Permission Granted: A County Board That Has Never Said No

Editor’s note (June 19, 2026): An earlier version said the board had never denied a land-use application — a “354–0” record. In fact it denied two since November 2021: the 1825 Summit Drive two-lot rezoning (April 2023, 4–1) and Xcel’s Colorado Power Pathway utility permit (July 2025, 5–0). Our original count was built from the commissioners’ vote tallies, which record how each member voted but not whether a motion was to approve or to deny — a motion to deny that passes is indistinguishable from an approval in that data. We have since read the minutes of all 84 Land Use meetings since 2021 and corrected the record. The correction does not change the article’s central finding: the board has not denied a single subdivision, master-planned community, metropolitan district, or developer rezoning in four and a half years. Its only two denials were a utility transmission line and a homeowner’s lot split. The Monument Independent regrets the error.

Since November 2021 the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners has ruled on 357 land-use matters — rezonings, subdivisions, metropolitan-district financings, and sketch plans for whole new towns. It has denied exactly two.

The two were a homeowner’s request to split five acres into two lots (denied 4–1 in April 2023) and Xcel Energy’s permit for a regional power line (denied 5–0 in July 2025). Neither was a developer’s project. The Monument Independent reconstructed the board’s complete voting record from county files; the result is across 355 approvals it has not rejected a single subdivision, master-planned community, metropolitan district, or builder’s rezoning. The more interesting question is not how often the commissioners say yes, but whether they are capable of saying no to the development industry.

The board does more than wave applications through. On occasion it overrules the very planners it employs to flag trouble. The county Planning Commission declined to recommend the Flying Horse East sketch plan — nearly 5,000 homes pressed against the fence line of Schriever Space Force Base — its motion to approve failing three to five, a recommendation of denial. In August 2025 the commissioners approved it anyway, four to one. That was not unusual. Since 2023 the board has approved at least six applications over a Planning Commission recommendation of denial: Falcon Highlands South in 2023; the Watts variance in February 2025; Flying Horse East itself; the Spaatz Road and Big Springs Estates applications that September; and the Pro Trans variance in January 2026. A recommendation against a project, in other words, is no obstacle. It is a formality.

Who seeks these approvals and who funds the officials granting them overlap to a degree that is hard to ignore. Chair Carrie Geitner’s campaigns have drawn money from the apex of the region’s development industry: roughly $12,900 from members of the Jenkins family tied to Nor’wood Development, the largest builder in Colorado Springs; about $7,900 from Doug Stimple and others associated with Classic Homes; $5,350 from the homebuilders’ political committee; thousands more from an entity called, with refreshing candor, Land Development Companies. Commissioner Cory Applegate, who made the motion to approve Flying Horse East, and Geitner, who voted for it, have each accepted contributions from people associated with Classic Homes, the builder behind the Flying Horse development. Commissioner Lauren Nelson, who seconded the motion, drew about 71% of her money, by our analysis, from development-industry donors in her last race. Holly Williams, the board’s longest-serving member, counts the developer-aligned Colorado Springs Forward among her donors.

None of this is illegal, and little of it is unusual. Developers give to candidates who share their instincts, and El Paso County’s commissioners are forthright about those instincts. They cast their votes as a defense of private property, not a favor to benefactors. “Smaller lots are not incompatible with the area; this is not ranchland,” Geitner said while approving one density increase. “Sometimes change is hard,” she remarked while clearing a contested RV park near Peyton over more than 140 written objections. The philosophy is sincere, consistent, and popular with the people who finance it. That the two align so neatly is precisely what makes the record worth publishing.

Three reliable yes votes are a majority of the five. If the pattern holds, the result is rarely in doubt.

One commissioner stands outside the pattern. Bill Wysong, who represents the Tri-Lakes communities of Monument, Palmer Lake and the county’s western edge, pledged during his campaign to accept no money from developers; none appears in state filings. He has voted no in all nine of the board’s contested land-use decisions — the lone dissenter in seven of them, joined by Williams only on the two electronic-billboard conversions. His no votes have struck digital billboards, a clutch of use variances, a subdivision with a single way in and out, and the homes beside Schriever. Wysong is no reflexive opponent of growth; he routinely approves ordinary rezonings, including in his own district. But he is, on the current board, the only commissioner who has been willing to vote no at all.

That distinction matters, because of simple arithmetic. Applegate, in office since January 2025, and Nelson, seated that summer, have never dissented on a land-use matter — 82 to nothing and 50 to nothing. Geitner has done so just twice in more than 330 votes. Three reliable yes votes are a majority of a five-member board, so if the pattern holds, nearly any proposal that reaches the commissioners has the votes to pass before the hearing begins; the suspense, such as it is, concerns the margin. Williams is term-limited and leaves in January 2027, opening the District 1 seat — but not the math, which does not depend on her.

The record is a pattern, not a confession, and it deserves the caveats. Campaign contributions are disclosed and lawful; state law caps each contributor, but not the combined total a family or a firm’s principals can give. Williams, who approves the overwhelming majority of what comes before her, has dissented four times in seven years and once recused herself outright, from a Black Forest development in 2022. Correlation is not causation, and none of the commissioners has been found to have traded a vote for a check. What the public record establishes is narrower and still significant: a board that approves what it votes on, financed in good part by the people whose projects it approves, with a single member who takes neither the money nor the outcome for granted.

Readers need not take our word for any of it. The Monument Independent has published the full vote tracker — every decision since 2021, with each commissioner’s vote, who moved it, and how the Planning Commission advised — alongside a projection tool that estimates how each commissioner is likely to vote on a pending project and flags when a party to that project has donated to them. We have also begun logging those predictions against the board’s actual votes, so the forecasts can be judged on their accuracy rather than ours.

The next test is already on the calendar. Dozens of major projects sit in the county’s development pipeline, from the GrandView Reserve community to a Lamar Advertising billboard rezoning to the metropolitan districts that quietly finance it all. The board will consider them in the months ahead. On the evidence of the past four and a half years, it is worth asking not whether they will be approved, but by how wide a margin — and who, if anyone, will vote no.

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Sources and further reading

This article is built from primary public records, compiled into The Monument Independent’s own tools: the land-use vote tracker (every BOCC decision since 2021), the vote predictor, and the accuracy scorecard.

• Voting records — El Paso County Board of County Commissioners agendas, minutes and voting details: agendasuite.org/iip/elpaso, including the Flying Horse East voting record (4–1, Aug. 28, 2025).
• Campaign finance — Colorado Secretary of State TRACER: tracer.sos.colorado.gov (search each commissioner’s committee).
• Pending projects — El Paso County development plan review (EDARP): epcdevplanreview.com.
• Contribution rules — Colorado Secretary of State, elections division: coloradosos.gov.
• News coverage — “El Paso County approves first step for up to 5,000 homes bordering Schriever,” Colorado Politics (Aug. 29, 2025); the Peyton RV-park approval, The Gazette (Jul. 2024); the Flying Horse North recusal, KRDO (Nov. 15, 2022).
• Contact the board — El Paso County BoCC / Clerk to the Board: bocc.elpasoco.com.

Methodology: we reconstructed every BOCC land-use decision that reached a final vote from November 2021 to June 2026 — 357 in all — from county agendas, minutes and voting records, and matched them against Colorado TRACER campaign-finance filings. The approve-or-deny disposition of every item was confirmed against the minutes of all 84 Land Use meetings since 2021; over that period the board denied two land-use applications and approved the rest. The count covers rezonings, subdivisions, plats, sketch and preliminary plans, variances, special uses and metropolitan-district service plans; it excludes items withdrawn, tabled or continued without a vote. Contributions are lawful and publicly disclosed; aggregate family or firm totals are sums across multiple legally distinct donors and election cycles, not single gifts. Each commissioner was given an opportunity to comment before publication.