission hearing (included for completeness).
[attachment=11328:Application.pdf]
BOCC Planning Dept. Staff Report, dated July 23, 2017 (similar to the staff report in the previous post with the addition of the Planning Commission's recommendation to reject the rezoning request by a vote of 4 to 1).
[attachment=11329:17ZON_04...f_Report.pdf]
Park County Planning Commission Resolution # 07-2017-05
[attachment=11330:PC_RESOL..._2017_05.pdf]
Referral Response (appears to be the same document by the Town of Fairplay and USFS as included in the previous post).
[attachment=11331:Referral_Responses.pdf]
Public Comments (includes additional responses to the one in the previous post).
[attachment=11332:Public_Comment.pdf]
Form letters in support of the rezoning request that also are targeted at the Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety to approve the 112 mining permit.
[attachment=11333:neighbor...ort_redd.pdf]
[attachment=11334:business...ort_redd.pdf]
[attachment=11335:other_su...t_1_redd.pdf]
[attachment=11336:other_su...t_2_redd.pdf]
Letters in support and opposition to the rezoning request.
[attachment=11337:Comments...nd_Later.pdf]
Plea to assist Gold Rush in getting the rezoning application approved and several signed form letters in support
[attachment=11338:Support_...Comments.pdf]
The last three attachments appear to be responses to DRMS adequacy questions raised during their review of the 112 mining permit. The last one seems clairvoyant as it is dated one day before (July 19, 2017) a reply from the DRMS (July 20, 2017).
[attachment=11339:Fairplay...INED__1_.pdf]
[attachment=11340:Fairplay...INED__1_.pdf]
[attachment=11341:Fairplay...e_170721.pdf]

And finally, the Board of County Commissioners July 27, 2017 Meeting Minutes, which lists everyone that testified at the hearing. The decision appears to have been delayed until the August 17, 2017 BOCC meeting because one of the commissioners left for a dental appointment.
[attachment=11343:Board_of..._Minutes.pdf]
For those wanting a Cliff Notes version, here is the link to the article in the August 4, 2017 issue of the Fairplay Flume Decision on residential to mining rezoning postponed until Aug. 17. Thirteen people testified in support of the rezoning and 15 testified against. A friend and professional colleague was among those that testified.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the Fairplay Flume article states that a mining engineer made a statement at the BOCC hearing that there was no public hearing in 1975. I respectfully disagree with Mr. Tonko that this should apparently be taken as true. Nor do I agree with his conclusion that the alleged absence of a public hearing means that the original zoning was illegal (and the implication that the residential zoning should be void ab initio). In many adversarial proceedings the opposing parties will resort to posturing during a hearing. There is no proof that the 1974 or 1975 zoning was illegal, only an assertion by an interested party that there was a problem. If you read through the Planning Commission staff report, the zoning for the last 44 years was residential. Nobody appears to have challenged that designation until HSA became aware in April that the Park County Planning Dept. had informed the Colorado Division of Reclamation Mining and Safety of the zoning issue.

Zoning plan authority in Colorado is stipulated in C.R.S. 20-28-111.

(1) The county planning commission of any county may, and upon order by the board of county commissioners in any county having a county planning commission shall, make a zoning plan for all or any of the unincorporated territory within the county, including both the full text of the zoning resolution and the maps....

The original zoning map of 1974 was updated in 1998, which if there was an actual problem with the zoning designation it was likely "fixed" by the BOCC's resolution adopting the 1998 and later zoning maps. Since the rezoning request was granted by the BOCC on August 17, the point is now moot. One note regarding C.R.S. 30-28-111 is that the first note in the Annotation below the statute is this cite, 'Law reviews. For article, "Winning the Rezoning", see 11 Colo. Law. 634 (1982)'. One of the co-authors of that 1982 article in The Colorado Lawyer is Lee Phillips, the current Park County Attorney. The meeting minutes and Fairplay Flume article show that he was in attendance.

I'll post the final installment later today. It will discuss the BOCC August 17, 2017 meeting and a second Fairplay Flume article. That article includes what I believe is the reason the BOCC granted the rezoning request, which BTW includes 11 conditions that High Speed Aggregate, Inc. agreed to follow.