BY SARA ANN MASON

Los Alamosans have an exciting opportunity to give feedback on a draft of the Comprehensive Plan and help it be more successful in accomplishing its three big priorities: expansion of appealing and accessible housing options, cultivation of vibrant and amenity-rich activity centers, and protection of open space. By far the biggest opportunity for improvement in this draft plan is that it does not yet make it clear enough how we can increase housing options, which undermines all three of these major priorities.

If we fail to allow more people to live in Los Alamos, we will not succeed in cultivating vibrant and amenity-rich activity centers because there will not be enough people to fund, staff, and use them. And what is more disturbing still to me as a climate advocate is that as long as there are 10,000+ daily commuters into Los Alamos, we will be failing to do our part to protect our county’s beautiful open spaces. I focus nearly all of my climate advocacy at making changes in federal policy because that is the scale of action required to address the problem and also because it’s fair: it’s not right to ask individuals to fix massive systemic issues. However we must reduce vehicle miles traveled to reduce carbon emissions and for better or for worse, the vast majority of policy changes that will accomplish this are controlled at the state and municipal levels.

Every day that Los Alamos postpones being part of solving this collective action problem is a day that we allow the environmental pollutants of 10,000+ commuters to negatively impact local air quality. Every day we do this is another day we lose to reducing the carbon emissions that are already a much greater threat to our natural spaces than a high rise building or an ADU in your neighbor’s yard ever could be.

I know that increasing housing density requires changes that make some people scared and uncomfortable, but we’re not a community that shies away from doing the right thing just because it’s hard. Los Alamos was founded by a community of creative, brilliant, brave people who took bold steps to solve a national crisis. They didn’t say, “That’s someone else’s problem to solve”, and we shouldn’t either.

Fortunately, the solution is clear. We can all speak up by September 9 and ask for this
plan to use stronger language to accomplish the following:

 Remove parking mandates for residential and commercial construction and provide a mechanism to reduce the existing amount of parking.

 Raise or eliminate rigid residential density caps by reducing minimum lot sizes and legalizing lot splits by right.

 Make Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) genuinely buildable by right rather than just theoretically legal.

  Consolidate All Single Family Residential (SFR) and (Residential Medium) RM
Districts into a Single Unified “Residential (R)” Zone.

So rarely do we have the opportunity to attract so many benefits with a single policy change. I know that Los Alamos can meet this opportunity with the same trailblazing enthusiasm with which we have faced the challenges of previous generations. It is in this spirit that I invite you to visit https://www.planlosalamos.org/ and provide your feedback today!

Letters to the Editor represent the opinions of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or editorial stance of the Los Alamos Reporter. The publication assumes no responsibility or liability for the factual accuracy of statements made by contributors.