03 - Challenges in Park County Colorado with Tom Eisenman - DRAFT

The transcription is a conversation between two individuals discussing the building process and community development in Park County. They mention the importance of hiring design professionals and conducting thorough research. They also discuss the focus on road safety and development services in the community. The county manager highlights the need for skilled individuals and the involvement of engineers in addressing geological challenges. They emphasize the importance of proper design for long-term durability and the impact of climate change on building regulations. The county is working on reviewing and updating their land use regulations and strategic master plan, considering factors such as drought and water resources. Water is a significant issue in Park County due to the reliance on groundwater and the limited availability of surface water. From the blueprint to the final nail, in open discussions with industry professionals of all kinds, we break down the complicated world of the building process done right. This is the holistic building experience. All right. So today we're sitting down with Tom Eisenman with Park County, and before we get started, we want to remind our listeners that as you listen to the holistic building experience, to the extent that we are discussing and explaining various building and land concepts, the information we discuss is for your convenience only and should not be construed as specific advice for your project, nor does it replace the need to hire a design professional, but this is to give you general advice to help you understand the process a little better. All of our listeners need to perform their own research and due diligence and need to verify any and all information heard on this podcast, and you should never rely solely on anything we discuss without verifying that it's correct or applicable to your project. So today we're setting the stage, discussing various subjects, projects here in Park County relating to building, involving homeowners, building officials, and industry professionals. So I'm sitting down with my good friend Tom Eisenman with Park County. How are you today, Tom? Doing very well, John. Thank you. Good. Can you tell me a little bit about what do you do exactly with Park County? Well, that's a very good question, John. Currently, as a county manager, it's more of a leadership role. Function at an executive level. Be a sounding board or mentor for various department heads. I try to translate the wealth of my knowledge that I believe I have to guide those folks within that lead as department heads to further providing good community service. Yeah, you've been here a long time. When did you start working for Park County? I remember that day well, John. May 18th, 1999. Wow. That's a long time. We kind of grew up together, didn't we? Yes, we did. Yes, we did. So what all are you involved in now in the community? Is there any special projects that are going on? Well, we're really focused on a lot of energy right now and dollars in two areas. The main push area right now is on our roads. We have been able to secure and utilize professionals from the front range to help us on the road safety studies, which is important, and as well as engineering, surveying, and things like that. The other area is development services or community development, which is near and dear to my heart. I mean, that's where most of my extensive knowledge is in. And to be able to provide better services to our professionals like yourself and your customers and the citizens that want to come in and build or looking at some guidance in I want to do maybe a home occupation and items like that. Yeah. You know, when I think about the county, I think about Bailey, all of the people that are building in that area. We come over on the Park County side, Indian Mountain, Stagetop, the Buffalo. We're seeing more and more homes. The impacts on county roads and these facilities are no doubt a big challenge to maintain, I'm sure. Oh, definitely. COVID, our experience with that, all of us, really drove a lot of sales of those lands for folks wanting to get out of the city, as well as those impacts that come recreate, as our governor said, go forth and recreate. Well, they certainly came to Park County, so we've seen a big influx on our roadways and what we have to do to better support that economic driver that does drive the county. For sure. Yeah. Well, it's nice to hear that people like yourself and other people here care so much about the people that live here. You care about your community, you care about the environment, and sometimes, as individuals living in the area, we tend to look at the negative things. Why isn't my road plowed? It snowed. Why isn't this graded? Why are there so many potholes? Things like that. Or if we're applying for a building permit, why is it such a long process to get permits? So having people like yourself that really care about the community is, I think, important for people to see. So I'm glad to see that, for sure. How do you feel that the county is addressing specifically relating to the building development, the community development, from planning-related issues, the environmental health department? How do you feel like the county is growing in these areas? Yeah, we've definitely had an opportunity to acquire skilled individuals, and mostly over the last year and a half, as you know, it was kind of hit or miss, and we were never really clicking on all cylinders to provide a very much more professional and quick service as I believe we're at now. We're able to pull in digital building plans, which helps everyone, including our customers and our citizens and customers, and expedites being able to get those building plans out. We have strong individuals in the environmental health area in relationship to septic systems, mostly, and driveway cuts, and things like that, erosion and sediment control. Strong people now in our building department actually worked in the industry, some that swung a hammer. So I think we relate more to our trades, a little bit better. I've always been a proponent, try not to be a regulator, be an educator. And I finally broke that tip of that iceberg, and I believe and I see that we moved in that direction. That will provide better service to our community. Yeah, for sure, because when we regulate people, people don't like that. They don't like to be regulated. I don't like it. No, no, for sure. One of the things that I hear sometimes is, why do so many things have to be engineered in Park County? Why is there so much regulation? That's a common thread that I hear when I'm out. How would you answer something like that? I think it's crucial to engage our engineering community. You know as well as I do of the variable geological formations across Park County. It's quite the gambit, you know, possible unstable slopes in areas that people want to build, shallow groundwater, solid bedrock, volcanic intrusions. We got it all. We are not engineers. We work with our engineers to address the code that we build under. We rely on engineers to design site-specific. I think that is crucial. That really helps the home builder. It's a service that, I didn't build my home, but I'll have an engineer come and design mine. Right? First doing some geological, some surveying, some site analysis, how it should sit. I mean, all those aspects are taken into consideration for you as the homeowner or the home builder. Yeah, more and more of these lots are certainly more difficult. They're getting steeper. A lot of the remaining lots that are being sold, a lot of the better lots have been developed. I know from my perspective, I've, you know, people don't like to be regulated, but they also want the ability to sell their home or property. Sometimes unfortunate things happen and people have to sell their property, but there's a huge benefit to having things properly designed when the next person comes along and buys that and acquires who knows what. That is a great point. I've always tried to look in that direction, knowing that I may not stay in my home, right? You know, the next four or five years, maybe eight, and you might want to downsize or you may want to build something larger to accommodate you. It's not so much me as the homeowner. I want something that's going to last, and when I sell that, I don't have to worry about the next buyer. That's important to me, so, and I think that's important to our staff, and I know it's important to you. It is. It is. Yeah, and we're seeing things change with snows, you know, the volume of snow that we're seeing, the moisture levels in that snow, some of the wind design criteria with climate change, we're seeing these things impact what people are building, so. Absolutely. I mean, it's, it seemed like a slow pace, but it's really accelerated over the last couple years, and I don't see it, change is going to happen more rapidly. Yeah. Yeah. How do you, what do you see in the future for Park County with regard to regulations and things? Yeah, good question. Currently, we received a DOLA grant to review and assess our current land use regulations and our strategic master plan, and with that, of course, our staff will do some internal work and has been, and because the dynamics have changed, okay, not only what citizens want to see or what our communities want to see, but dynamics as a whole, right, 285, that major construction, that plan is to have, do not slow down traffic. That's going to have a big impact on this local community, so a lot of things that we're working on is that, the community and the industry is going to be stakeholders through that process. We hope to have a framework that we can move forward to make those changes appropriate to our community, so it's a big project, and I'm excited about it, because it really will take a look. I think the biggest thing that's been on the radar is, okay, how are you going to address drought, because we have never addressed that, climate change, and water resources, and not only in our strategic master plan, but in our land use regulation as a whole, so that'll be an interesting component and an interesting exercise. Why do you think that water, I mean, I read in the news a lot about water rights and what's going on in Colorado and those kinds of things, but from Park County's perspective, why is water an issue? It is. As we know, 85 to 90 percent of all surface water has been purchased and utilized on the front range, so we rely mostly on groundwater. People that build in this community that are not near a water district, water and sand district, is going to be on well and septic. We have to educate still, because a lot of folks, when they build their home, they may come from a different area, that those sewage and water are provided by an entity. Now we're drilling wells. Back in, what was it, 2008, we were in a big drought, and in certain areas of the county, the wells were at about 150 feet, well, they went dry, so lessons learned, most of them are drilled past that now, somewhere about 350, it's probably an average, I think, so how does that equate? Not enough precipitation, not enough recharge, you have to go deeper to get the water, and different areas, like we talked geology, crystal and bedrock, sand and gravel, all those geological underlying structures where you're drilling one's well is going to utilize that system, because we don't really have, we're not in a basin. And I think that's something, just from my perspective, sometimes people miss, we tend to come into communities, and if we're building a home, we tend to look at all the regulations, you know, people learn about, oh my goodness, I have to do this with my septic system, I have to pump, I have to have a pump in my septic tank, why do I need a pump when it's pumping downhill, things like that, so there's a lot of technicalities with that, when it comes to our water tables, our environmental impacts, really what I'm hearing is that because there's so much development that's occurring, and now we've got house building on top of house building on top of house, people drilling a well, right next to another well, right next to another well, looking at how these things are constructed, making sure that we're protecting the underlying water tables, making sure that the wells are constructed properly, that they're grouted properly, that they're drilled properly in the proper locations with the proper setbacks, is becoming more and more important, and ultimately leading to more regulations. Well, and you're exactly right, I mean, septic systems have evolved, and how we utilize them has evolved, and how we protect our groundwater resource has evolved, and same, you know, two compartment tanks, used to be single compartment tanks back in the day, right, well that was okay, because the next house might be, I don't know, eight acres away, ten acres away, it's not like that anymore, and so we have to utilize the technology that has evolved for us to protect not only health and safety, but our groundwater, because it's a finite resource, it's not infinite, we just recycle it, the planet recycles it. So is our water in the county sold to, you know, you mentioned that a lot of it is owned by other entities, does Park County, do we get paid for that water that flows out of our county, how does some of that work, or do you know? Certainly not, I mean, we have different state parks that are storage vessels for the front range, so through recreation, if there's recreation adaptation to that, we may receive a few dollars, you know, but directly, no, we do not. So protecting what we have now is important. Oh, it is extremely important. Right, right. All right, well, I wanted to talk a little bit, too, a little bit more just about the county itself. I know that in the past, some of the staffing has been an issue, we came through COVID, staffing, you know, it was difficult to get staff, maybe you can kind of talk a little bit about some of that and what the county is doing to try to better serve the community today. You know, we lost a lot of folks like everybody else in different industries, they moved on. Some found it better to work from home. I think it had a extremely deep psychological effect on folks, they looked at themselves internally, and do I really want to do this or do I want to do something else? So that changed the dead max, we lost, we, a lot of folks retired or moved on that had extensive experience, but it gave us an opportunity to evaluate ourselves and to retool. And we are in the retooling process. With that, our greatest asset is your staff. Every industry, in my opinion, at least where I come from. And you know what, give them a good place to work, give them an opportunity to excel, educate them and pay them. And been very lucky with the Board of County Commissioners that I've had the opportunity to serve with to understand that and really, really made a astronomical, made it their mission to provide those pre and post COVID. What does that mean? Well, we have higher salary ranges across the board, which entices or brings to us more qualified people. We're fortunate that some of those people that did move out of the front range wanted to be here. So we tapped into that energy and that expertise. So we're utilizing technology to our fullest advantage. We have good folks that are staffing PubWorks and we have had opportunity to elevate those salaries to get those qualified people. That's very helpful. And to move forward. And it's an exciting time, I think, for Park County. I think so, too, from everything that I'm seeing. So maybe just a couple more things. Do you have any projects that you're real excited about right now? Oh, definitely. Definitely. So we have a Internet system that we have and our web page being more interactive. We also have some backdoor programs or applications that you, the citizens and the community, will see that can better facilitate their needs when they apply for a building permit or development permit. That's coming online pretty quick. We have been working on doing road safety studies, which would help us understand how we should develop the roads given the local traffic or the recreational traffic. So that's important. We are building a new Bailey PubWorks building. Oh, nice. We're in the process of that. That, you know, that kind of wore out about 30 years ago. So I'm excited about that. And that'll help the community over there. Oh, definitely. Definitely. Yeah. So there's a lot of stuff happening. We work with CU students, master's students, and they're helping us with our master plan for our fairgrounds. So we're in the process of that. We enlisted CSU students, grad students, for they're reaching out to the community right now for economic development. And they've had a couple meetings across the county. So we'll be developing a roadmap of sorts plan for that. With the other work with PubWorks, we're looking at a three to five to 10 year plan for development there. And I'm excited. There's not going to be these guiding documents that are sitting on the shelf. They're going to be active documents and the public are going to be asked to be stakeholders for that. Nice. All right. Well, maybe just to summarize, any advice you'd have for people that are looking to, you know, come to Park County, maybe live in Park County, maybe to somebody who is looking to build in Park County, any particular advice you'd have for those? I'm going to tell a story on that one. And it's an observation, okay? And I get it. We all do it. People come to Park County, it's beautiful. They come in the summertime, you know, you're looking at properties and you're like, this is heaven, and it is. It is. And people buy or buy a parcel or look to develop it based on that snapshot in time. Park County, it's an interesting, it's a park for all seasons and we do mean that. And we have a nice summer, we have nice spring, nice fall, and we have some very nice winters, as some folks have exhibited with our spring snowfall. So, but advice is hire a professional when you're thinking about developing your parcel. There's folks and engineers that live in the area, know the area, and they are better equipped to help you visualize your dream. We want you to be safe, we want you to be happy, we want you to be part of the community, and we need you to be part of the community. So, I think it's crucial that you hire those professionals and those professions that can help you through the process. Survey your property, get a site evaluation from a professional. Make sure you know what you bought. Just because you have an IOC or someone gives you a, it's in a subdivision and they give you a plat map, doesn't mean that's where your property is. So, and me and you, we've experienced folks developing on that and they didn't set their corners or get it surveyed and, well, why is half my house on somebody else's lot? So, we don't want that to happen to you. We're much better at it, you know, than in the past, but you need to, you need to really think about the steps to build your home. And, but it starts at, I like this parcel, can I build on it? And know what you're building on. So, I think that that will make me happy, that'll make our community happy, that'll make you happy. Nice. All right. Well, anything else that you wanted to, wanted to mention? No, I just think for Park County, it's a renaissance at this point. And I'm excited that where the county is headed and we're equipped this time. Yeah, for that, because all, a lot of times, I think every community, I know my experience here, growth came and we weren't as equipped as we could have been. But we are now, and I'm just excited about the possibilities for our community. Yeah, it's nice to know that the community here really care about the people that are coming and they want to help them. Absolutely. That's what they're, so, you know, when they, people walk in and they're told they have to do A through Z, just knowing that those people really care and those rules aren't there to just be rules, but to really help them, I think is important for people to know. So, definitely. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you very much, Tom, for your time today. We, we really appreciate it and we're looking forward to the future of working in Park County. Oh, you know, you are the future. So that's true, we all are. Yeah, that's for sure. All right. Thanks. An absolute pleasure as always. Yeah. Thank you, Tom.