With second reading of the Brown Ranch annexation ordinance set for Tuesday, Yampa Valley Housing Authority Executive Director Jason Peasley is hoping Steamboat Springs City Council members will change course on a decision to refer the matter to voters next summer.

The annexation of Brown Ranch would bring 534 acres west of downtown Steamboat under the control of the city after the housing authority purchased the land with a $24 million anonymous donation in 2021. Plans for the project would see 2,264 affordable housing units, available for rent and for ownership, built over the 20-year lifespan of the project.

Last week, a 4-3 City Council vote on the annexation ordinance’s first reading directed the decision to a voter referendum scheduled for June 25.

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Council members Ed Briones and Joella West voted to support the annexation ordinance under the condition it would be put to a referendum. Their votes formed a majority along with council members Heather Sloop and Robin Crossan, who have consistently opposed the annexation, primarily over a more than $52 million projected budget gap facing the city for infrastructure improvements needed to accommodate the project.

“I am kind of floored at the delay, it’s really frustrating and it’s not helping us deliver on what the community has been telling us they need,” Peasley said. “You have Briones and West who were elected to do this, who ran on, ‘We are going to get Brown Ranch done,’ and now you are not actually getting it done.”

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Short of reversing the decision to send the matter to Steamboat voters, Peasley said he hopes council members will at least reconsider moving up the referendum date when they convene for a second reading Tuesday night.

Reached on Sunday, West said the second reading of the ordinance on Tuesday would give council members an opportunity “to ask every question all over again.”

“It is open season on all of the things we have talked about last Tuesday, and we will have to make a final decision on whether to go forward with proposing it to go to the ballot or not,” said West. “I don’t think it was ever the intention to kick the can down the road. You do that by postponing indefinitely and we certainly didn’t do that.”

When it comes to the assertion that West ran on providing affordable housing and is now pulling back from her campaign promises, the city council member said the Brown Ranch project, “all sounded terrific two years ago.”

“What has changed is we have gotten a very realistic view about what it will cost and not a realistic view about where the costs to the city are going to come from,” West added. “Every time I turn around, the only thing I can think of is that the citizens of Steamboat are going to have to face kind of a different life, depending upon how it affects parks, depending upon how it affects the capital improvement plan.

“I can’t in conscience make the decision for everyone who lives in Steamboat that I know best because I don’t have the answer, so it is time to put the question to the citizens.”

In a parallel process to the annexation ordinance, a ballot question approved in September by council members for the Nov. 7 ballot will ask Steamboat voters to decide on directing 75% of the city’s short-term tax revenues to the housing authority to fund most of the project’s costs.

Should the referendum on the funding measure be rejected and the annexation ultimately approved, future City Council members would be tasked with an annual appropriation decision to support the Brown Ranch development, or they could decide to propose a multi-year fiscal obligation to voters in the future.

Steamboat Springs currently has 273 affordable housing units spread across five properties, according to figures provided by the housing authority, but the units are 100% occupied and the combined waiting list for the properties holds more than 800 applicants.

In a report released in May, the housing authority estimated the city is about 1,400 units short of the number needed to house the local workforce. That number is expected to grow to about 1,960 units by 2030 and about 2,300 additional units by 2040.

For Peasley, one of the biggest concerns about the delayed annexation vote is that the housing authority and the city have already secured, “$15 million in grants at the state level and (the referendum date) puts those grants in jeopardy because project readiness is a major criteria and we are arbitrarily saying the project is not ready because we need to do the work of a public election.”

“They are so worried about the (budget gap), but they are totally cool with putting $15 million at risk that is helping fill that gap,” Peasley said.

Peasley spoke to The Steamboat Pilot & Today last week after returning from the 2023 Housing Colorado Conference. Held in Keystone, the annual event drew more than 900 attendees representing municipalities and housing authorities from across the state, along with representatives of banks and real estate firms and development companies.

Peasley said that during the three-day conference, he heard from fellow attendees about the prospects presented by the Brown Ranch development, which he noted is unique from affordable housing projects elsewhere in the state because the local geography allows for a project of such a size and scope.

“The whole eyes of the state are on it and anyone from any mountain town is looking at (Brown Ranch) as like, ‘They are so damn lucky,'” Peasley said of the sentiment he received from others at the conference over the potential for the project to meet the area’s housing needs. “The consensus was that ‘We would kill for that.'”

While the housing conference attendees may have been envious, a segment of Steamboat’s population has voiced consistent concern over the implications of the project.

In a letter sent to council members earlier this month, resident Brad Johnson said the Brown Ranch project, “has been steamrolled onto the community by (the housing authority) and City Council with ever-changing language (i.e. affordable, but now ‘attainable’ housing) and changing financial guesstimates.”

“The sheer size of the project both in projected population volume and financial cost is simply not within the town’s capacity,” Johnson wrote in the letter.

Peasley said he knows not everyone in the community is keen about the project, but he asserted the financial concerns expressed are inflated.

“I completely understand where they are coming from — I think there is a lot of fear and I think that fear has been stoked unnecessarily and very purposefully,” Peasley said last week. “That is the thing that has been tough for me. We went into this with the city talking about a partnership, and it’s felt nothing like a partnership.”