About one out of every five homes was destroyed or significantly damaged in Lyons in the 2013 flood. At least 98 households were forced to relocate. Many haven’t returned, in no small part because they have no home to return to.
But the Town of Lyons is working to bring the displaced people back by proposing to build 50 to 70 affordable replacement housing units in Bohn Park. Lyons residents will vote on whether to allow the town to use parkland for housing development on March 24. It is a tight race, hotly debated at board meetings, and it is anyone’s call if the housing development will be allowed.
One group of people who won’t get any say in the matter is the people who will be affected most by the vote: the displaced Lyons residents. Because many haven’t been able to return to Lyons, and because mail-in ballots, by state law, cannot be forwarded to an out-of-town address, a portion of the Lyons population large enough to decide the outcome of the vote will be disenfranchised.
It is on the minds of community members, local and displaced, and the Lyons board of trustees.
“Here are folks who consider themselves part of Lyons but don’t get to be a part of this very important vote,” Trustee Dan Greenberg says. “It weighs on my mind. With the parcel we selected, we’re required by state law to have a vote. And the board has passed a resolution that we’re committed to holding that vote. It weighs on my mind that while the democratic process is incredibly important in this — we’re asking people to say, ‘Yes, this is OK to use parkland,’ — there’s a lot of people who don’t have a say, and they’re part of our town.”
The crux of the issue, Greenberg says, is that Lyons residents rightly hold their parkland in high esteem and don’t want to see it developed. Opponents of using Bohn Park say construction there will limit revenue that comes in from budgetary allocations and Planet Bluegrass parking, and it will create environmental and infrastructure concerns.
“These park properties in many ways reflect the core beauty and attractiveness of our town,” Lyons resident Mark Stevenson recently wrote Mayor John O’Brien. “They are heavily used and treasured by town citizens and visitors alike. They are irreplaceable. To change their designation and use against the wishes of our citizens would be a travesty of public intent.”
But Bohn Park, Mayor O’Brien says, is really the only feasible option to build replacement housing. O’Brien says the town surveyed several dozen possible locations before pinpointing Bohn Park, and then hired an independent consulting group, the Trestle Strategy Group, who also came to the same conclusion: Bohn Park was the best option.
One other parcel was given final consideration, the Williams’ property, which is about 25 acres located across from the Eagle Canyon subdivision. But that property would need to be bought, O’Brien says, a significant cost that doesn’t even factor in the expenses associated with providing infrastructure for it.
“It would’ve taken too long and cost too much for us to [use the Williams’ property],” O’Brien says. “Just off-site infrastructure costs alone, not the construction costs of housing or building, Williams’ would be a little over $1 million, and Bohn Park would be $450,000.”
The other main consideration is that after construction of the replacement housing, if approved by voters, Bohn Park would actually realize a net gain in acreage. That’s because Lyons will receive funds through what’s called a 404 buyout program and a community development block grant — federal relief dollars — to buy up residential land damaged in the flood and use it as park land, or “return it to nature.”
The lands bought via these programs are adjacent to Bohn Park and will be enveloped in the park eventually. Since the stipulations of those grants require that the land stay as parkland in perpetuity, the five to seven acres needed to build replacement homes would be built on current Bohn Park land. Still, the 25-acre Bohn Park would increase to at least 40 acres when all is said and done, and there is opportunity to work with Boulder County to buy more land contiguous to Bohn Park’s current boundaries that would expand the park even further.
O’Brien says the town is facing urgency in applying for the $4 million community development block grant, which, with a deadline of March 2, is critical to the success of the development and “expansion” of Bohn Park. The next step, which is already under way, is to receive bids from developers, and a decision will be made on the winning bid as soon as Jan. 19 or 20.
So the Lyons trustees (who voted 5-2 in favor of sending the Bohn Park site to a vote) are moving forward and crossing their fingers that voters say “Yes” on March 24. But is there a backup plan if voters say no?
“We don’t have one, frankly. We’ve looked,” O’Brien says. “That’s it. If this is voted down, then we’re back to any potential private sector development, which if that were possible would’ve already taken place.”
“If we don’t get the people’s permission to do this, to build recovery housing, I think the next thing will be to wake up the next day and say, ‘What do we do next?’” Greenberg says. “However, I think we’ll be more than hard-pressed to find a viable solution. We wouldn’t have gone with this option if we didn’t think it was the best option, and I know that I would consider all other options before choosing parkland. They’re just not there. That’s the best I can say. … I guess there’s an element of do or die, but if the vote doesn’t pass I’ll put my thinking cap on the very next day and figure out what to do next. But I don’t know what that will be.”
And the outcome of the vote is still very much in question, both O’Brien and Greenberg say after hearing comments from a very divided and passionate public over the past few weeks.
“I think it’ll be close,” Greenberg says. “There are plenty of people in town who really want to see this happen, who think it is the best solution, who are seeking to organize. I think it’ll be close because we hold our parks dear. To ask them to set aside acreage of parkland is a big thing to ask people. So I’m optimistic and very hopeful, but I think it’s going to be very close.”
“It’s necessary for the future of the town,” says O’Brien. “It’s vitally important, and I really can’t take a guess now. I’ve talked to a lot of people who are against it for various reasons; either they are afraid park space is going to be used up, and when we tell them there’s going to be a net increase in park space, it’s looked upon skeptically. On the other side, there’s people who want to be back in Lyons, living out of town temporarily and would readily buy affordable units.”
For what it’s worth, the two trustees who voted against sending the Bohn Park site to a vote, Dawn Weller and LaVern Johnson, said in opposition to the measure at the time they were holding out hope the Williams’ property, a dog park or a viable third option would present itself as a site for replacement housing. Alas, the majority of the board couldn’t hold its breath.
Janaki Jane, displaced resident advocate for the Lyons Emergency Assistance Fund, says even those displaced persons are hesitant to allocate parkland toward development but see it as the only real option.
“The ones I’ve spoken to feel quite strongly that — as most people I’ve spoken to in the town that support the proposal feel — that ideally, of course, nobody wants to take parkland, however, this is an extraordinary circumstance. We have a significant proportion of our residents, many 20-, 30-, 40-, 50-year residents who have been flooded out of their homes and we need 120 housing units to replace what we lost. This is only half of it. This is a reasonable solution that we’re being given a substantial amount of money for that will help to bring these people, and this demographic [lower income], back to town,” Jane says.
And so in such a tight race that affects, most directly, the displaced residents of Lyons, enough people to swing the vote one way or the other are not going to get to vote. How many people are still displaced is up in the air, but Lyons Town Clerk Deb Anthony says 98 households were vacated the last time they checked, adding, “I’m not sure how many of them have returned but not as many as we would like.”
Jane says 90 percent of the displaced residents she’s spoken to haven’t been able to return. But she also says about one-third actively want to return, one-third want to live in manufactured housing (trailers planted in foundations, not wheels) and one-third can’t afford to move back. Everyone she’s spoken to, however, would move back in a perfect world.
Now with a vote looming, Greenberg and Anthony say there really isn’t much the town of Lyons can do to give the displaced Lyons residents a chance to vote on the issue due to state voting regulations.
“If you have moved then you would not [get to vote],” Anthony says. “You have to actually physically live here, and the state statutes even say that in the election code, that you have to be a resident for a minimum of 30 days to vote. Just because you own a home here and live somewhere else doesn’t mean you get to vote. You have to physically live here.”
“People who have been displaced haven’t lived in Lyons for over a year now,” Greenberg says. “Even in the 2013 November election, there were people who were displaced like me and couldn’t get their ballots. … A ballot is not going to get mailed to an out-of-town address, and if a ballot goes to a previous address and the person is living, say, in Longmont, the ballot just gets returned.”
Jane says the displaced people she’s worked with are starting to talk about the fact they won’t be able to vote, and some are just learning it now.
“Some people said they didn’t get a chance to vote at all last year because they didn’t have a permanent place to live,” Jane says. “And about this [upcoming vote], I’ve heard discussions of people saying ‘I’m one of the people who wants to live there, and I can’t vote to say I’ll be able to live there.’”
With numbers hazy to all involved, and the fact that only about two-thirds of displaced people are willing and able to return to Lyons, a conservative estimate of the number of disenfranchised voters would be somewhere around 50 people. Is that really enough to swing an election?
“Close in Lyons can be 25 votes,” Greenberg says. “If you look at the last board of trustees election, you look at someone who finished seventh in the trustee voting, I don’t think they were too far away from being the sixth highest vote-getter, which would’ve put them on the board. We just approved community funding for the library district in 2014, and in 2013, there was [a previous] vote for it, and the vote was [decided by] less than 50 votes.
“So we’re talking about incredibly small scale. When we’re talking close, we’re talking close. We’re talking dozens of votes.”
O’Brien says he wants to get the displaced Lyons residents back simply because they want to be back. He also understands living in Lyons is special, and the replacement (or addition, depending on how you look at it) of 60 units is a big deal.
“A lot of people want to live here,” O’Brien says. “It’s the last best place in Boulder County.”
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