This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
"Dear Longmont City Council,
As residents of Rogers road who will be impacted by the Mountain Brook development, (400 new homes on a Rural street, under a airport approach, in a high water table flood plain with only 30 existing rural homes), we remain concerned that our questions and concerns over impacts have yet to be addressed as required by the Code. As you reconsider extending special metro financing districts for residential developers, please know that it was the Mountain Brook developers who requested the law change and received it. Please consider why they could not get financing for this highly profitable project from a bank? Council members stated the goal was to help fast track and increase affordable housing but Mountain Brook is not including any affordable housing in the 300-400 condo units, instead they are doing a pay-in-lieu which they admitted to the Planning Commission. Their homeless veterans small homes is a separate development from the condos. .. admirable, but not affordable workforce housing. Ask yourselves why Longmont is accommodating anything a developer wants, yet citizens stakeholders and neighbors in this process have been ignored, insulted, and dismissed. Last year, the planning commission and council approved the preliminary plat of Mountain Brook despite over a dozen required elements missing, effectively giving the residents of Rogers Road no information to even understand the impacts. We won an appeal of that decision, yet the Mayor reconsidered that vote and undid our appeal, effectively removing our voice in the process. And, since Council has a newly found concern about ethics, please ask Members Waters and Martin to recuse themselves from any action on Mountain Brook, as they admitted to meeting the developer on the day we filed our appeals of the preliminary plat. Perhaps the district atty could also look into this. Transparency is not just a slogan.
Thank you,
Kevin Gallagher/Jim Enright
Longmont, CO
