Berthoud Weekly Surveyor | Covering all the angles in the Garden Spot

Berthoud town board talks housing and delinquent parking fines

By: Will Cornelius | The Surveyor | October 28, 2022 | Local News

Tuesday night’s Berthoud Board of Trustees meeting was focused on a historic house in town, traffic and parking violation collections, and short-term rentals. All members of the board were present for the shorter-than-usual meeting.

Before the scheduled items, Butch Hause and Sarah Lincoln spoke during the citizen participation portion of the meeting. They discussed their request for a 20-foot easement for parking near Newell Farm and Amphitheatre. As Lincoln said they are “looking for a strip and a strip only.” The discussion between the two and the Board was cordial and constructive.

The landmark in question is the E.E. Stepp House, located at 545 7th Street. The bungalow-style home was built in 1913 and represents the type of home built in Northern Colorado around that time. The house has also been owned and inhabited by Berthoud’s two longest-serving mayors. Elmer E. Stepp, who served as Berthoud mayor for 11 years from 1925 to 1936, and Richard Strachan who served two non-consecutive stints from 1976 to 1984 and 1988 to 2000 for a total of twenty years. While the former became the namesake of the House, the latter has lived at the house for over half a century and counting.

During their Oct. 10 meeting, the Historic Preservation Advisory Committee (HPAC) voted unanimously to recommend the approval of the historic designation for the E. E. Stepp House. HPAC cited the house meeting the following criteria for the historic designation: the home is more than fifty years old, the property is associated with significant people from Berthoud’s past, and the property embodies the distinctive characteristics of a period of construction.

Adam Olinger spoke to the board on behalf of the resolution and fielded questions concerning the historic designation. The only concerns raised were if homeowners were aware of the restrictions that come with a historic designation. Olinger assuaged these questions by pointing out that while exterior renovations may be limited, interior renovations still have wide latitude. Afterward the board then unanimously approved the resolution designating the house as a local historic landmark.

Next up was attorney Fred Long to discuss a traffic and parking violation collections ordinance. Many small municipalities across Colorado, Berthoud included, depend on traffic and parking fees for their budgets. Typically, municipal courts would notify the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) of delinquent fees owed by someone. The next time they go to renew their driver’s license, the DMV would hold their license until the fee was paid. But in 2021, the Colorado Legislature passed a law stopping this practice. This has left many small municipalities across Colorado without a method to collect these fees. Long said this has many small towns asking “how are we going to collect our unpaid fines?”

One solution is to use a private collections firm to handle the unpaid fees. This is something that Milliken has already adopted. Many municipalities don’t have the capacity or jurisdiction to collect unpaid fees for minor traffic offenses. If someone gets a parking ticket in Berthoud, but then never pays it or returns to the town, it becomes very difficult to recover the fine.

Mayor Will Karspeck spoke to this personally, recalling driving through Oklahoma in the past and getting a fine. “It was a hassle to deal with, it was a huge pain,” he said. He said he paid it, but then the municipality never received the money, and it kept snowballing from there. For many people, it is also a matter of forgetting a speeding ticket given in a different state or county during a summer road trip.

One concern raised by the board to this ordinance was the cost of using a collections agency. Collection agencies charge a fee for recovering unpaid debts, and this can be substantial. Long said that the ordinance capped this rate at 25 percent of the debt. Forgoing the entire debt owed for a portion of the debt may seem counterintuitive, but Long pointed out that 75% of an unpaid fine is better than zero percent. “We have no other way of collecting our unpaid fines and judgments,” he said. Long also assured Berthoud that it would not be walking blindly into any agreement, saying they would be able to “review the contracts before they get signed.”

This ordinance would also only apply to fines assigned by the Berthoud Municipal Court. With no input from the public, the board approved the ordinance unanimously.

During the elected officials’ reports, the most prominent point of discussion was short-term rentals. “Rental properties have been on my mind lately,” said Sean Murphy. Steamboat Springs was brought up as a community that has recently passed local laws limiting short-term rentals (STRs). STRs — think Airbnb and VRBO — are regulated in Steamboat Springs. From Jan. 1, 2023, all STRs will be required to have a license in Steamboat Springs, and most of the city is prohibited from having STRs at all. While the law changes grandfathered in existing STRs, it prohibits new ones from being created after June 15, 2022, in many parts of the city.

There was debate about whether this is an issue in Berthoud currently and whether a special meeting was needed or if this could be discussed during a regular meeting. Town Administrator Chris Kirk suggested the discussion “start in a regular meeting and see where it goes.” While most of the board seemed interested in further discussing the matter, there seemed to be a lack of consensus on if this was an underlying issue for Berthoud or not.

One of the last topics discussed, and perhaps the most illuminating was the discussion around more Christmas lights on Main Street. Jeff Butler stressed that more lights were going up this year but that they are constrained by getting power on the streets. “It’s always a cost discussion,” Butler said.

The next regular meeting of the Berthoud Board of Trustees will take place on Nov. 8th.

 

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