County postpones Road 38 development hearing to December 29

Montezuma County commissioners put off a decision on a nine-acre single-lot development and rezoning near Mancos on Tuesday, voting unanimously to continue the public hearing to December 29 at 9 a.m.

The application covers a nine-acre lot carved off the west side of a 62-acre property off Road 38, east of Highway 184 and west of Road 38.7. Planning Director Don Haley told the board the owners are splitting off the strip west of the road, and that access would run down a private road the owners built across a 60-foot strip of land they bought from a neighbor to the south, so that traffic would not pass through other houses. The county planning commission had recommended approval unanimously.

The applicants’ agent asked the board either to approve the application conditionally or to continue it, because two things are unfinished. The Colorado Department of Transportation has said the existing highway access permit serving Road 38 will have to be applied for again, on its estimate that the new parcel would raise traffic through it by 20 percent, and the department wants a level two traffic assessment. The agent said no engineer is working on that yet, that 60 days would be enough, and that the applicants intend to push back on the 20 percent estimate. A wildfire mitigation plan for the property is also still in progress.

Graphic: Cortez Current. Source: Montezuma County BOCC agenda and meeting recording, October 27, 2026

Commissioner Kent Lindsay was the first to say the board should wait. “I would recommend we postpone this until we get our CDOT stuff done and our wildland fire mitigation plan in hand,” he said. Commissioner Jim Candelaria agreed, saying that if the state has not yet approved the access, the county could end up needing to do something about that access before approving more development there, and that even approving with a condition would be premature. Commissioner Gerald Koppenhafer asked about the width of the right-of-way on the private ground below the property; Haley said he believed it is 60 feet.

Three neighbors spoke against it

All three people who spoke in public comment live on Road 38, and all three raised the road rather than the lot.

One said the sharp curve where Road 38 meets Highway 184 is the central problem, that more traffic coming down the road makes pulling onto the highway more dangerous, and that heavy construction traffic from a development the county has already approved has torn the road up. Road 38 is a red road, maintained by its residents rather than the county, and he asked why the county decides what development is allowed off a road the residents pay to keep up. “A yes vote will negatively impact Road 38 and the traffic on 184,” he said.

A second resident said drainage is the immediate damage: water now runs off the private road and down the middle of Road 38, which has been worse through the recent rain. A third said he did not dispute the owner’s right to divide the property but wanted a condition requiring an engineer to divert that water across Road 38 and down a drainage ditch to the creek below.

The agent said the applicants’ intention is to maintain the road and work with their neighbors. One resident said she had sent photographs of the road damage to the planning director the day before. When an exchange started up between the applicant and a resident, the chairman cut it off: “This is our hearing where we’re trying to — so please hold your comments.”

The Current is not naming the applicants, their agent or the people who spoke. All are private individuals, and county hearings take their names and home addresses into the record as a matter of course; the board has made no findings about anyone’s conduct, and a claim made by one neighbor about the applicant is not something the Current can check.

Immediately afterwards the board signed the high impact permit and the mylar for Ruby Rose, LLC, a separate Highway 184 application it approved last week.

The sheriff’s budget decision was pulled

The agenda listed a “possible decision related to MCSO budget discussion from October 19” as the only item needing individual consideration. The chairman pulled it. “We’re going to pull off because it’s a budget discussion, which that will go down the road for another month or so,” he said. No decision was made and no figures were discussed.

The board approved its consent agenda in one unanimous vote. It carried the memorandum of understanding for Elevating Prevention in Colorado with the School Community Youth Collaborative, a secure transportation vehicle permit for Guardian Transport, a letter of support to reappoint James Dietrich to the Bureau of Land Management’s Southwest Resource Advisory Council, and a letter of support for a U.S. Forest Service motorized trail grant — all four of which the board worked through at Monday’s workshop.

A resident starts a campaign against battery storage in the land use code

In public comment, a county resident objected to a proposed legislative edit to Chapter 10 of the land use code that would add utility-scale lithium-ion battery energy storage to the code. He told commissioners the edit “would incorporate utility scale lithium-ion battery storage known as a BESS system into the land use code, creating a dangerous new property right in agricultural and residential zoning,” and said he intends to comment over several weeks.

He handed the board a United Kingdom policy brief written for members of parliament and read from it, quoting passages on explosion, fire and toxic-release risk and on contaminated firewater runoff reaching soil, aquifers and streams. Those are the brief’s claims, not findings by any authority with jurisdiction here, and the county has published no staff analysis of the proposed edit. The chairman stopped him at three minutes and said the board would read the packet.

The county has been rewriting Chapter 10 and is separately weighing a large solar project.

Reports

The county attorney told the board his assistant county attorney is leaving at the end of November for a job with La Plata County, which he called a significant change in a two-attorney office, and that the position is being advertised. He is still writing the county’s brief in the Leaf Properties appeal. Ironwood, through its attorney, has filed a motion for reconsideration of the recent amendment to the injunction order in that case, and he had a call scheduled on the county’s response. A draft short-term rental ordinance is still being worked on and is expected before the board before long, and a property tax appeal hearing before the state Board of Assessment Appeals was set for Friday.

Roads. Commissioner Kent Lindsay said the road superintendent’s crews are well behind because of the storms, with water over roads and banks slipping in the northwest and the south, but that the county still has no major road closures. Another commissioner named roads in the Roundup Road district in the northwest that need blading and gravel — CC and 12, BB and 13, and Z and 12 — said rocks that came down on Montelores have been cleared, and said several culverts plugged as rising water carried material into them. The county’s running account of the rain’s damage to its roads, including the Road J sinkholes, is here.

Elections. The deputy clerk told the board that ballots should no longer be mailed back and gave the county’s in-person options and return figures, which the Current reports separately.

The meeting ran about 35 minutes and is posted in full on YouTube. The county’s post carrying it is titled “BOCC Meeting October 26, 2026,” but the agenda inside it is dated October 27 and the video is titled October 27; it is the October 27 meeting.