If you go

What: Lafayette City Council

When: 6:30 p.m., Tuesday

Where: 1290 S. Public Rd.

More info: Read full agenda: bit.ly/2m4Sfby

Lafayette's City Council will consider an amendment Tuesday to increase the amount of public land required for future developments, an issue that has grown even more salient amid the city's diminishing open-space.

Following the proposal's approval from city planners last month, the amendment will ride a wave of public support heading into Tuesday's council meeting.

"You will be voting on something that will be getting a lot of public support in Lafayette: open space," resident Karen Norback told planning commissioners last month. "We are behind our neighbors in our public land dedication."

Lafayette residents have come to fear that a deluge of development could eclipse the last bastion of preserved natural space, an increasingly rare commodity for the ever-growing east Boulder County.

Lafayette's code requires public land dedication for 12 percent of a residential site, and 6 percent for a commercial or industrial site, according to the city website.

Under the current regulations, the cost for cash-in-lieu equates to roughly $2 per square foot.

The spirit of public land dedication: in which an applicant seeking to develop a project on "x" amount of acres must give the city a percentage of that parcel to use for public land, acts a municipality's strongest tool against harsh development, according to Lafayette Senior Planner Greg Thompson.

An option exists for developers to pay cash-in-lieu if the parcel allocated for public land is too small to support anything above a "pocket-park," city officials said.

The amendment, if approved by council Tuesday, would adjust the amount of public land dedication to 15 percent for residential and to 12 percent for commercial or industrial.

More importantly, the cost for cash-in-lieu would swell to a market value rate.

Currently, a minimum of 12 percent for nonresidential subdivisions of the total land area of the tract being subdivided must be dedicated for park, school, or other public purposes in Lafayette's neighboring municipality, Louisville, according to the city's website. A minimum of 15 percent is required for residential subdivisions.

Every annexation, subdivision or residential or commercial development that comes through Lafayette requires the dedication of certain sites for parks and recreation use, according to the city's municipal code, and also requires reservation of sites for school and other public purposes.

The code adds that land dedicated could include the 100-year floodplain, national and state historical or natural features, and proposed public areas set aside in state, regional, county or city comprehensive plans.

Commissioners in January were overwhelmingly in favor of such an amendment.

Following the loss of more than 22 acres of preserved natural open-space slated to act as a buffer between Lafayette's Beacon Hill neighborhood and Erie's Nine Mile Corner — a Boulder judge ruled last week Lafayette's condemnation lawsuit satisfied " no public purpose" — city leaders could be further inclined to protect its last vestige of undevelopable land.

Anthony Hahn: 303-473-1422, hahna@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/_anthonyhahn

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