On November 21, 2024, during public comment at the El Paso County Planning Commission hearing on the Monument Ridge East rezoning, Monument Mayor Pro Tem Steve King made this profound statement:
“Property rights are the rights that you have today, not the rights that you want in the future. That’s a wish. And when you grant somebody property rights that are in excess of what they have right now, what you’re doing is in effect taking the property right from the adjacent property owners who have the right to peaceful enjoyment.”
Northern El Paso County was built on that understanding. Across the Tri-Lakes region, much of the zoning has remained in place for generations, some of it since the 1940s. Families bought homes and invested their lives here relying on those designations because zoning is a promise about the character of a place and the expectations that come with it.
Hearing after hearing, the question is no longer simply whether a proposal fits its surroundings. Increasingly, the surroundings are reinterpreted until the proposal appears to fit. The landscape has not changed. Only the description of it has.
At the August 20, 2025, Palmer Lake Planning Commission hearing, Buc-ee’s consultants described our corridor as “already disturbed” and “compromised or impaired,” arguing that those conditions justified placing a Buc-ee’s atop Monument Hill. At the June 18, 2026, El Paso County Planning Commission hearing on the MA Infrastructure rezoning, Monument Academy Charter School was presented as evidence that the rural character around Walker Road and Highway 83 had already been lost.
The Master Plan is made to say what it does not say, turning possibility into obligation. A designation of where growth could occur becomes an argument that it must be developed now. Then the argument shifts again. Residents are told that current zoning could allow something even more intense, as though that alone should make the proposal acceptable. And when all else fails, there is inevitability: it is coming anyway.
That June 18 hearing ended with the El Paso County Planning Commission voting 6 to 1 to recommend denial of the MA rezoning, which would rezone five-acre rural residential land to RM-12 and RM-30, densities the county’s own staff report describes as significantly higher than surrounding densities in all directions. The lone vote in favor came from Tom Bailey, the commissioner the Board of County Commissioners reappointed this spring over public objection. Explaining his support, he called the compatibility criteria “the most subjective of all of this” and said everything depends on “how wide are you going to make your look.” That is the key, handed to us by a sitting commissioner.
Widen the aperture far enough and a thirty-unit-per-acre apartment complex sits comfortably among five-acre residential properties. Widen it further and a 74,000-square-foot travel center can ask to be classified as a neighborhood convenience store. The criteria we are told to trust are stretched to accommodate whatever is being proposed.
Craig Dossey led El Paso County Planning and Community Development from 2015 to 2022. He authored the 2017 code amendment that expanded administrative authority and oversaw the 2021 Master Plan. After leaving county government, he founded Vertex Consulting and has represented Monument Ridge East, MA Infrastructure, and Buc-ee’s within the framework he helped write.
Residents get three minutes. Consultants present for hours, call expert witnesses, and close with a rebuttal. The final word belongs to the applicant. Yet, in those three-minute snippets, neighbors describe the place where they live, not as an abstract land-use designation, but through winters on Monument Hill, school traffic, wells, wildlife, and the daily journeys that knit the Tri-Lakes together.
Three weeks after that November hearing, on December 12, 2024, Steve King stood before the Board of County Commissioners opposing the Monument Ridge East zoning change:
“People feel defeated in the process, feel unrepresented, and have thrown in the towel. We ask for community engagement, and when they show up, they feel the deck is stacked.”
Just hours later, the Palmer Lake Board of Trustees held the Buc-ee’s annexation eligibility hearing for the property at I-25 and County Line Road.
The people of Walden held the map to the land. On July 23, the rest of us must do the same. The entire Tri-Lakes community should stand together, united by a love of place, and fill Centennial Hall. This is about far more than one rezoning. It is about whether our maps continue to describe the places we love or become tools for redefining them.
Laurel Schow
Woodmoor, CO
Both zoning and ‘master plans’ are government intrusions on property rights.
They have no special meaning other than what the ‘planners’ wanted to do — nearly always without any consent or input from the people.