Interpretation of the County's definition of "Access"

[shd2025]

Jurisdiction

Colorado

Boulder County's Land Use Code defines "Access" as "A driveway or other point of entry and/or exit that creates an opening through the right of way line to abutting landowners, public street, or road."

Before 2020, the Planning Department appears to have interpreted this to include driveways on the subject property. Basically, the roadway from the property line to the building site. Starting around 2021, the Planning Department has expanded their purview to include "off-site" roadways, including private roads shared by multiple property owners.

Notwithstanding the change in interpretation without public review, does this definition support an interpretation that includes private roadways with deeded ingress/egress across private properties?

 

[army judge]

Notwithstanding the change in interpretation without public review, does this definition support an interpretation that includes private roadways with deeded ingress/egress across private properties?

This particular question can't be answered by anonymous, nobody human beings.

I suggest you address this and similar questions to your local, elected officials. After all, they're the individuals who allegedly committed this dastardly deed which causes you aggravation, irritation, and annoyance.

 

[shd2025]

This particular question can't be answered by anonymous, nobody human beings.

I suggest you address this and similar questions to your local, elected officials. After all, they're the individuals who allegedly committed this dastardly deed which causes you aggravation, irritation, and annoyance.

I am looking for some guidance from people with expertise in the legalese of property law. I have submitted an application to rebuild an existing cabin in the mountains, and the County is telling me that they will not give me a building permit unless I can get the private road up to multimodal transport standards - an act that will require extensive road improvements on other people's land.

Asking government officials what they think is not the point. Asking how government officials must, legally, think is.

 

[Tax Counsel]

Boulder County's Land Use Code defines "Access" as "A driveway or other point of entry and/or exit that creates an opening through the right of way line to abutting landowners, public street, or road."

Before 2020, the Planning Department appears to have interpreted this to include driveways on the subject property. Basically, the roadway from the property line to the building site. Starting around 2021, the Planning Department has expanded their purview to include "off-site" roadways, including private roads shared by multiple property owners.

Notwithstanding the change in interpretation without public review, does this definition support an interpretation that includes private roadways with deeded ingress/egress across private properties?

Article 18 of the Boulder County Land Use Code is the portion that defines terms used in the Code. It does not have a definition of "access". So where are you seeing the definition and how does it affect you? Having once lived in Boulder I'm familiar with how seriously both the city and the county take the land use regulations. Their basic goal for decades has been to make the county as green as possible and have adopted rules that significantly where and how new housing can be built and what can be done in changing an existing property. If the definition is really important to you, consult an attorney in Boulder about it. With the CU law school located there Boulder has more lawyers than it knows what to do with. Some have to come down to the Denver area to practice and Denver too has more lawyers per capital than almost any other city outside Washington, DC. The point being that it shouldn't be too hard to find an attorney to assist you and you might get the first consultation for free.

 

[shd2025]

Article 18 of the Boulder County Land Use Code is the portion that defines terms used in the Code. It does not have a definition of "access". So where are you seeing the definition and how does it affect you? Having once lived in Boulder I'm familiar with how seriously both the city and the county take the land use regulations. Their basic goal for decades has been to make the county as green as possible and have adopted rules that significantly where and how new housing can be built and what can be done in changing an existing property. If the definition is really important to you, consult an attorney in Boulder about it. With the CU law school located there Boulder has more lawyers than it knows what to do with. Some have to come down to the Denver area to practice and Denver too has more lawyers per capital than almost any other city outside Washington, DC. The point being that it shouldn't be too hard to find an attorney to assist you and you might get the first consultation for free.

"Access" is defined in the multimodal transport standards adopted by the county (latest update was 2011). Yes, Boulder County works very hard to stop all building permits in the mountains, that doesn't mean that they have a legal basis to do it if the Land Use Code does not specifically prohibit the size, scope, and use of the building project. In my case, the County is blocking me from replacing a 1940s 3-bedroom cabin with a 3-bedromm cabin built to current energy efficiency and fire safety standards. Ironically, and perhaps the cause of my current dilemma, is that the County adopted new regulations in 2021 to regulate vacation rentals in the mountains, which included a provision that applicant properties must meet the multimodal transport standards. Coincidence? Unlikely. Now that the County wants to open mountain properties to an influx of short-term rentals, they are denying property owners building permits until their private roads can be used for commercial purposes. All of this sound green to you?

 

[shd2025]

Article 18 of the Boulder County Land Use Code is the portion that defines terms used in the Code. It does not have a definition of "access". So where are you seeing the definition and how does it affect you? Having once lived in Boulder I'm familiar with how seriously both the city and the county take the land use regulations. Their basic goal for decades has been to make the county as green as possible and have adopted rules that significantly where and how new housing can be built and what can be done in changing an existing property. If the definition is really important to you, consult an attorney in Boulder about it. With the CU law school located there Boulder has more lawyers than it knows what to do with. Some have to come down to the Denver area to practice and Denver too has more lawyers per capital than almost any other city outside Washington, DC. The point being that it shouldn't be too hard to find an attorney to assist you and you might get the first consultation for free.

To clarify how this is affecting me directly, I would like to do a project on my property that triggers a Site Plan Review (SPR) process, which is overseen by a County Planner. After being assigned to my application, the Planner sends my proposal out to different groups for "referrals". The Access and Engineering group within the Planning Department is one of them, and they indicated that the private road that provides deeded ingress and egress to my property does not meet adopted multimodal transport standards. Because of this, the Planner is preparing to make the approval of my SPR application conditioned on my ability to bring the private road up to the standard, something that I cannot do because the improvements required are not on my property nor are they feasible, I am not alone. A large number of property owners have no path to obtaining building permits through the SPR process because the County decided about four years ago to expand their interpretation of what "access" means when applying multimodal standards to permit applications.