Live - Chaffee County hearing on whether to approve 5-year FoV permit

Gizzverse
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Don’t know whether it’ll remain as a recording afterwards but the county commissioners are currently conducting the hearing on the FoV permit.

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Update: sounds like they have unanswered safety questions and they’re going to gather more information/conduct more DD and then re-convene with a potential answer on November 18th.

Also, thankfully - somebody advocated strongly for them approving FoV and then worrying about the Pretty Lights fest later (apparently there are more unanswered questions about PL)

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I watched as well and had a similar takeaway as you did. Sounds like the County is concerned with the risks associated by focusing the large majority of their emergency services on a festival, which then reduces the service level that they can provide to everyone else in the county, especially if there were to be a major emergency (brush fires, flood, etc.). Certainly understandable concerns, for sure.

It did seem like the additional concerns with the concurrent PL/Labor Day permit application were related to the fact that weekend is already busy in the area, which calls into question the added economic benefit to doing a fest on a weekend where hotels are already at full capacity. That’s a legit concern – seems logical to a fest would boost the economy more on a non-holiday weekend than it would on a weekend that is already pretty busy.

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I’ll also add that reading the “Staff Report” document that was part of the documents included in the info for the meeting today was quite informative. The staff recommendation was actually to approve the applications with the condition that a) Meadow Creek events cannot be held closer than 1 month apart and avoid holiday weekends, b) the increase in capacity from 10k to 12k be staggered over the course of the 5-year permit (i.e. an extra 500ppl each year), and c)establish some sound level limits, and d)limit amplified music to no later than 11pm on Fri/Sat and 10pm on Sun.

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Definitely bummed that it seems the event organizers dropped the ball… hoping they can figure it out by next month. My guess is if they can’t get approval by EOY it is unlikely to happen in 2026.