A group of mid-valley residents has had it with Eagle County. Our Valley Our Voice wants Basalt, Willits and El Jebel to join neighboring Pitkin County. Leaving one county to join another, it turns out, is no easy task.
Tim Whitsitt thinks the Eagle County Commissioners are a little tone-deaf to what the Roaring Fork Valley is all about.
“They don’t have the same understanding and feelings about development as we have here,” he said.
The commissioners have approved some controversial developments. Whitsitt, for the record, thinks development is important.
“On the other hand, it’s absolutely wrong to pave the entire valley floor with five-story condominiums,” he said.
Whitsitt lives in Basalt; his wife is the mayor. He and a few others have formed Our Valley Our Voice. They want the mid-valley to join Pitkin County, which, according to Whitsitt, is more inclined to limit development.
If Pitkin County annexes the portion of the roaring fork valley, currently in Eagle County, it will end a debate that’s nearly as old as the counties themselves.
“I have a copy of a newspaper article from 1897 saying that portion of Eagle County really belongs more logically with Pitkin County,” said Kathy Chandler-Henry, an Eagle County Commissioner. She admits it is random that a little slice of the Roaring Fork Valley is in Eagle County. It’s expensive, too; they spend more on providing services here -- like a sheriff’s deputy, public health offices, and so on -- than they get back in taxes.
“It would be a revenue gain for Eagle County if that portion of the county were to annex into Pitkin County,” Chandler-Henry said.
For this to happen, a majority of voters in both counties would need to approve it. Of course, the question needs to get on the ballot, which is tricky because of a statute from 1887. It requires signatures from 50 percent of voters in the area to be annexed.
Tim Whitsitt thinks this is an “onerous and monumental task.” By the calculations done by Our Valley Our Voice, that’s over 5,000 signatures; he and several other members of the group spent an hour or two collecting 50 signatures outside of Whole Foods recently.
“Well, multiply that out a hundred times, you know, it’s several hundred hours of work,” said Whitsitt.
Not everyone in the mid-valley is interested in joining Pitkin County.
“I’ve heard that Pitkin County is extremely difficult to work with,” said Robert Hubbell, who manages the El Jebel Mobile Home Park. Eagle County approved affordable housing projects without forcing him to jump through too many hoops.
“There’s too much paperwork in Pitkin County,” Hubbell said.
And, as far as Pitkin County goes, does it even want this? When its commissioners and staff discussed annexation in June, there was lots of skepticism.
Pitkin County Manager John Peacock estimated annexing the mid-valley would increase the population by over 40 percent and cost the county millions each year to get services to its new residents.
Tim Whitsitt questions these numbers, and also doesn’t see the harm in asking voters the question.
“I don’t put a lot of weight in what either the Pitkin County Commissioners or the Eagle County Commissioners think. I want to hear what the voters have to say,” Whitsitt said.
On Tuesday, Whitistt and other members of Our Valley Our Voice met with the Eagle County Commissioners. They urged them to put the question on November’s ballot directly, disregarding the 1887 statute requiring a petition.
The commissioners didn’t bite. Jeannie McQueeny said petitioning, in fact, is the best way to hear all voices from Eagle County’s little sliver of the the valley.
“The right thing to do,” she said, “is to let the people who live in that section of the county to decide, and the way they do that is through petition. Do they want that on their ballot?”
After the meeting, Whitsitt said it’s unlikely Our Valley Our Voice can collect 5,000 signatures in time for this fall’s election.
The next chance to do so would be in 2020, adding two more years to a discussion that’s over a century old.
