Members of the Falcon/Peyton Advisory Small Area Master Plan Advisory Committee met for the first time June 14. The purpose of the citizen volunteer committee is to update the plan written in 1993 for the Falcon/Peyton area.According to Colorado law, planning advisory committees must include citizens.The Falcon/Peyton advisory committee members were approved by the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners in June. They’ll serve for one year.”This committee is an integral part of the planning process,” said Carl Schueler, long-range planning division manager for the El Paso County Development Services Department.The El Paso County master plan consists of the El Paso County policy plan and is augmented by small area master plans. When completed, the Falcon/Peyton master plan will be adopted by the county planning commission – not the county board of commissioners. “The Falcon/Peyton small area master plan is advisory only and not binding on the zoning discretion of the county,” Schueler said.He said the county wants to use the completed Falcon/Peyton Small Area Master Plan as a template for revising and completing other small area master plans. “We have a small staff, so we need to be more efficient.”The county has outsourced supervision of the committee to HB&A, an architecture, planning and information technology company headquartered in Colorado Springs. HB&A will provide the committee with support services and planning expertise.Tasha Norman from HB&A said the planning process will consist of three steps: information gathering, analysis and plan adoption. The committee will meet every two weeks and use the existing plan as a starting point.Committee meetings are open to the public. Norman said there will be at least two public meetings where the committee will present progress information and two hearings before the planning commission. The committee will eventually select a chairperson, who will regularly update the county commissioners.The committee also will post information for the public at a Web site, still to be determined.Committee member Timothy Kistler, superintendent of the Peyton School District, said his overall hope is to have input on how planning affects the Peyton School District. “A major portion of this community plan falls within the Peyton School District, so whatever takes place is going to affect us dramatically,” Kistler said. “I am thankful that the board [of county commissioners] has allowed me to be on the committee. I am going to miss some school time to be a part of this group, but I think this is a great opportunity for the community.”On June 27, the School District 49 Board of Education approved the appointment of Henry Reitwiesener to the Falcon/Peyton committee. Reitwiesner is the district’s director of planning and construction. He is looking forward to working with Kistler. “I have a good working relationship with all the school districts in the area, and I work especially well with Timothy Kistler,” Reitwiesner said. He also said he has offered the committee a room at the administration building so they can hold meetings in Falcon.Among other committee members are Lynne Bliss, Conrad Schaap and Sandra Martin – all live in the Falcon area.Bliss said she is especially interested in law enforcement in the area. She recently experienced a theft from her property. In general, she said, “I hope to fill the gap between the community and the county commissioners.”His neighbors on Owl Lane are Schaap’s primary concern. He’s worried about water and sewage. “These are important parts of building in that area,” Schaap said. “I hope to represent those people and to guide any work on the master plan that would affect the Falcon and the Peyton areas.”It’s an interesting project and vital to the area. The group consists of great people: construction people, developers – all the people that are interested in real estate, and that’s a pretty fantastic group.”Martin has been involved in community issues for years, including Meadow Lake Airport. As the current president of Protect Our Wells, an organization that advocates for private well owners on the eastern plains, she is concerned by the number of developers on the committee. “It’s like jackals guarding the hen house,” she said. “We will have to guard against a developer pushing a particular agenda.”Martin said she also is concerned that the county hired a consultant to manage the planning process.”We need to have a process to monitor development. The 1993 plan called for monitoring that was never done. We know that things change. For compliance, we know that you have to review again and again. I’m not sure that it will happen this time.”Martin said she believes most people agree that a developer has the right to develop his or her land, but the developer must do so with respect for the needs of the resident, which includes “quantity and quality” of water.”A lot of people spent so much of their time doing a plan 14 years ago, and their plan was largely ignored,” Martin said. “We’re left with the waste of that. We’ve been forced into accepting what we have, so now we have to come up with a new plan that defines what we want our lifestyle to be.”
