Dear Editor,

In three letters to the editor in the August 11 edition, Arden Buck, Betsy Buck, and Dennis Duckett all criticized redevelopment of 1st Street and candidates who supported it, claiming such redevelopment would affect the beauty and nature of the town we all love. While I’m as fervent as they are on keeping Nederland from over-development, it’s not redeveloping 1st Street, which desperately needs it, that threatens us, it’s dumping the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) with Boulder County, an agreement that has kept the “greedy developers” Betsy Buck mentions from destroying forests and wildlife habitat on the town’s borders.

Both Tom Mahowald and Jesse Seavers recommended walking away from the IGA, while Riley McAllister said “he agrees with continuing the IGA and possibly assigning more responsibilities than the current IGA,” a comment that reflects an understanding of how the Town can benefit from a strong IGA with the county. Getting candidates’ views on how our agreement with the county helps us manage development outside town borders should be critically important to residents with views like Arden and Betsy Buck, but instead they present preventing the re- development of 1st Street as the critical issue.

I participated in the Envision 2030 process and closely followed former mayor Kris Larsen’s single minded efforts to renegotiate the IGA in order to permit developer Michael Ackerman’s very dense development in a wildlife corridor on the southern border of town (75 housing units on 17 acres at last count). My husband and I have lived on 10 acres in that corridor abutting the southern border of town for over 30 years and are very cognizant of its importance in providing an east- west corridor for all manner of wildlife, including the Magnolia Elk herd. Healthy wildlife are an integral component of a healthy forest, and a healthy forest is an integral component of clean water and other ecological benefits to us and to hundreds of thousands of people living downstream from us.

I believe the desire to keep wildlands on Nederland’s border as undeveloped as possible is a common desire of the majority of Nederland residents, but this view was challenged by members of the Envision 2030 Economic Development subcommittee, including Tom Mahowald and Kris Larsen, who pushed to remove any language supporting preservation of wildlands on the town’s border and replace it with a commitment to not “unduly damage” the town’s “natural setting”. The reason the town’s efforts to re-negotiate the IGA failed was Larsen’s insistence that no limits be placed on the number of dwelling units in Ackerman’s planned development. The county wanted a limit of 50 units, with 50 permanently affordable—even this is an unsustainable number to my mind, given the importance of the 17 acres to wildlife; the real limitations of Nederland’s fire and police departments; traffic and evacuation concerns on Eldora Road; and other realities of life here in the mountains, including water and sewage.

I agree with Arden Buck’s support for Billy Giblin, whose comments in the July 28 paper on Envision 2030 and how our town can “balance growth with intention and careful planning for our future” were right on the mark. Whether Giblin was being tactful or he was unaware, it wasn’t just COVID that kept the 2030 process from completion but actions by Mayor Larsen, the Town Administration, and participants who supported annexation and development of borderlands to prevent any re-commitment to Nederland’s award- winning 2013 Comprehensive Plan call for keeping development within Town borders.

Sincerely,

Susan Wagner

Nederland