by Katherine Nettles

Gunnison County commissioners took the first step in finalizing a much-anticipated Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with jurisdictional partners for the Gunnison Valley Corridor Plan on Tuesday, October 6 by approving the final draft document. The MOU includes the town of Crested Butte, Mt. Crested Butte and city of Gunnison and the final draft will go to those jurisdictions for potential approval as well. The Corridor Plan Project Advisory Committee (PAC) began working on the document last spring.

The final draft came together in early October after extensive work between the parties’ staff and town mangers to find agreement in the language culminated in an in-person meeting with county staff, staff from Crested Butte and Mt. CB on September 22. The city of Gunnison did not participate because they “did not have any concerns with the draft MOUs,” according to a county staff memo.

The MOU is defined as a “nonbinding statement of intent for the [corridor planning] process that identifies the operational detail on roles, communication, decision-making and conflict resolution.” It includes a partner charter, which is a more detailed document establishing specifically how the county and its entity partners will collaborate.

Commissioners Laura Puckett Daniels and Liz Smith said they had read the memo and details from the PAC. The two commissioners said they didn’t have much to add (commissioner Jonathan Houck was not present at the BOCC meeting), but Puckett Daniels noted that it has been an involved process between the parties and that she appreciated the final product.

“It has been a long time coming,” agreed Smith. “And it’s taken a lot of work from multiple parties to get to a place of solid foundation which is really important for the scale and scope and impacts of the project that we’re taking on. I realize it’s not going to be easy for everybody and there will be disagreement.” Smith said she believed the MOU is a firm foundation to navigate that and define expectations.

Highlights that assistant county manager for community and economic development April Kroner noted were consideration of the consultant’s staff member time to avoid requiring significant additional staff time on the plan and getting materials out in advance of meetings to other parties so they could thoroughly review them and prepare for discussions. The MOU also condensed previous project milestones, “and the other piece was recognizing that the county has the ultimate authority over decisions regarding the corridor plan and that we do aim to develop a document that all of the other partner jurisdictions can endorse, should they wish to endorse it,” summarized Kroner. She said she thought the September meeting was extremely collaborative with both towns. “We’re all in agreement that we’re working for the betterment of the entire county and the corridor, and we needed a few concessions to get to this language, and we all agreed on it.”

Smith and Puckett Daniels approved of the resolution to adopt the MOU, and Kroner noted that the next step is for each of the jurisdictions to bring the document forward to their respective elected officials for final review and execution.