City planning manager outlines Boulder Valley comprehensive plan update; proposes moving open‑space 'OSO' marker into an overlay

At the Sept. 10 Open Space Board of Trustees meeting, the city’s comprehensive planning manager presented an overview of the major update to the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan, explaining the project scope, timeline and proposed changes to how open‑space values are shown on the plan’s land‑use map.

Christopher Johnson, comprehensive planning manager for the city’s Planning and Development Services, told trustees the comp‑plan update is a decade‑level project meant to set a 20‑year community vision and to align with the city’s sustainability, equity and resilience framework. “Comprehensive plans are aspirational plans that are intended to describe a community's long term vision over about a 20 year time horizon,” Johnson said.

Johnson said the current comp plan contains roughly 210 policies and 26 future land‑use designations, and staff are proposing a simpler structure that would reduce overlap and redundancy. One specific change discussed with the board would be to remove the three existing open‑space land‑use labels — commonly called OSA, OSDR and OSO — from the main land‑use map and migrate OSDR and OSO into a separate “natural systems” or “open space values” overlay. Johnson said that change would remove confusion about ownership versus land‑use and would keep a mechanism to flag privately‑owned parcels that have open‑space values so OSMP staff can be notified if a future development application affects those parcels.

Johnson provided historical context for the OSO designation, explaining it dates to hand‑drawn maps from the 1970s and that digitization in the 1990s introduced mapping artifacts and slivers that now create public confusion. “By removing that open space designation out of the map itself, it helps remove some of that confusion,” Johnson said, and added that an overlay would still allow OSMP to receive referrals when parcels with open‑space values are affected by a planning action.

Trustees asked technical and procedural questions, including how the planning reserve area would be treated; Johnson said the comp‑plan update is part of a staged review of the planning reserve and that any detailed decisions about reserve land use would be handled in a separate service‑area expansion plan if city leaders determine a need. He also said the city had already completed extensive outreach (more than 40 engagement opportunities and more than 5,000 responses) and planned to present draft recommendations to planning board and council later in the year, with a draft plan release around March and an expected adoption process in mid‑2026.

Trustees noted the importance of making plan language and maps readable to the public and urged planners to keep the updated document accessible. Johnson said staff are aiming for clearer policy statements, fewer overlapping categories, and better linkage to departmental implementation steps.

Ending: The board offered feedback on open‑space designations and asked staff to return with draft policy and mapping recommendations. No formal action was taken at the Sept. 10 meeting; staff said they would follow up with OSMP staff as the draft plan is prepared for public review.