On Tuesday, the Pitkin County Commissioners met with the Aspen City Council to discuss their intergovernmental agreement, dictating how the workforce housing program is run.
Currently, there is an appointed citizen committee, which acts as the board for the housing authority, but all of their work also needs to be approved by Aspen City Council and the Pitkin County Board of County Commissioners, or BOCC. Each group has different levels of understanding of the housing system, different priorities, and different budgets with which to pay for APCHA assets.
On Tuesday, the groups discussed a potential new governmental structure that would keep this same representation, but reduce it to just one decision-making entity, referred to as an “empowered APCHA board.” The exact makeup of that board is undecided.
All 10 elected officials agree there needs to be some sort of “super” APCHA board, instead of the current system. That would take a rewrite of the current intergovernmental agreement between Aspen and Pitkin County. The commissioners were not ready to direct staff to start the rewrite just yet. In two weeks they will discuss this further in a retreat, and bring their thoughts and questions back to council. In the meantime, staff will begin creating a process to collect public comment on this proposal.