As every elected and appointed county official knows, maintaining a healthy community takes a delicate balancing act. How do you keep a city, town, or county growing without damaging the physical or social fabric of the community?
Polarized forces tend to push choices to the extreme - growth vs. no growth, preserve everything or preserve nothing at all. The experience of the environmental conflicts in the Northwest over the Spotted Owl shows they are false choices. It is not merely a matter of choosing jobs over the environment, but how to blend community-enhancing economic growth with protection of environmental values.
Hundreds of communities around the country are struggling with those choices within a national trend that is shifting more responsibility and authority to state and local governments. How one such county in Colorado is doing is documented in the first publication of NACo and the U.S. Conference of Mayors new Joint Center for Sustainable Communities(JCSC).
"Routt County, CO: Holding the Reins" tells the story of vibrant, creative energy on the part of citizens, organizations, and their elected city and county officials as they collectively create a new vision for their community.
In this county nestled high in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, the Yampa River flows through a valley that collects 300 to 400 inches of snow each winter. The ski resort town of Steamboat Springs attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors, most of whom vow to return to live in the pristine mountain setting.
It is a rural community where farming and ranching has dominated the landscape and the social life of long time residents. In short, a classic example where rapid growth threatens a traditional way of life and a fragile environment.
"Holding the Reins" documents how ski operators and ranchers, environmentalists and business interests, city and county officials all came to the conclusion that collective community action was a sometimes painful but necessary way to develop a vision for Routt County. In the words of one activist, "We got educated."
It also relates how city and county officials chose to develop partnerships with the private sector, with conservation groups, with the state of Colorado, and with federal land management agencies, all to move them along toward a common goal. It shows a willingness on their part to try new approaches such as a recently passed one-mill property tax increase to allow for the purchase of development rights.
"Holding the Reins" is sprinkled with words like hard work, careful negotiation, goodwill and leadership, all ingredients of how the citizens of Routt County are attempting to achieve a balance in their own community.
It may be too soon to claim that Routt County is a complete success story. Achieving a sustainable community takes time and the process must respond to continually changing conditions. But there are lessons to be learned for others even though each county, each community, has its own unique history, tradition, and geography. "Routt County, CO: Holding the Reins" shows what is possible.