Gunnison city and county talk corridor plan

The Gunnison City Council and Gunnison County Commissioners Elizabeth Smith and Laura Puckett Daniels discussed the Gunnison Valley Corridor Plan at an update from the county delivered at the Oct. 13 City Council meeting.

Prior to the discussion, the council approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the corridor plan which detailed the roles, communication and decision-making processes for the entities participating in drafting the plan.

Gunnison Mayor Pro Tem Marisela Ballesteros opened the discussion by thanking the commissioners for including entities including the Crested Butte South Property Owner’s Association and the Gunnison Valley Regional Transit Authority in the planning process.

She said that she was excited that one of the strategic priorities for the plan was maintaining and supporting agricultural lands in the area.

Ballesteros added that there were a variety of goals in the MOU, including supporting land conservation and schools, but asked if water conservation was also included as a priority.

Puckett Daniels said that water conservation was integrated in several ways, such as through infrastructure planning. “We want to see strategic growth happen when it can be tied to infrastructure and not a proliferation of wells,” she said. “We think that that’s significantly more efficient for development of our communities. It’s also safer and better for water conservation to have people on central water systems versus a proliferation of wells. And, for sure, a central sewer system is better for the health, safety and welfare of our community than many septic systems that have their own tradeoffs.”

Smith said that centralized water and sewer systems also impact how people interact in their communities and how much driving they must do.

Ballesteros said that one of the goals outlined in the MOU was “creating a more equitable and inclusive region,” and asked what the county meant by inclusive. She added that the word inclusive can mean many things, in her perspective.

“I think of it … like the access to resources that are readily available is part of how I see that,” Smith said. “So, being able to have capacity to get to the bus, when we talk about inclusivity, you know, like the routes up and down the valley. 

“We’re also talking about the longevity of the place itself and how we can sustain it. And so, there’s a really tough balance in there for how do you sustain community in places and then how do you sustain the open spaces that we all want to enjoy. And so, if some of those things are more privately owned and they’re not as accessible or they’re partitioned up where it used to be open space and then it can’t be utilized in the same way, I think that there are some values of inclusivity that are maybe, they’re a little bit subtle but when it comes to, like, infrastructure access up and down the valley, I like to think about opportunity to work on either end and to get there back and forth and to have the resources to do that as part of it.”

“For me, it’s definitely about how do we create mixed economic class community and how do we have communities that are not just billionaire enclaves but also where people from all different walks of life can walk in the door and build a life for themselves,” Puckett Daniels said. “And so, it’s about housing policy that creates for mixed-income communities and also walkable, bikeable, transit accessible, so that there isn’t this giant inequity in how much time somebody has to spend commuting or how much money they have to spend commuting.”

For example, Puckett Daniels highlighted that someone who lives in Gunnison and works at the ski resort at Mt. Crested Butte has limited opportunities. “You’re not going to that kid’s Christmas concert at noon at your kid’s school,” she said, “because there’s an inequity in how far you have to travel and the time you have to take off of work. 

“And so, building communities that are close to where people go to school, they can work near where they live, it’s really about those housing strategies and how do we use our housing strategy to a lot of what our [Gunnison Resiliency Project] partners are talking about where we know our neighbors. We’re out of our house. We have the time to go to the Music Cruise because we’re not commuting an hour each way, whatever that looks like. So, for me, that’s what inclusivity and equitable … that’s a big piece of it is how do we have a community that truly reflects in built infrastructure what our values are.”

Smith added that the county and the other partners in the project were also looking at home to expand early childhood education alongside housing in the valley in a way that’s accessible to residents.

Ballesteros said that she had hoped that the commissioners would respond the way they did “in regards to making sure people who have lived here for generations and their kids are able to find this place to be their home.”

“I feel like a lot of my generation is finding it hard to stay and a lot the solution is to go outside, so finding ways where we can be a solution for people to stay here and call it their home but also for new folks,” she said. “We are a college town and we do have a lot of people who come here who visit and then never want to leave, so I applaud you guys for just stating that.”

She said that the goal of her question had been to was to ensure everyone, including the commissioners, had a full understanding of what inclusivity means. “I mean, it can be what people look like, but it’s also how are people able to access different things within our valley up and down. It’s not just the City of Gunnison, it’s Gunnison Valley.”

Puckett Daniels said that the plan focuses on infrastructure and the proper placements for things like open space or development, which also shaped how the plan approaches inclusivity.

Mayor Diego Plata said that the fact that entities like the City of Gunnison being involved in the plan was also a way that the plan was making things more equitable. “In my short 15 years here in the Valley, I think there continues to be some Crested Butte versus Gunnison versus Gunnison County conversations and rumors and old time … rhetoric. I don’t foresee that going away entirely but in my short six years on the council, I’ve see a tremendous improvement when it comes to how different civic organizations interact with one another and it has begun through conversations like these, through intention effort of bringing everybody to the table even if we’re looking at the [Crested Butte] Corridor Plan up north, like, how does that impact Gunnison.”

Puckett Daniels said that the plan is the Gunnison to Mount Crested Butte Corridor Plan, adding that she was “emphatic” that the corridor includes the whole valley, not just Crested Butte. 

“I appreciate the conversation, I appreciate the candid and intentional inclusion in all of it because we as representatives are tasked with bringing out community’s vision and ideas and concerns to the whole thing, but we couldn’t if we weren’t included,” Plata said.