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County adopts local rules for natural medicine/healing centers, citing state law and setback limits
Summary
The board adopted Resolution 2026-16 amending land-use regulations to add provisions for natural medicine/healing centers, including fire-suppression review, conditional operating hours, 1,500-foot inter-center and 1,000-foot school/daycare setbacks, and case-by-case bonding requirements.
The Rio Blanco County Board of Commissioners adopted Resolution 2026-16 on May 5, updating the county’s land-use regulations to add special-use restrictions for natural medicine or healing centers.
Staff member Leaf summarized revisions made after prior review, saying the amendments respond to voter-driven Prop 122 and Senate Bill 23-290 and that the county tailored local permitting language to address local needs. He listed five changes the board had asked for: adding a fire suppression review with involvement from the building department, allowing time-of-operation conditions as part of approval or an improvement agreement, specifying 1,500-foot setbacks between centers and 1,000-foot setbacks from schools and daycares (language adapted from another town’s code), tying staffing qualifications to state regulations, and treating financial guarantees or bonds as condition-dependent items applied at approval time.
"We then ran it through the planning commission twice... we ran it through the attorney's office as well as our staff here locally," Leaf said, describing the review process. Commissioners stated they were satisfied with the revised language and voted to adopt Resolution 2026-16. The adopted resolution will be added to the county land-use regulation book after signature.
The board noted some provisions (setbacks and bonding) are intended to be applied with regard to site-specific factors and that the building department and referral agencies will be involved at permitting.
