The Colorado Environmental Coalition, The Colorado Public Interest Research Group, The Sierra Club, John Fielder, Trout Unlimited, the Audubon Society, and many other groups and citizens have developed the following:
We call on the Colorado Legislature to pass strong, anti-sprawl legislation during its 2001 session that addresses the following principles:
1. Enforceable Comprehensive Plans with Urban Growth Boundaries
Require communities and regions to adopt, with meaningful public input, enforceable plans that establish growth boundaries, protect open space and agricultural lands; and address at a minimum such issues as land use, open space, environmental quality, water, transportation, and essential community services and their fiscal impacts. Such plans must preserve the ability of local governments to ensure environmental protections through site-specific conditions on development.
2. Permanent Protection of Open Space and Agricultural Lands
Increase funding, develop new funding sources and expand opportunities to permanently protect natural open space and farm and ranch lands, through such policies as fee title acquisition, permanent conservation easements, transferable development rights, clustering of development, land banks, tax policy changes, and other financial incentives for landowners.
3. Affordable Housing
Provide a range of housing choices that meet the needs of all income levels through financial incentives and the promotion of inclusionary zoning policies and mixed-use development, and require that affordable housing be addressed in local and regional land use planning.
4. Ending Taxpayer Subsidies That Support Sprawl
Increase regional revenue sharing mechanisms and expand local governments’ authority to assess impact fees in order to end taxpayer subsidies that support sprawl.
5. Expanding Transportation Choices
Expand transportation choices including rail, buses, neighborhood shuttles, and bike and walking paths; and require that transportation be integrated in local and regional land use planning.
6. Protecting Water Resources
Protect Colorado's rivers, streams, wetlands and other aquatic eco systems
from the adverse water quantity and quality effects of growth by requiring
growth plans to disclose proposed sources of water to support new
development, by encouraging water use efficiency and sharing of existing
supplies, and by protecting water quality.