A developer wants Calhan to annex 96 acres for 467 homes, though under the town’s new water rule the land’s own supply covers about 62. If Calhan says no, the developer can go to El Paso County, as three Tri-Lakes projects did after their annexations failed; the commissioners approved all three.
Between 2014 and 2024 the Town of Calhan issued building permits for four new homes. The comprehensive plan it adopted in July 2025 made room for 450 more on a single field at the town’s northwest corner, and sketched how the water and sewer lines would reach them. The plan’s water page, in the copy the town posts on its website, carries a red stamp across its map: “PENDING TOWN WATER INFO.”
The field is now an application. Smith Land Development & Co., the company that has owned the land since 2002, has asked Calhan to annex 95.9989 acres along McClasky Road for a subdivision called North Tree, 467 single-family homes at five to the acre. The town’s water attorneys calculate that the groundwater beneath the land, measured the way Calhan now requires, would serve about 62 of them. The developer’s engineers say the town’s own wells have room for the rest. A town of 762 people is deciding a question that larger places in El Paso County have fought over for decades, and it is doing so mid-application, with an eligibility hearing set for Dec. 7.
The Tri-Lakes knows what happens when a town says no. In July 2023 Monument’s town council voted 2-5 against annexing Monument Ridge, 161 acres at Interstate 25 and County Line Road; in December 2024 the county commissioners approved homes on its eastern 60 acres, 4-0. After a church withdrew its bid to annex land on Ben Lomand Mountain into Palmer Lake in 2024, the commissioners rezoned 341 acres there for 2.5-acre lots. Buc-ee’s withdrew its Palmer Lake annexation in February and took its travel center to the county. By the Independent’s count, five projects have gone to the county since 2018 after an annexation failed or was withdrawn. The commissioners approved all four that reached a vote.
If Calhan turns North Tree down, the land stays in unincorporated El Paso County, and the developer can ask the commissioners instead. Smith Land and LGI were asked on Oct. 25 whether they would go to the county if Calhan declines.
What is proposed
The land is the northwest quarter of Section 2 north of the old Rock Island railroad: dry pasture between McClasky Road on the north, Eurich Road on the west and the town on the south and east. It is zoned A-35, the county’s 35-acre agricultural district, and the Assessor values it as 91.15 acres of “dry farm land.”
The general development plan shows 467 homes on lots of about 6,000 square feet, a park and a well site. Calhan’s code sets a single minimum lot of 7,500 square feet, so the homes would need a planned unit development, the zoning tool the town adopted in December 2025 for exactly this kind of application. The developer’s filings give the count three ways (467, 473 and 475) and the acreage four, which the town’s planner has flagged as inconsistent.
Annexation takes several steps. Calhan found the petition in “substantial compliance” with state law on Oct. 13, at the developer’s request, by voice vote; the mayor and five of the six trustees took part, Chester Barlow by Zoom, the town clerk says. That set the statutory eligibility hearing for 7 p.m. Monday, Dec. 7, at the VFW hall at 560 Colorado Ave. That hearing decides only whether the land can legally be annexed: whether it touches the town enough (48 percent of its edge does, against a one-sixth minimum) and shares a community of interest. The decision that matters comes after. Calhan’s procedure holds annexation until an annexation agreement, a water resources agreement and PUD zoning are in place, and the town’s project page says the board may still deny it “for any reason.”
Who is behind it
Smith Land was formed in April 2002, weeks before William and Sonya Vandergriff bought the land from the Balsick family for $250,000; the Assessor records it as an arm’s-length sale. Will Vandergriff signs for the company. The Gazette has described him as a Calhan-area contractor. Vandergriff Contractors, which shares Smith Land’s Calhan address, described itself on federal pandemic-loan applications as a highway, street and bridge builder in 2020 and a heavy and civil construction firm in 2021, with eight and nine jobs. He has appeared at the town’s meetings since 2024, when he offered to reimburse the town for its master plan “in return for a pre-annexation agreement.” Kimley-Horn is the developer’s engineer and planner; Fairfield and Woods, a Denver firm, is its water counsel.
The project reached Calhan through a consultant. The board’s April 2024 minutes record that Bill Caldwell of LOC Business Management “has been hired by Smith Land Development to develop a parcel north of Calhan”; in July he asked the board to lift its moratorium on annexations, citing $4.75 million in tap fees. Five weeks after his first appearance he filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, listing about $61,000 in assets and $4.8 million in debts, and was discharged that September. This September a federal judge ruled for him on creditors’ claims that a Utah debt should survive the bankruptcy. In 2020 a county file under the name of his company, LOC Legacy Ranch, proposed about 48 lots on 400 acres in Black Forest; it was canceled that August. The August 2025 title commitment names him as the seller’s agent. Caldwell was emailed questions on Oct. 25.
The developer may not be the builder. A title commitment dated Aug. 11, 2025, two weeks before the petition was filed, names LGI Homes–Colorado as the proposed buyer, with an owner’s policy of $19.6 million. That is the amount of insurance, which need not equal a price. LGI, a publicly traded builder of entry-level homes based in Texas, also commissioned the site’s environmental assessment in March 2024. The town’s page says Smith Land asked the board to sign its pre-annexation agreement partly “to help secure financial support for the potential project from prospective investors.” At the Oct. 22 hearing John Watts, a Calhan resident, asked whether Smith Land or LGI would build the homes. Vandergriff said the builders were “yet to be finalized.” One builder, he said, “has made some commitments” but has had “delays for market reasons in the Pikes Peak region.” He described LGI as a national builder that “has expressed interest in the area” and said it builds in Bennett and elsewhere on the Front Range. Smith Land and LGI were asked on Oct. 25 whether a sale is under contract.
LGI’s annual report describes the business. The company will “continue to focus primarily on entry-level homebuyers,” buys land “further away from urban centers than many other suburban communities,” and calls federal mortgage backing through the FHA and the USDA “particularly important” to its business. Vandergriff made the same pitch to the town’s planning committee in May 2025; its notes record him saying “these homes qualify for USDA funding – zero down and low fixed interest.” LGI also sells homes in bulk to large rental companies. Last year that was 737 homes, 15.7 percent of its closings; in the second quarter of this year it was 21.6 percent.
Smith Land has borrowed against the land. In March 2024 it gave deeds of trust to two companies, Granite View Holdings and BSP Holdings, which were released that May. A May 2024 deed of trust to Mike Hale secures $1.25 million, according to the title commitment, and no release has been recorded. A $50,000 loan from Oasis Financial in July 2025 was released this February. That month Smith Land signed a 36-page deed of trust to Windy Peak Investments, recorded in the same minute as one on Will Vandergriff’s own land. Smith Land was asked on Oct. 25 who its investors are.
How much water
Start with the demand. Kimley-Horn’s utility report puts the subdivision’s use at 120.7 acre-feet a year, counting each home at a quarter of an acre-foot (an acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons). The town’s water attorneys, Curtis, Justus & Zahedi, recalculated it at Calhan’s new standard of 0.35 acre-feet per home, plus irrigation, and got about 167.5. Moore Engineering, the town’s water consultant, wrote in a Sept. 11 letter that the full figure is not yet known, because the plan leaves the exact park acreage to be set later. It recommended that the developer identify the full demand; “otherwise, the adequacy of the water supply cannot be assessed.”
Then the supply that comes with the land. Calhan, like most of eastern El Paso County, drinks from the Denver Basin: stacked sandstone aquifers that refill little, if at all. Since 1973 state law has tied that water to the land above it and allocated it on a 100-year aquifer life, about one percent of the water beneath a property each year. (The Independent’s report on the aquifers under the Palmer Divide explains how that works.) The state’s estimate for this land, in an April 2024 evaluation the developer’s lawyers cite, is about 28.6 acre-feet a year from the Denver aquifer, 33.6 from the Arapahoe and 31.4 from the Laramie-Fox Hills. None of it has been quantified by the Colorado Ground Water Commission; the developer’s own water review calls it “inchoate.”
Calhan’s ordinance, adopted Aug. 10, cuts that further in two ways. It requires a 300-year supply, which divides the state’s figure by three. And the town’s attorneys exclude the Laramie-Fox Hills, the deepest aquifer, because of a conflict with the town’s own well rights in it, which predate the 1973 law. That law is Senate Bill 213. The town’s Laramie-Fox Hills right dates from 1954, and when the state approved a replacement well in 1989 it wrote that the permit “does not consider landownership or 100 year aquifer life” because the original permit came before the law. Moore’s letter explains the exclusion. About a quarter of the site lies inside the circle of land assigned to that old right, and any new application to pump the aquifer “could result in Calhan losing its pre-SB 213 water right status.” A well for the 8.3 acre-feet a year that would be left would be “uneconomical.” By the count of the town’s attorneys and Moore, what remains serves about 62 homes. (The developer’s own lawyer, applying the 300-year rule, put the land’s reliable supply at about 21.7 acre-feet a year, enough for 87 homes even at a quarter-acre-foot each.)
That leaves roughly 146 acre-feet a year to find, by the Independent’s calculation. The developer’s answer is the town’s wells. Calhan holds permits for 462 acre-feet a year from three Laramie-Fox Hills wells, plus alluvial rights in the Upper Big Sandy valley. Kimley-Horn’s report says the town uses about 80 acre-feet a year. It concludes that the town’s existing permits “are estimated to support more than 1,800 additional” homes, and that water “appears adequate.”
The town’s own engineers found less. Moore Engineering tested the wells in June. The alluvial well by the old railroad, permitted for 77 acre-feet a year and dug in 1888, had no pump installed, Kimley-Horn reported; under test it drew down to its intake in less than eight hours. Moore concluded the source “will not provide a reliable water supply for the Town.” Of the two deep wells it tested, one meets its permit and the other, built in 1992, cannot. Together they “can produce in the range of 200 to 225 ac-ft/yr in their current condition,” or 250 to 275 counting a third well Moore did not test. Moore warned that the wells’ condition “could result in a loss of production over time” and that “the proposed current annexation will put more pressure on these wells.” In September Moore added that the existing capacity of the town’s Laramie-Fox Hills wells “currently appears to be sufficient to meet initial residential demands at North Tree,” though fully serving it would likely take upgrades and possibly a new well. The 1,800-home figure counts every permit at full value, including the well with no pump. On the developer’s own numbers for what the wells actually produce today, the spare capacity serves about 680 homes at a quarter-acre-foot each, or about 490 at the town’s 0.35. The town’s engineers put it lower. Moore’s infrastructure report, presented to the trustees on Oct. 29, says that after about $600,000 of work on the three wells the town “may be able to serve approximately 250 to 300” of North Tree’s homes, and that the plan “cannot be served solely with existing Town Laramie-Fox Hills aquifer wells”; at least one new well, at about $1.86 million, would be needed.
So on paper the town has water to spare. The dispute is over whether the developer may count it. In an Aug. 3 letter, the developer’s lawyer, Eric Trout, urged the town to use the state’s 100-year standard and a quarter-acre-foot per home. A heading in his letter calls the 300-year rule a county standard that does not govern the town. He offered to pay $1,500 per acre-foot of shortfall in lieu of water. He wrote that the town’s wells “can already produce in their current condition (approximately 325 acre-feet per year),” citing Moore’s June report. Kimley-Horn repeated the figure in an Aug. 7 response to the town’s attorneys, writing that a Moore evaluation “indicates that approximately 325 acre-feet of annual water supply is available from the existing three wells.” Neither Moore’s June report nor its Sept. 11 letter, which the town provided on Oct. 28, contains that figure. The town’s attorneys wrote on Sept. 11 that the developer’s reading of Moore’s report “may not be an accurate interpretation,” citing “infrastructure and other limitations,” and that the developer “cannot rely on the Town’s water supply.” Smith Land and HR Green were asked on Oct. 25 where the figure comes from.
The town’s attorneys replied in a memo in the board’s Aug. 10 packet. Calhan sits in a designated groundwater basin, where the statute he cited does not apply, they wrote, and the town alone decides whether a supply is adequate. Colorado Springs, Fountain and Monument, they wrote, use a 100-year standard “against diversified renewable portfolios Calhan lacks.” For Monument that is accurate. The town’s code defers to its water districts’ standards, and Triview Metropolitan District, which supplies part of the town, counts its groundwater on a 100-year life; its June 2025 summary of its water rights says river water it has bought on Fountain Creek and the Arkansas can now meet “upwards of 80%” of its demand. Bennett, the attorneys noted, pairs a 100-year rule with a fee of $78,500 per acre-foot. In September they recommended “expressly rejecting” the $1,500 rate, which the town had not accepted.
The same Sept. 11 letter, which the town provided on Oct. 28, lists five “critical deficiencies.” Besides the 62 homes, title to the water rights is unresolved, the developer has proposed no plan to conserve or reuse water, the irrigation and park water demand has not been quantified, and no well site has been identified. The town requires one of at least 1.5 acres; the one shown on the development plan is smaller, the town planner’s Oct. 22 staff report says. The attorneys also wrote that the town’s existing water system “can serve approximately 71 homes,” and that anything beyond that needs improvements “at the Applicant’s expense.”
The Upper Big Sandy Ground Water Management District, which manages groundwater in the basin under the town, told Calhan in September that its concerns “have not been addressed.” A water-rights determination, a groundwater consent agreement and a water model were all still to come, and the district “strongly encourages the Town not to proceed with annexation” until they are done. In an Aug. 17 response to the district, the developer’s engineer wrote that the applicant would “continue working collaboratively” with it. “Neither the developer, nor its engineer, nor anyone else representing the developer, has contacted the District,” the district’s lawyer wrote.
The board adopted the 300-year rule 4-3. Trustees Mark McCrary, Steve McCrary and Byron Wall and Mayor Melvin Fields voted for it; Chester Barlow, Jimmy Cochran and Dustin Geist voted against. The rule can be waived. Section 14.11.110 of the town code lets the board “substitute or waive any conditions or requirements” for a development whose “exceptional nature” warrants it, citing examples such as open space or “significant primary employment generation.” Another section lets it extend water service before the water is dedicated when matters are “pending resolution.”
Water may not be the binding limit anyway. Calhan treats its sewage in lagoons permitted for 80,000 gallons a day, and last year they peaked at 78 percent of that. Under state rules, as the developer’s engineers describe them, a town must start planning an expansion at 80 percent and schedule construction at 95. By Kimley-Horn’s own calculation, that means about seven homes before planning must begin and 67 before construction must. Moore is now helping the town seek state loan money for the plant. The town’s draft 2027 budget carries no construction for it. Moore’s October report recommends replacing the lagoons with a mechanical plant for 200,000 gallons a day, at about $6.73 million, because expanding them would fall short of North Tree’s flows and could not meet stricter state limits that take effect in March 2029 without added treatment.
The town’s planner
Calhan has no planning staff. HR Green, a national engineering and planning firm, does the work under contract. It wrote the comprehensive plan that anticipated 450 homes on this site. It now reviews North Tree against that plan as the town’s contract planner, writing both rounds of referral letters and the staff report that went to the board on Oct. 13. Its engineers did the third-party review. HR Green’s monthly reports say its hours on the application “are billed to the Town but are reimbursed by private applicant escrow fees.” The developer pays for the review. The town’s escrow ledger for North Tree, which the town clerk provided on Oct. 27, shows $292,364 billed to Smith Land from August 2025 through September 2026. Moore Engineering’s work accounts for $117,379 of that and the town’s water attorneys for $63,906; HR Green’s share is $45,836. Smith Land has paid every bill except the latest, $42,665, sent Oct. 19.
HR Green has held the job since the spring of 2024. That April the board said it wanted to “research other companies before making a decision.” In May it approved a master agreement and “the planning services contract” without naming the firm or a price; HR Green’s name first appears in the minutes in June, and in July the board approved its proposal for the plan. The minutes from January 2023 through the hire record no request for proposals or competing bids for the work. The same minutes show the town taking bids for paving, sewer-pond liners, a backhoe and an engineering contract for sidewalks. The April 2024 workshop at which the board planned to discuss the hire has no posted minutes.
The Independent found no record of HR Green working for Smith Land, the Vandergriffs, LGI or Kimley-Horn. It has reviewed their work for other governments: LGI’s water and sewer plans for a subdivision in Cleveland, Texas, in 2019 and 2020, and Kimley-Horn applications for El Paso County in 2022 and for Denton, Texas, in 2023.
The firm bills by the hour. Its monthly reports to the board put the town’s planning time at $155 an hour in December 2025 and $165 in January 2026, the last month for which they list hours. The same reports describe an on-call contract with a monthly budget of “up to $15,000” and an annual budget marked “Not Defined.” At $165 an hour, that monthly ceiling would buy about 91 hours. In January a motion to have the planner report directly to the board died for lack of a second, and the board said it would “check each month and figure out contract details.”
HR Green’s invoices on the town’s monthly payment lists came to $161,867 in 2025. About two-thirds of that, $105,496, was for the comprehensive plan. Annexation invoices dated September and October, when HR Green was reviewing North Tree’s first submittal, came to $21,591; a drainage project, routine planning and code drafting made up the rest. This year’s lists, through the one in the Oct. 13 packet, add $51,263, about $35,600 of it for annexation work.
Two invoices on the Oct. 13 list, numbered 207506 and 207532, are each for $6,022.50 and both dated Sept. 15. They are separate bills from two HR Green projects for the town, according to the invoices the town clerk provided: one covers 36.5 hours of the planner’s time in August, 34 of them on annexations, and the other 25.75 hours of engineering plan review on North Tree by four HR Green engineers. The clerk says she noticed the matching totals too and asked HR Green for the details. Smith Land reimbursed both.
The town’s budget does not name the firm. Its planning costs are charged to a general-fund line for engineering and consulting, and by the Independent’s comparison nearly every charge to that line in 2025 matches an HR Green invoice to the cent. The board budgeted $100,000 for the line that year and spent $154,865. When it approved HR Green’s proposal for the plan in July 2024, the minutes record: “We have money to budget 100,000 this year and will have to budget $50,000 in 2025.” The plan’s 2025 invoices alone came to more than twice the second figure. The town’s 2024 audit attributed a $73,747 fall in its combined fund balances “in large part to the master plan project.”
For 2026 the line started small. The October draft budget put it at $20,000 and the December draft at $30,000. At the Dec. 8 budget hearing, the minutes record a suggestion to lease the police car instead and “move money to planner”; the budget the town adopted on Dec. 11 carries $55,185. By the end of August the town had spent $41,512, and its own estimate for the year is $62,267. The draft budget for 2027 sets aside $35,000.
HR Green’s plan sets a stricter test than the code it advises on. The plan says annexation requires the board to find the land’s use “in full compliance” with the plan. The code asks only that annexation be “compatible with the goals and intents” of the plan. The plan’s future land use map shows the North Tree land as residential, with a potential commercial strip along McClasky Road and a park.
The neighbors
The annexation plat names the land around the site. To the north, across McClasky Road, is about 1,250 acres held by Adam M. Balsick, and a six-acre parcel at 27990 McClasky Road owned, county records show, by Bailey R. and Garrett M. Balsick. The same four Balsicks (Adam, Kristin, Bailey and Garrett) jointly hold Ground Water Commission determinations, granted in February 2024, for the Denver, Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills water under land north of the road. The Balsicks sold the North Tree land to the Vandergriffs in 2002.
Garrett Balsick, who co-owns that six-acre parcel and shares in those water determinations, has been a frequent guest at the town’s meetings since 2023 and has pressed the board on water. The minutes of Nov. 10, 2025 record him asking the board to change the water-life requirement to 300 years “as El Paso does”; those of Aug. 10 record that he “encouraged the Town to look at the McClaskey Road corridor and what the town wants.”
He has also organized opposition. On the night of the Oct. 22 hearing he urged members of the Falcon Community Forum, a Facebook group of about 14,000, to email the trustees and the town clerk, and offered “a generalized email” they could forward. Before the hearing he had posted 16 questions in the same group. One concerned his own land: when the planned retention pond drains, he wrote, “it will make my entire hayfield a bog.” Moore’s October report says the development’s runoff volume “will increase” and, if not managed, “may exacerbate existing drainage and flooding concerns in downstream areas”; the plan puts its pond beside a culvert under McClasky Road whose north end opens onto Balsick land.
To the east, inside town limits, are two blocks owned by Isela Gonzalez. Kimley-Horn’s 2024 site plan drew the subdivision’s stormwater pond, 559 feet long, on her land, and the town asked for her written consent. The town’s planner wrote in September that the question “may be resolved by removing off-site stormwater improvements there.” At the Oct. 22 committee hearing, according to The Fence Line Files, an independent news page on Facebook run from Yoder by MaryAnna Clemons, who was in the room, Gonzalez said Vandergriff had offered her about $1,000 an acre for her land. Smith Land was asked on Oct. 25 about the offer.
Beside her land is Lot 1 of the Baysinger Subdivision, 800 Third St., which the plat lists as an adjoining property. County records list its owners as Melvin and Amber Fields; Melvin Fields is Calhan’s mayor. The Independent found no disclosure by him on North Tree in the board’s minutes since 2023. State law requires a member of a town board who has “a personal or private interest in any matter proposed or pending” to disclose it and not vote; whether an adjoining lot is such an interest is a legal question the statute does not answer directly. Fields voted for the pre-annexation agreement in 2025. In August, with the trustees split 3-3, his vote carried the stricter water rule the developer opposed. Fields was asked about it on Oct. 25; his answer will be added when it arrives.
What people said
Most of the written comment has been critical. Of the 13 emails the town received in the first round of review, 12 were critical; the 13th, from a trustee, asked the board to answer the others publicly.
Clemons, a former editor of the Ranchland News, covered the Oct. 22 hearing for The Fence Line Files. She counted 50 to 60 people and saw no one there from other local news outlets. Her report carried nine minutes of video, and she shared about 18 minutes more, in eight clips, with the Independent. The town recorded the meeting, audio only, the clerk says. Most of what was recorded on video is public comment, and most of the comment was critical of the project as drawn. Michael Gates, the Calhan Fire Protection District’s fire marshal, told the committee that “the current concept is not within our requirements” and that “it is way off.” He also said annexation changes nothing about the district’s review, which applies in the town or the county, and that his dealings on the project had been with the town’s planner and had covered the annexation only. The district’s written comment in September raised “no comments, concerns, or objections” to the annexation itself.
Gates explained the difference in an email on Oct. 29. The September comment covered annexation only, he wrote, and “having no objection to annexation does not mean the proposed development concept meets the adopted fire code. Those are two separate considerations.” Under the 2021 International Fire Code, which the district has adopted, the plan would have to show enough water, for long enough, to fight a fire among closely spaced homes, which may mean a hydrant system. Its streets would have to work for fire engines: at least 20 feet clear, no parking on streets narrower than 26 feet, parking on both sides only at 32 feet or more, turnarounds on dead ends longer than 150 feet and, for several hundred homes, possibly a second way in. A first concept, he wrote, is like a first budget: it shows the most one could hope for, and adjustments usually follow. His comments “were not intended as opposition to annexation or development,” but the concept “will need to demonstrate compliance with our adopted fire code before it can be approved.” Moore’s October report, reviewing a Kimley-Horn model of the town’s pipes, finds that North Tree’s own hydrants could deliver 1,500 gallons a minute through two new 8-inch connections, while 10 hydrants already in town cannot.
Peggy Hampton, who lives on Denver or Golden Street (she named both), said traffic from McClasky Road would cut through on her street, which has been “a washboard road” for six years and “cannot handle any more traffic than it already has.” She asked the board to keep the 7,500-square-foot minimum lot, so that no one could “jump rooftop to rooftop.” A man who said he works in affordable housing in Pueblo told the committee to “Dial it back” and “Build better homes.” Shannon Butler, who owns the Calhan Feed Store, told the committee that Calhan should not become a bedroom community for Colorado Springs, The Fence Line Files reported, and questioned calling homes at $300,000 to $400,000 affordable. Another commenter said “this is not a fire sale” and “this does not need to go fast,” and asked, “Why annex when there’s still questions?” He urged the committee to “lock it down” before annexing, because annexed land is often sold on to other developers.
Much of the questioning was about order. HR Green’s planner told the room that annexation brings the land into the town and that zoning follows; North Tree would come through a planned-unit-development application whose review, he said, is “just as rigorous, if not more so.” “Nothing just happens like that,” he said. Watts asked whether the land could be annexed before that zoning was in place. The planner said it could, and that the sewer pond and road widths could change afterward; a change in lot size would need the board’s approval, and whatever is written into the annexation agreement “gets locked in.” HR Green’s report to the committee says staff will bring back annexation-agreement issues, “including the sequencing of PUD zoning with annexation.” Another told the committee it could approve the annexation and the subdivision plan together. “You will lose your leverage if you annex it,” he said.
The developer’s side has made its case at board meetings. In May 2025 Vandergriff told the board the town needed “re-population” and handed out its population history; the school superintendent replied that the district was “not in fear of closing” and was “poised for growth.” In August Kimley-Horn’s representatives argued for the 100-year rule. Vandergriff said the company supports the town’s plan, is offering entry-level homes and would work with the town on wastewater.
If the town says no
The land would stay A-35 in unincorporated El Paso County. Homes there would need the county’s rezoning and subdivision approvals, a finding that the water would last 300 years, and a water and sewer provider; Calhan’s code makes the town the exclusive provider inside its limits. County Parks has said that a non-annexed version would owe regional and urban park fees that annexation avoids.
What happens next
Moore Engineering presented its infrastructure report to the trustees at a workshop on Oct. 29, and the town posted it the next day, saying that discussion of a water fee in lieu will follow and that “no decisions have been made.” The Independent’s report on Moore’s findings lists the work, the estimated costs and who would pay. Calhan must prepare an annexation impact report by Nov. 12 and file it with the county by Nov. 17. As of September the county’s copy was a placeholder reading “NEED REPORT.” El Paso County said on Oct. 27 that it had not yet received the report. The committee did as its planner recommended and continued the Oct. 22 hearing to 6 p.m. Nov. 19 at the VFW hall, the town clerk says; its findings are due to the trustees by Nov. 22. Balsick wrote that night that emails, calls and letters received until Nov. 19 “will be recorded and read and will be part of the public record,” and asked residents to attend on Nov. 19 and Dec. 7. The eligibility hearing is Dec. 7.
The plan’s water page still says “PENDING TOWN WATER INFO.”
Who the Independent asked
Updated Oct. 27, 2026, at 1:02, 1:08 and 2:27 p.m.: adds the town clerk’s answers, the town’s escrow ledger for North Tree, HR Green’s backup for two invoices and El Paso County’s answer on the impact report. An earlier version said one of two $6,022.50 HR Green invoices was likely a duplicate; they are separate bills, one for the town’s planner and one for HR Green’s engineers, both reimbursed by Smith Land.
Updated Oct. 28, 2026, at 12:31, 12:37 and 1:35 p.m.: adds Moore Engineering’s Sept. 11 water letter, the town water attorneys’ Sept. 11 letter and the Upper Big Sandy Ground Water Management District’s Sept. 11 letter, which the town provided on Oct. 28. An earlier version said the town’s attorneys had “expressly rejected” the developer’s $1,500-per-acre-foot offer; their letter recommends rejecting it and says the town had not accepted it. An earlier version of the Methodology suggested that the 65 acre-feet behind the 62-home figure might have come from the Arapahoe and Laramie-Fox Hills aquifers. Moore’s letter shows it is the Denver and Arapahoe, using the state’s Aquifer Determination Tool rather than the April 2024 estimates.
Updated Oct. 29, 2026, at 8:29 p.m.: names the fire marshal, Michael Gates, and adds his explanation of the fire district’s position.
Updated Oct. 30, 2026, at 6:30 and 7:55 p.m.: adds findings from Moore Engineering’s infrastructure report, presented to the trustees on Oct. 29, on the wells, the sewer plant, hydrants and runoff, and links to the Independent’s report on it.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: If the City Says No, Try the County · The Water Under the Palmer Divide
Town of Calhan: North Tree project page · Comprehensive Plan 2035 (July 2025) · Municipal Code chs. 14 (art. 11) and 15 (arts. 11, 13) · Board of Trustees agendas, packets and minutes, 2023–2026 · Resolution 2026-14 and staff report (Oct. 13, 2026) · Planning and Development Committee agenda and staff report (Oct. 22, 2026) · Payment Approval Reports and monthly budget comparisons, Feb. 2025–Oct. 2026 · HR Green monthly planning activity and billing reports, Dec. 2025–Sept. 2026 · Budget drafts for 2026 (Oct. 6 and Dec. 2, 2025) and 2027 (Sept. 29, 2026) · 2024 audit · Round 1 and Round 2 referral review letters (Oct. 16, 2025; Sept. 16, 2026) · Escrow ledger for the North Tree annexation (provided by the town clerk, Oct. 27, 2026) · Moore Engineering (Lytle Water Solutions), review of water supply availability vs. water demand for the North Tree annexation (Sept. 11, 2026), and Upper Big Sandy Ground Water Management District, Round 2 comment letter (Sept. 11, 2026), both provided by the town clerk, Oct. 28, 2026 · Curtis, Justus & Zahedi, Round 2 referral comments on the North Tree annexation (Sept. 11, 2026), with Exhibits A–F, provided by the town clerk, Oct. 28, 2026 · Moore Engineering, Infrastructure Capacity Assessment for Proposed Annexation (October 2026, posted Oct. 30, 2026) · Kimley-Horn, response to the town water attorney’s review (Aug. 7, 2026) · Michael Gates, fire marshal, Calhan Fire Protection District, email to the Independent (Oct. 29, 2026) · Town clerk’s answers to the Independent’s questions, with HR Green invoices 207506 and 207532 and their transaction detail (Oct. 27, 2026)
Water: Moore Engineering / Lytle Water Solutions, well testing and water supply evaluation (June 22, 2026) · Curtis, Justus & Zahedi memo (May 22, 2026) and response to Fairfield and Woods (Aug. 10, 2026) · Fairfield and Woods groundwater review (Feb. 25, 2026) and letter (Aug. 3, 2026) · Kimley-Horn water resources and sanitary sewer report (Aug. 7, 2026)
El Paso County: Land Development Code § 8.4.7, water supply standards · EDARP file ANX257 (annexation plat, general development plan, title commitment, traffic study, Phase I environmental site assessment, county referral letters) · Assessor and GIS parcel records
Courts and county files: U.S. Bankruptcy Court, D. Colo., In re William Harrison Caldwell II, No. 24-12634, and PLR, L.L.C. v. Caldwell, Adv. No. 25-01003, memorandum opinion (Sept. 2, 2026) · El Paso County planning files EA2056 (2020) and PPR2310 (2023)
El Paso County Clerk and Recorder: index of instruments for Smith Land Development & Co. and William B. Vandergriff, 2024–2026
LGI Homes and Vandergriff Contractors: LGI Homes, Inc., Form 10-K for 2025 (filed Feb. 20, 2026) and Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 · Small Business Administration, Paycheck Protection Program loan data · Calhan Planning and Development Committee notes, May 1, 2025
HR Green elsewhere: City of Cleveland, Texas, council minutes (Dec. 15, 2020) · El Paso County EDARP file PPR2217 (2022) · City of Denton, Texas, traffic study TIA 23-0011 approval (Nov. 8, 2023)
Tri-Lakes: Triview Metropolitan District, Summary of Legal Water Entitlements (June 20, 2025) and inclusion agreement form (Res. 2024-11) · Town of Monument Municipal Code ch. 18.02
The Oct. 22 hearing: The Fence Line Files, report and video on the Oct. 22 committee hearing (MaryAnna Clemons, Oct. 25, 2026) · MaryAnna Clemons, eight further video clips and photographs of the hearing, shared with the Independent
Social media: Garrett Balsick, two posts in the Falcon Community Forum (Facebook), Oct. 22, 2026
State: Colorado Division of Water Resources well permit and determination records, including the file for the town’s Laramie-Fox Hills well (permits 9691-F, 9691-F-R, 9691-FP) · C.R.S. 37-90-107 · Ground Water Commission Designated Basin Rules (2 CCR 410-1) · C.R.S. 31-12 (annexation) and 24-18-109 · Calhan Chamber of Commerce v. Town of Calhan, 166 P.3d 200 (Colo. App. 2007)
Methodology
The Independent read the town’s comprehensive plan (318 pages), the water reports and letters, the county’s annexation file and every board packet from February 2025 to October 2026 in full. Some of that reading was done with AI assistance, and every figure used here was checked against the page it came from.
Water figures are the documents’ own except where marked as the Independent’s own calculation. The 62 homes come from Moore Engineering’s Sept. 11 letter: using the state’s online Aquifer Determination Tool, Moore estimates the land’s Denver and Arapahoe water at 29.6 and 35.4 acre-feet a year over 100 years, or 21.7 a year at 300 years, which at 0.35 acre-feet a home serves about 62 homes. Those estimates are slightly higher than the April 2024 figures the developer’s lawyers cite. The “about 146 acre-feet” shortfall is 167.5 minus 21.7. Moore’s October report gives 134.8, because it counts the Laramie-Fox Hills water that its own analysis says may be impractical to develop. The 680- and 490-home figures take Kimley-Horn’s 250 acre-feet of current well capacity, subtract its estimate of 80 acre-feet of current town use, and divide by 0.25 and 0.35. Kimley-Horn does not source the 80-acre-foot figure, and the Independent has not confirmed it.
HR Green figures are from the town’s monthly Payment Approval Reports (vendor 9204), February 2025 to October 2026, read on the page images; they are invoices approved for payment, grouped by the meeting that approved them, so the 2026 total includes a December 2025 invoice. The packets posted online begin in February 2025, and 2024 payments are not itemized in them. The comparison of the engineering and consulting line with HR Green’s invoices is the Independent’s: in 2025 one $4,300 charge in September is not HR Green’s, and HR Green’s drainage invoices are charged to another line. Hourly rates are from the tracking logs in HR Green’s December 2025 and January 2026 reports. The likely duplicate comes from comparing the town’s list with HR Green’s own year-to-date figures: $36,545.00 billed through September, less $21,506.25 through June and the July and September invoices, leaves room for one $6,022.50 bill in August.
Caldwell’s bankruptcy is In re William Harrison Caldwell II (U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Colorado, No. 24-12634), with the creditors’ case decided Sept. 2, 2026. The Independent ties it to the Bill Caldwell of the town’s minutes through his bankruptcy schedules, which list LOC Business Management and LOC Legacy Ranch as his, and a 2023 county planning file signed “LOC Legacy Ranch LLC/William H. Caldwell” with the same phone number and email address as the North Tree title commitment. Deeds of trust are from the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder’s online index, which shows parties and dates but not amounts; the amounts given come from the August 2025 title commitment. LGI’s figures are from its annual report for 2025 and its quarterly report for the second quarter of 2026. Vandergriff Contractors’ descriptions are from the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program loan data.
The developer’s payments are from the town’s escrow ledger for North Tree, a spreadsheet the town clerk provided on Oct. 27; its vendor lines add up to its billing totals, $292,363.97 through September 2026.
Garrett Balsick’s words come from his two Oct. 22 posts in the Falcon Community Forum, a Facebook group, read by the Independent on Oct. 25. The search for past HR Green work for or with the developer, its builder and engineers covered El Paso County’s development files, HR Green’s own site, and city, county and court records found by web search in Colorado, Texas and other states where both firms work; it is not a search of every record. Quotations from the Oct. 22 hearing come from eight video clips, about 18 minutes in all, recorded by MaryAnna Clemons of The Fence Line Files, and from the nine minutes of video she posted there; neither is the whole meeting. Comments that are not on the clips, Shannon Butler’s and Isela Gonzalez’s among them, are as The Fence Line Files reported them. The Independent transcribed the clips by automatic speech recognition, twice, with two different models, and used only words both transcripts agree on. Machine transcription misrenders names and carries no speaker labels; speakers were identified from the video, the fire-district speaker as he identified himself, and commenters whose names could not be confirmed are not named.
The town’s Laramie-Fox Hills well history comes from the state’s well-permit file for permits 9691-F, 9691-F-R and 9691-FP; the 1989 permit language was read on the scanned page. The attorneys’ Monument comparison was checked against Triview’s June 2025 water-rights summary, its inclusion agreement form and Monument’s subdivision code; their Colorado Springs, Fountain and Bennett figures were not independently checked.
The map uses El Paso County’s parcel and owner layers and the annexation plat’s list of adjoining owners; parcel lines are approximate.
Using this reporting? Credit The Monument Independent and link to this article: https://monumentindependent.com/government/north-tree-annexation-calhan-water/. Our guidelines are at Using Our Reporting.
