approval of the Snowmass Village Planning Commission<\/a> of the code March 18.<\/p>\nTown Attorney Jeff Conklin presented the code to council, which came out of the 2023 state legislature formation of a State Wildfire Resiliency Code Board tasked with developing a model code to regulate and address wildfire hazards in the woodland urban interface. The Board identified areas within the WUIs categorized as low, moderate or severe wildfire hazard areas, with different requirements attached to the varying levels of hazard in the form of a code. <\/p>\n
The code contains two general areas: Structure hardening requirements and site and area requirements.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Board adopted the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code, requiring local governments with planning and building authority to adopt a code that meets the minimum standards for their area and begin enforcing that code by July 1 of this year. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll of Snowmass Village is either moderate or severe wildfire hazard area,\u201d Conklin reminded council. \u201cThere\u2019s a requirement to comply with all of the structure hardening and site and area requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those requirements would only be enforced for new developments, or if a homeowner wanted to replace more than 100 square feet of roof, replace more than 25% of siding or build an addition of more than 500 square feet.<\/p>\n
The site and area requirements for new developments are divided into the three zones: Immediate (the first 0-5 feet where code requires a hardscape design), intermediate (5-30 feet where code requires the removal of dead plants and tree spacing) and expanded (30-100 feet where code focuses on tree spacing).<\/p>\n
For those replacing more than 25% of the siding on an existing home, they would also have to meet the \u201cimmediate\u201d zone requirements, although Conklin noted the first five feet has built-in discretion within the code for building officials to allow for modifications or alterations.<\/p>\n
He added, \u201cThe model code does allow for a process to essentially seek a variance from the code altogether. If there were a desire of the council to say this element of the code does not make sense for us and we think we can protect the community in an alternative way with an alternative criteria, there\u2019s a variance process to go through with the state.\u201d<\/p>\n
At this time, however, Conklin confirmed that is not being sought out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a desire to get this implemented,\u201d Conklin said. \u201cMy recommendation is to proceed. I think we\u2019ve prepared ourselves to start working with this code for better or for worse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The town of Snowmass Village\u2019s Chief Building Official\u00a0Mike Metheny also spoke in favor of beginning implementation. <\/p>\n
\u201cI do think that this code may change a little bit as it evolves, but I think this is a good place to start,\u201d Metheny said.<\/p>\n
Council Member Tom Fridstein spoke in favor of the local amendments to the code and agreed he wanted to get it rolled out as soon as possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really important,\u201d Fridstein said. <\/p>\n
Fridstein did bring up the need to address extending the code to existing homes in the future, proposing a timeframe of five to seven years where homeowners could be incentivized to voluntarily upgrade their homes to adhere to the wildfire resiliency code. <\/p>\n
Metheny noted that while the next few months will be focused on implementing the code as is, it would be possible to address requirements for existing homes going forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the next step I\u2019d like us to be thinking about,\u201d Fridstein said.<\/p>\n
Council Member Britta Gustafson brought up a concern around all new development being required to comply with site and area requirements up to 100 feet, questioning if that meant eliminating all trees in those expanded areas.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are a village in the forest,\u201d Gustafson said. \u201cIt\u2019s not that I don\u2019t want to do the right thing, I just want to wrap my head around what that looks like.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brooke Stott, the new fire marshal for Roaring Fork Fire Rescue Authority following former Fire Marshal John Mele\u2019s retirement<\/a>, confirmed that the 30-100 feet requirements would not mean clear-cutting the area.<\/p>\n\u201cI would not say we are ever going to clear cut,\u201d Stott said.<\/p>\n
Council unanimously supported a motion to approve the first reading. The second reading is scheduled for April 20.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Snowmass Town Council approved the Wildfire Resiliency Code on first reading Monday. This motion follows the approval of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[128,130,129],"class_list":["post-159521","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}