{"id":13542,"date":"2026-02-12T22:02:40","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T05:02:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/junk-trash-blight-commissioners-plan-to-reexamine-1990s-policy\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:38:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:38:48","slug":"junk-trash-blight-commissioners-plan-to-reexamine-1990s-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/junk-trash-blight-commissioners-plan-to-reexamine-1990s-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Junk, trash, blight\u2019: Commissioners plan to reexamine 1990s policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Montezuma
Montezuma County says complaints often involve trash on private property, including household waste, abandoned tires and derelict vehicles. County official Vicki Shaffer said the problem occurs in both rural and residential areas. (Anna Watson\/The Journal) (Anna Watson\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Montezuma County Commissioners said Monday they would take steps to reopen the county\u2019s decades\u2011old policy on visual blight, signaling efforts to start public discussions to revisit the 1990s land\u2011use comprehensive plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe blight in the county is getting really bad,\u201d Commissioner Jim Candelaria said at Monday\u2019s workshop. He cited near\u2011daily complaints and increasing frustration among community members expressed recently at town hall meetings, such as one in Pleasant View.<\/p>\n

Candelaria emphasized not just trash creating eyesores but a larger concern for environmental and public health issues that he said also lower property values, especially when trash blows onto neighboring yards.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, we talk about personal responsibility, private property rights \u2026 all of these come into play. At the end of the day, there are a lot of people not taking care of their property \u2026 because trash is junk, trash, blight \u2013 it just continues to grow,\u201d Candelaria said.<\/p>\n

Officials did not propose a blight ordinance Monday but asked county attorney Stephen Tarnowski to begin reviewing the public process required for adopting any new enforcement.<\/p>\n

Blight has been a regular topic at meetings, and in January the Commission brought it forward and said it aimed to start addressing it more directly. Tarnowski emphasized at the time that any blight ordinance requires a public process and likely changes to the 1990 land\u2011use plan. Past county officials opted for voluntary compliance over stricter code enforcement out of concern about overzealous government intervention.<\/p>\n

At Monday\u2019s meeting, Tarnowski outlined the current approach in the plan\u2019s Chapter 5, \u201cJunk, Trash and Visual Blight.\u201d He said a working group drafted the proposal to consider more broadly what the county\u2019s role should be.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted to promote the image of Montezuma County and the towns, but then they also address some of the issues that they ran into, including where to draw the line,\u201d Tarnowski said. \u201cWhat is a problem, something that might need to be addressed by a local government, and what is someone\u2019s right as a private property owner.\u201d<\/p>\n

The working group at the time rejected adopting a blight ordinance and instead focused on encouraging subdivisions to set their own standards and increasing voluntary compliance.<\/p>\n

Commissioners Gerald Koppenhafer and Kent Lindsay agreed that developing those regulations decades ago took considerable time and was at times divisive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll through writing the regulations, it was a struggle to determine what is one man\u2019s treasure and what\u2019s one man\u2019s trash. And it\u2019s still very difficult to determine that,\u201d Lindsay said. \u201cSo, we\u2019re going to have to be really careful how we word this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Staffing limits provide constraints<\/div>\n

The county attorney previously said staffing limits make code compliance difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re still trying to get those two land\u2011use enforcement cases out the door. This has been one area where it has been more difficult than I anticipated, just not having a legal assistant in my office,\u201d Tarnowski said during the weekly attorney\u2019s report.<\/p>\n

He noted that while the process is time\u2011consuming, it remains a high priority for him.<\/p>\n

Tarnowski told the commission he has gathered examples from other counties with language for potential ordinances and hopes to share more information publicly before any outreach meetings.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs it relates to our public process of our junk, trash, blight plan in the land\u2011use code, I think it would be really good to get a lot of materials together to help inform that discussion, so I will be working on that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Commissioners have said their preferred approach is to start with voluntary cleanup and have considered offering help, such as waiving the dumpster tipping fee, which depending on the type of waste, runs $15 to $64 per ton.<\/p>\n

Following up on the idea, Candelaria proposed organizing a countywide cleanup day or weekend, similar to a previous tire\u2011collection event in which the county gathered 30,000 old tires. Similar cleanup events happen in Mancos, Dolores and Cortez.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor the county, we keep talking about this: Your strategy is let\u2019s help the people if they don\u2019t have a way to get help. Maybe for a day or a weekend, we just post it, think about it,\u201d Candelaria said.<\/p>\n

awatson@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

meetings, land-use update or possible ordinance discussed <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-13542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19030,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13542\/revisions\/19030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13542"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=13542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}