Our betters at the Planning Commission were supposed to consider the following last Thursday evening, 8/26/12.
The Site Development Plan process ensures compliance with:
- Conditions of approval (unlimited)
- Planned Unit Development requirements
- Platting restrictions
- Elbert County Zoning Regulations
- Elbert County Subdivision Regulations
- Elbert County 1041 Regulations
- Elbert County Master Plan
- Elbert County Design Standards for Non-Residential and Multifamily Developments
- Elbert County Construction and Specifications Manual
- Circulation and traffic
- Landscaping
- Parking
- Signage
- Lighting
- Sidewalks
- Storm water drainage and detention
- Water and sanitation facilities
This plan, consisting of a myriad of subordinate plans, must be submitted before a permit to construct will be considered for issuance for any use or change in use of a platted or un-platted parcel for:
- Any business
- Any commercial facility
- Any industrial facility
- Any multi-family dwelling
- Any recreational facility
- Any institutional facility
- Any government building
- Any library
- Any fire department facility
- Any law enforcement facility
- Any church
- Any school
- Any major utility facility
- Any cell site
- Any utility service facility larger than 500 square feet
- And facilities contemplated under Planned Unit Development regulations
Plans must be provided by Colorado certified engineers and must include a guarantee bond payable to the County should the plan fail in some way.
Look around you. See all those cows? They’re nice enough, to be sure. But to raise them you have to be either a multi-millionaire looking for a hobby, or a descendent from a pioneer family with inherited land, because there’s not enough profit in the animals to pay for the land on which they feed. That’s a pretty exclusive club, and it’s not growing.
Elbert County’s Community and Development Services Department makes sure this situation stays exactly the same. Of course they’re just a well intentioned bunch of bureaucrats doing their bit to bring about a perfect world, which they’ve apparently decided looks exactly like the world we already have.
They’re giving services all right. Bend over, touch your toes, and make your checks payable to Elbert County.
As for the common people who moved here to build a family and a life? Don’t worry about them. There’s federal TANF welfare funding, Food Stamp credit cards from the Feds, and all sorts of Social Services to deal with their wrecked circumstances after their economic hopes come crashing down. They don’t need jobs. They can look at the pretty cows.
Svetlana Kunin summed it up recently in Perspectives of a Russian Immigrant No. 24
- When more workers joined the federal government’s disability program in June than the number of jobs created by the economy — were we rising or falling?
- When enrollment in the food-stamp program increased by 44% from 2009 to 2011, were we rising or falling.?
- When in a very dangerous world the U.S. military is weakened and the borders are not protected — are we rising or falling?
- When a growing web of government agencies and tsars are taxing, penalizing, mandating, forbidding and limiting citizens’ liberties, and when entrepreneurship is demonized — are we rising or falling?
- For those who study world history, the difference between government planners vs. private entrepreneurs is dramatically apparent.
“You are free to argue that certain government interventions are justified. You just need to acknowledge this truth: Every intervention that erects barriers to starting a business, makes it expensive to hire or fire employees, restricts entry into vocations, prescribes work conditions and facilities, or confiscates profits interferes with economic liberty and usually makes it more difficult for both employers and employees to earn success. You also don’t need to be a libertarian to demand that any new intervention meet this burden of proof: It will accomplish something that tort law and enforcement of basic laws against force, fraud and collusion do not accomplish.” Charles Murray – Why Capitalism Has an Image Problem
B_Imperial