The effort to provide affordable housing to about 60 families displaced by the September 2013 flood has turned into a fractious problem.
The latest effort, a plan for Habitat for Humanity-built homes, foundered last week when the Lyons Board of Trustees voted down a resolution that would have made the project financially viable.
That followed a March special election in which the town’s voters rejected, by a 55-45 margin, a plan that would have dedicated a slice of Bohn Park as the site of a 66-unit affordable housing project.
After Wednesday’s vote, two members of the housing committee that proposed the plan, Valley Bank project developer Craig Ferguson and Thomas Delker, resigned.
“I resigned because I felt like this was a project that would help the town heal from the flood and from our last very divisive vote on Bohn Park,” Delker said. “I felt like everybody could get behind this.”
The proposal would have had Habitat for Humanity of the St. Vrain Valley build six homes on a ¾-acre lot, the vacant former home to Valley Bank & Trust.
The six homes would have been sold to displaced Lyons residents at $150,000, less than half the current median home price in town.
Lyons has one of the state’s costliest average tap fees — which cover the price of connecting a home or business to public sewer and water systems — at about $45,000 a property.
The resolution before the trustees last week proposed charging Habitat for Humanity a flat fee of $7,000 per unit in lieu of the typical tap fee rate.
“We didn’t have sufficient information to make an informed decision with using taxpayer dollars,” Mayor John O’Brien said.
“We didn’t have complete information on the extent of the project, the cost of the project and exactly what was required by Habitat for Humanity to move forward,” O’Brien said.
