DELTA, Colo. (KREX)—
The saga surrounding Delta’s land use code continues after the county commissioners voted the 2022 codes down in a meeting last Tuesday attended by hundreds of Delta residents.
Niko Woolf, one of the Delta County residents fighting the current land use codes, told me this was a step in the right direction but not enough. He said, “It was a minor victory, we felt, however a big part of our message was asking them to stop updating and to give us time to really contribute to the process.”
Commissioner Suppes said giving in completely would lead to chaos. He told us, “One of the things that we heard in that public hearing was they wanted a full repeal of the whole code, and if we repealed the whole code, we would live without any code at all. That’s utter anarchy and chaos and that just never works.”
Even after the victory of voting down the proposed codes, Woolf feels they are moving way too fast. He told us that it seems like they already had the next version ready when they voted, “So it’s kinda like they already had all their plans together before the next meeting so five six hundred people showed up for what.”
A major goal for the city of delta through this process has been clearing up misconceptions and Suppes thinks that’s what’s to blame for a lot of the uproar. He told us, “The majority of it has been cleared up, but you’ve still got a lot of people who, you’re gonna believe the first gunfighter in town and he’s the good guy the next one is gonna be the bad guy.”
Woolf’s final complaint was about the chairman of the land use commission, who was voted as chair earlier despite a rule in section 8.5 of the delta land use commission’s bylaws .declaring him ineligible for the position because he had already been serving in it. “If they can’t follow their own eleven pages of simple bylaws. How can we really trust them to have 200 pages of land use codes that affect everybody?”
Some Delta county residents have reported receiving a survey about the codes as the codes are kicked back to the commissioners to make their revisions in the coming weeks.
