Chaffee County adopts glitch bill land-use fixes, renames PCR zone and directs staff to address site-specific concerns

The Chaffee County Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday approved a package of "glitch-bill" amendments to the countys land use code, addressing implementation problems that surfaced after the code went into effect Jan. 1.

The board approved changes that add a Wildlands Resource Preservation (WRP) zoning district intended to cover publicly owned lands, rename the countys existing Public Conservation Recreation (PCR) zone to "backcountry" for clarity, remove maximum building-coverage percentages in favor of landscape-surface-ratio standards, and make a handful of targeted map corrections.

Planning staff presented the package after a multi-month review. "One of the changes we're proposing is to add the Wildlands Resource Preservation Zone to cover all the public lands and change the name of the PCR, Public Conservation Recreation Zone, to backcountry," the planning staff presenter said. The renaming is intended to reduce public confusion about whether large tracts of federal public land had been given county-level conservation designations.

The board took public testimony for more than two hours. Speakers included…