JOHN GUSTAFSON
Chairperson
Community Development Advisory Board
The Community Development Advisory Board has spent much of its time this year informing ourselves about and discussing, debating, and tussling over details of Chapter 18 of the Los Alamos County Municipal code, aka the Nuisance Code, and the rewrite of it led by contractor Dekker/Perich/Sabatini.
The Chapter 18 rewrite has been presented to the County Council along with CDAB’s recommendations.
I wanted to let the community know that CDAB’s recommendations are available on the County website at https://www.losalamosnm.us/cms/One.aspx?portalId=6435810&pageId=19111888
It was a challenge for CDAB to pull together these recommendations because of the diversity of opinion — within the community and within our Board — regarding how property maintenance should be regulated. Very few of the recommendations were by unanimous vote. I also was a challenge to frame recommendations in a way that we could discuss and vote on them, and I want to express my appreciation to the CDAB members for their diligence and respectful interactions in pushing our discussions forward.
CDAB members brought to the discussions their own perspectives, but we also informed ourselves with community inputs from surveys, the large collection of comments that the contractor leading the rewrite received and posted, and inputs members received directly form the public.
The recommendations are a hodgepodge of inputs, some philosohical and some specific. Because of how our discussions proceeded, some of our recommendations make others moot. We decided nonetheless to present it all, in hopes that the entirety of our discussions will help inform the Council’s deliberations in some meaningful way. And if not — well, we tried.
This is a complicated subject with views on regulating property maintenance that range from near anarchy to detailed specifications for how neatly your lawn must be trimmed. CDAB, in general, leant toward public health and safety as the principal driver for property maintenance requirements.
Interested residents have time to consider the text of the Chapter 18 rewrite and prepare for a public hearing on the topic on November 29. May you have as much fun with the material as we did.