September 14, 2011 12:09 AM UTC

We Don't Need No Stinking Zoning Regulations!

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• by: Colorado Pols

Jefferson County (and Western Arapahoe County) have been home to two significant re-zoning issues this summer that speak to the heart of the very reason we have zoning rules and regulations in the first place.

In Littleton, local residents are not pleased that the Foothills Park and Recreation District is trying to re-zone some of its land from “open space” to allow for new development. As 9News reports:

Mike Williams bought his home in Littleton’s Shadow Ridge subdivision for the view from his back yard.

“Ninety-five percent of the reason is this open space that we back to right now,” he said. “You can come out after a stressful day at work, you can come out and watch the birds, the prairie dogs, whatever else. We’ve got coyotes coming through here, elk and deer. This is just my way to kind of unwind.”

Williams said he paid an extra $55,000 to back up this open space. This Arapahoe County appraiser said the home was sold and marketed as one with open space. No documents presented to him prior to sale indicated this land could be developed.

But Williams recently found out the Foothills Park and Recreation District that owns the open space put it up for sale, along with five other parcels of land, to possibly build more homes.

Foothills says that it needs to sell the land to make money, but what about the loss in property value that Williams and his neighbors will see as a result?

Over in Golden, many residents are concerned that South Table Mountain — which locals have fought for decades to preserve as open space — may again be on the verge of development. From the blog Pedal Pushers Cyclery:

A current landowner of approximately 400 acres on top of South Table Mountain has requested the removal of “Open Space Only” designation to allow commercial/residential development on half of the land. This the same landowner family who wanted the NIKE corporate headquarters on South Table Mountain. The proposed commercial uses are incompatible with the quality of life for adjacent land and with preservation of South Table Mountain as Open Space…

…A public hearing by Jefferson County Planning Commission on the Central Plains Community Plan is scheduled for: September 14, 2011; 6:15 P.M. Jefferson County Building (The Taj), Hearing Room 1.

The southwestern suburbs of Denver grew rapidly in large part to the layout of the area that mixed home developments with adjacent open space areas. It’s no surprise to hear that homeowners who bought land near officially-designated “open space” areas would be upset about seeing that land developed.

The heart of both issues is an ideology of private ownership vs. the public good. A Jefferson County publication called City and Mountain Views magazine has an interesting profile of Republican Jefferson County Commissioner Donald Rosier in its Autumn 11 issue, in which Rosier lays out rather bluntly his view of the planning and zoning process:

He also believes property owners should be allowed to do whatever they wish, regardless of zoning.

This is an incredibly juvenile and intellectually bankrupt position to have on zoning regulations. Perhaps Rosier justifies this belief — and he is not alone in this opinion among some conservatives — by thinking that he is donning his personal freedom cloak and pretending that he is standing up for the individual. But how can you justify protecting the “freedom” of an individual over the “freedom” of the rest of the community?

Planning and zoning regulations were established in communities hundreds of years ago for very, very good reasons. For example, most people would agree that you should not be allowed to open up a pornographic bookstore, or a strip club, or a liquor store, across the street from an elementary school. Perhaps that is seen as infringing upon the rights of the person who owns the land where the strip club would go, but what about the rights of all of the individual people connected to the elementary school? What about the parents and teachers? Don’t they have a right to take their children to a school without having to park across the street from a Kitty’s Theatre?

Or how about these examples: should your neighbor be allowed to keep an old, rusty car on blocks on the front lawn? What about a hog farm? It’s his land, right? — shouldn’t he be allowed to raise hogs in the front yard and spray the pig excrement down into the gutters? Why can’t your neighbor build a 12-foot-tall monument to the band KISS on top of his house? Should your neighbor be allowed to bulldoze his house and build a 30-story office building in its place? Why not? It’s his land! He should be able to do whatever he wants!

These are extreme examples, but they are not irrelevant. The reason we have zoning regulations is not to restrict the interests of an individual property owner — it is to protect the interests of everyone else. One landowner on South Table Mountain shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever the hell he wants if his decision is going to negatively impact entire communities in Golden…just as one homeowner shouldn’t be allowed to build an office building in place of his 1960’s brick ranch.

Electing people to office who openly disregard the laws and regulations they are supposed to enforce is a dangerous thing. People in southwest Denver are seeing that firsthand this summer.