Longmont sustainability board forwards zoning and open-space farming recommendations

Longmont’s Sustainability Advisory Board voted June 17 to send City Council two recommendations: one urging land-use code changes across multiple zoning districts and another proposing sustainability standards for the city’s open-space agriculture program, according to the board’s meeting packet.

The packet says the board approved the zoning recommendation 4-3, with Chair Robert Davidson, Jeff Gawrych and Ethan Augreen dissenting. It separately approved the open-space agriculture memo 5-0 with two abstentions from Davidson and Alec Solimeo.

The zoning memo asks Council to direct staff to draft “neighborly mixed use” districts, revisit the definition of “secondary uses” so essential-service businesses can operate within neighborhoods, and explore allowing limited industrial, retail and farming uses in all zoning districts, the memo says. The packet says board member Korkut Onaran presented the draft as a summary of earlier recommendations and that staff member Lisa Knoblauch helped with language for Council consideration.

A separate memo on open-space agriculture grew out of an Open Space staff presentation and a document Solimeo drafted with staff review, according to the packet. It proposes eight sustainability components for the next Open Space Master Plan update: soil-health measurement, lease accountability, climate and drought adaptation, watershed function, pollinator and biodiversity habitat, water bodies as living infrastructure, agricultural transition and local food production, and annual public reporting.

Both items remain recommendations, not city policy. Public city records reviewed for this story did not show either item on a completed City Council agenda, in approved minutes or in a council staff report as of June 18. Longmont’s City Council meetings page and agenda management portal are the city’s main public posting points for council agendas and packets.

That means the next verified step, if council members choose to act, would likely be staff work rather than immediate adoption. For the zoning item, the board is asking Council to consider directing staff to draft code changes. For open space, the board is asking Council to consider sustainability criteria as the master-plan update proceeds.

One part of the packet’s broader context remains current: Longmont is still under a Mild Drought Response. The city’s watering restrictions page and a city news release say the city is reducing water use by 10% at city-owned facilities and is asking, but not requiring, residents to cut use by about 10%. The city’s current 2026-2027 Water Supply and Water Shortage Implementation Plan updates the plan year cited in the board packet, but the mild-response rules described there remain materially consistent.

The recommendations could matter if they advance because one would reopen questions about where neighborhood-serving business, light industrial and agricultural uses fit in Longmont’s zoning code, while the other seeks to influence how the city measures sustainability on open-space farmland.