Brandon Leuallen, The Business Times 

During a City Council workshop on Dec.16, a discussion about potentially increasing impact fees on new residential and commercial construction raised concerns about deficiencies in the planning department and a review on expediting affordable housing.

At the workshop, City Council member Cody Kennedy highlighted issues within the planning process, saying, “Maybe there’s a way, if we’re talking about these fees, that we can have an expectation from staff to say, hey, we want to add some positions within the planning department, so that we can have more of a consistent expectation for new homes and new units coming online, that they could expect that they could get through the process in an expedited fashion.”

Mayor Abram Herman inquired about a current planning department study, asking, “Is it coming in the form of a memo? What’s happening?”

Recently hired Grand Junction City Manager Mike Bennett said he was aware of the study but not yet up to speed with it, and he asked Community Development Director Tamara Allen to provide more details.

Allen said she anticipates having a draft of some of their findings by January. 

Allen later added, “As we prepared the scope, we did not anticipate bringing it to council,” and, “We certainly could do so or prepare a memo with their findings.” 

Allen also explained, “The intent of the project, if you may recall, is using Prop 123 dollars to look at expediting affordable housing. We’ve really taken it as an opportunity to look at our processes that housing goes through, which are predominantly our site plan review as well as our subdivision plan review.”

Bennet emphasized the value of addressing both issues simultaneously in a January joint meeting between stakeholders involved in the current impact-fee study and city council.

“I think they’re separate, but it’s the same group of stakeholders, and the timing fortunately is aligning,” he said.

Bennet later said, “I definitely want to emphasize that it’s incredibly important, and an area we want to focus heavily on. I don’t know how to tie it directly to the fee piece, but I think it’s a natural question we are going to get, and so we need to be able to address that as an organization.”

The Business Times reached out to local developers that were contacted to be stakeholders in the process.

One developer, Ron Abeloe, said, “They were contacting stakeholders that work with the department. They interviewed us over the phone, and that was the last we ever heard about it. I don’t know any more than that. I haven’t heard any results or any follow-up.”

Another developer, Kevin Bray, who recently wrote a letter to Grand Junction City Council about inefficiencies in the planning department, said, “We’ve had these conversations for years, and it was one of the first things we talked about on the Development Codes Rewrite Committee, was the fact that their planning process isn’t working.”

Bray added, “They were talking about doing an expedited process for affordable housing, and we were arguing for, ‘Well, why don’t you just fix it for everyone? Why would you just fix it for affordable housing? It’s broken. Fix it for everyone, and then it’ll be good for affordable housing, too.’”

Bray also said, “They call it capital-A affordable housing; it means it’s subsidized housing. I think the bigger issue is housing affordability. What we want is broad affordability and naturally occurring affordable housing.”

The Business Times contacted the City of Grand Junction to inquire about the study. Communications Director Hannah Ellis said there was no dedicated page on the city’s website for the study, describing it as an internal process.

The Business Times reviewed the contract on the City of Grand Junction’s Public Records Search page. The contract, dated Aug. 16, 2024, shows consulting firm Baker Tilly is being paid $49,990 for “Professional Services Consultant to Evaluate the Development Review Process to Provide Expedited Review for Affordable Housing.”

When asked why there was no page on the city’s website or recorded meetings for the media and the public to learn more about the process as compared to the recent impact-fee study, Community Development Director Tamra Allen said, “The target audience for process improvement are those people involved in the process, different than impact fees that have broad implications to all of our taxpayers and residents with regard to how improvements to our capital infrastructure are funded.

“The process improvement work is really focused on who participates in that process and the continuous improvement throughout and the efficiency in that. The audience that understands and participates in the process is very different than one of our other types of projects going on that you’ve compared it to.” 

When asked if the process can be used for market-rate housing as well, Allen said, “The intent is to look at our process as it relates to affordable housing.”

She later said, “Certainly our hope is that the lessons that we learn for the ability to expedite affordable housing will be transferable to all housing types.”

Allen said a report about the findings and recommendations will be available in early March. And she anticipates the consultants will be asked to present their findings, but she does not yet know when that will be.

WHAT IS PROP 123

Proposition 123 is a ballot measure passed by voters in 2022, and it created the State of Colorado’s Affordable Housing Fund. It authorizes the state to retain money from existing state tax revenue to support affordable-housing investment.