... Boulder County House Concerts Regulations Updates ... For more articles and complete details check out: http://www.aspenmeadowshc.org "Sustainable World Music for a Fast-Paced World" In support of the Aspen Meadows House Concerts (www.aspenmeadowshc.org) series, The Duhks will play two nights at the Nederland, Colorado LEED-certified Community Center theater. Performances 7 PM on both Tuesday and Wednesday 30 April 2008 will help reimburse the house concert hosts Debbie and Greg Ching who have spent over $25,000 defending the right to have quiet private living room house concerts preceded by a potluck. Proceeds will also benefit The Duhks Sustainability Project (www.greenduhks.com) which was launched in October 2007 to raise awareness about ways to live a more economically viable and ecologically sustainable lifestyle. The Chings had not received any noise, traffic, or parking complaints before Boulder County Land Use sent a cease-and-desist order in July 2006. Rather than concede or sue Boulder County, the Chings tried to get the law changed. Boulder County agreed on 13 March 2008 to legitimize these community-building events with a precedent-setting Land Use Code revision hopefully complete by this post Earth Day celebration. Both performance nights will include a mini Sustainability exhibition and silent auction. Selected live recordings from this concert will also be available for CD-quality download via FestivaLink.net. This concert will include new material from their next album (anticipated release date July 2008). This intimate theater seats only 261 people. $25 general admission tickets for this benefit will be sold through www.greenduhks.com . No service charges. Reservations for The Duhks show at the Nederland Community Center can be made for Tuesday 29 April 2008: http://ectores.luisys.com/make_res.php?event_id=279 Wednesday 30 April 2008: http://ectores.luisys.com/make_res.php?event_id=280 VIP packages and single tickets can be purchased via http://greenduhks.com/index.php?page=shop&display=Benefit_Concerts March 26, 2008 - npr news report: http://www.krcc.org/krccnews/2008/03/house_concerts.php March 18, 2008 - editorial: http://dailycamera.com/news/ 2008/mar/ 18/play-away/ March 13, 2008 (exerpts of an e-mail from Greg Ching) "Anyway, we "won" tonight. On principle, we're unhappy that political fund raisers, charity events, and private parties can take place more often with fewer restrictions. But we're satisfied by this compromise...it's a vindication of what we've done and allows us to basically operate as we've done all these past years. The County Commissioners apologized to me afterwards. They said that if they had been able to intercept Land Use's cease-and-desist letter they would have done that. They never intended Land Use to shut down house concerts. The Commissioners have asked if I'll apply for the Planning Board...maybe I should make more lemonade from the lemons. Although the Commissioners were unanimous in supporting house concerts, the vote was not unanimous. It was 2-1 with one Commissioner opposing saying he thought the regulation was too much...he wanted to only change the definition of commercial activity (our preference) to exclude home events such as house concerts. So, was definitely on our side!... Here's the Daily Camera article: http://dailycamera.com/news/2008/mar/14/county-oks-house-concerts/ Folks, let's not forget Cindy Harris's on-going case in Pennsylvania...be sure to support her as much as possible! Check out: http://livingroommusic.googlepages.com/ ... ...Thanks again to all of you who wrote letters of support. I believe it made a difference.... The best thing you all could do to help now is to get the word out about the post Earth Day Duhks benefit concerts on April 29-30 at the Nederland Community Center. Or buy a MP3, AFLAC, or CD of the show (via FestivaLink.net after the show or greenduhks.com before it). Or purchase a t-shirt from our website www.aspenmeadowshc.org. peace & gratitude, greg and debbie " February 12, 2008 Dale Case, the interim Boulder County Land Use Director, just confirmed today a new date Thursday, March 13 at 5 PM for the Commissioners meeting to discuss Home Events. Hopefully this will be our very last public hearing on this topic! It will be in the same Pearl Street Courthouse Public Hearing room we've always used. We could use a good turnout on this last hearing. We would appreciate you helping us get the word out about this public hearing as 5 PM isn't great for many people to attend. There will NOT be a hearing on Feb 21st. Thanks again for those who wrote letters asking that the date be changed for us. If you have time please comment on the proposed draft regulation per any of the 10 reasons cited in earlier postings. Thank you. http://www.festivarian.com/index.php/topic,2032.msg18215.html#msg18215 Good news...the County Commissioners will reschedule the Feb 21st public hearing. Rescheduling means we won't have our hearing until late April which is what we had expected. Please continue to send letters regarding the draft regulation to give our Commissioners political cover should they decide to weaken the proposed regulation. However, you no longer need them to move the hearing date. Thanks for those of you who wrote lettters asking to change the date! greg & debbie Public Meeting with Land Use Staff on House Concerts Date: January 16, 2008 Time: 3:00 PM Location: Third Floor Hearing Room Courthouse Building 1325 Pearl Street Boulder, Colorado 80302 http://www.co.boulder.co.us/lu/code_updates/home_events/DC07001_meeting_011608.htm December 2007 - There are three more public meetings involving house concerts. We realize how busy everyone is so to help you prioritize, we want the best attendance at the January 2008 Commissioners meeting - exact date TBD. We could also use a large turnout at the Planning Commission's meeting. These folks take the input from Land Use and make recommendations to the County Commissioners. We will be on the Wednesday, December 19 meeting agenda starting between 3 and 4 PM. All of these meetings take place at the same place - Pearl Street Boulder County Courthouse. Tuesday, December 4th we have another public discussion with the Land Use Director at 6 PM. http://www.co.boulder.co.us/lu/code_updates/house_concerts/DC07001_meeting_120407.htm Acoustic Avenue House Concert Series auctioned Peter Mayer's brand new CD of novelty songs, "Novelties". All proceeds from this special auction have gone to Debbie and Greg's legal defense fund. This CD has 14 songs including "Happy Place", "Driving With My Knee", "Fake Plant", and more "silly" songs you may have heard live in concert, plus some brand new songs, all previously unrecorded. By special arrangement, we acquired this autographed copy before its official release date. The CD was awarded to the highest bidder on November 25. "The Sherpas in the mountains" Sunday, 18 November 2007 Aspen Meadows House Concert Legal Defense Benefit Boulder County Proposes House Concert Regulations Thursday, October 4th, 2007 In a precedent-setting move, Boulder County proposes to regulate "house concerts" if guests contribute to the performer(s). The Aspen Meadows House Concerts (www.aspenmeadowshc.org) series in Nederland, CO was shut down in August 2006 for having monthly potlucks where folk musicians played in the living room of Debbie and Greg Ching. The County's concern was that guests gave these performers voluntary contributions. Although the Chings had not received any noise, traffic, or parking complaints since beginning their series in 1999, these events typically involving 50 guests and a dozen parked cars on their 2.5-acre property were deemed an illegal commercial activity by Boulder County Land Use. The couple fought back, drawing over 200 supporters to a February 2007 public hearing, but still lost their case. They did not give up. Spending over $25,000 in legal fees they succeeded in having the ban temporarily lifted in June 2007. The new proposed regulations are much more restrictive - limiting concerts to 4 times per year and requiring a permit. Supporters of these quiet living room concerts argue that that house concerts have no greater neighborhood footprint other parties where people pool their resources - pay-per-view sporting/movie parties, group lessons, wine tasting parties, author book signings, fund raisers. They argue that serious constitutional issues involving the right of free speech and assembly, due process, and equal protection should be considered before passing any regulations specific to house concerts. The general public is invited to discuss this topic on Tuesday, October 16 at 6 PM at the Pearl Street Boulder Courthouse in the 3rd floor Public Hearing room. Details on this meeting as well as the proposed regulations can be found at http://www.co.boulder.co.us/lu/code_updates/house_concerts/DC07001_meeting.htm http://www.co.boulder.co.us/lu/code_updates/pdf/DC07001HouseConcert.pdf The Mountain Ear - 04 October 2007 June 7, 2007 Thank you to the 20 or 30 folks who showed up at the public comment portion of Tuesday's Boulder County Commissioners meeting. You were respective, passionate, and effective. Basically, the Commissioners endorsed the idea of house concerts but BoCo Land Use is still the bottleneck. They said they would ask Land Use again to move faster on legalizing house concerts but they didn't have confidence the public review process would begin any earlier than August or September. By that time it will be over 1 year since our last legal house concert. We will likely need a good turnout if there is a public hearing this fall to review our proposed house concert land use code amendment. You can find both a letter to editor and an article in the June 6th copy of the Daily Camera - see our website for links to it. Interestingly enough, the Daily Camera is soliciting feedback for an editorial they want to do this Sunday on complaint-based enforcement. Although we are probably the most remote of all the house concerts in Boulder County, the most common question people ask us is why were you investigated by Boulder County if you never had any noise or traffic complaints? As indicated in the History section of our website, the initial inquiry was mistakenly classified as a complaint. It took 3 months to discover and even more to correct this mistake but by then another anonymous complaint had been filed. The only public complaints we know about were those expressed at the Feb 7th hearing by one immediate neighbor (invited numerous times but always declined but he did send a thank you for the community effort a few years ago) and one Magnolia road neighbor (who had been to most of our house concerts leaving us with a sense of betrayal). Would these people have complained if the official investigation hadn't already been started by mistake? We don't know. We do know that our immediate neighbor is a chronic neighborhood complainer - from conversations with neighbors and from the public record he's complained about airplane noise, barking dogs, fences, horses, llamas, real estate agents, whatever. He probably would be happier in a more isolated area. Yet, if you read carefully one of his earlier (of many) letters to the County even he is saying it was not a formal complaint. Was he the anonymous complaint? We don't know. Was the County overwhelmed by all the e-mail questions he sent - probably, based upon the comments made to us about how much staff time he consumed. At this point, our issue is no longer with the neighbors who called the County (though an apology to the neighborhood would help heal the rift) but with the County itself. It should be noted that we feel the County could have exercised better judgment by letting the neighbors work out issues first. Neither the neighbor who made the initial call or us knew a complaint had been filed for a few months. A call from the County suggesting we converse with our neighbors rather than a cease-and-desist order would have been more appropriate, in our opinion. It should be noted that we complied with all County requests with respect to house concerts and our aquatic massage (Watsu) home occupation. We are in the process of making our house bigger to comply with County space ratios regarding our very part-time Watsu home occupation - we think that's pretty silly, too, but given our house was built in 1976 we've always wanted to do some remodeling. Our complaining neighbor is now trying his hardest to stop the addition he unintentionally triggered by badgering (but not complaining). http://magnoliaroad.net/~greg.ching/Ching%20ZON-06-075/Final%20violation%20letter.pdf http://magnoliaroad.net/~greg.ching/Ching%20ZON-06-075/Passerini_mistake.jpg http://magnoliaroad.net/~greg.ching/Ching%20ZON-06-075/DIA%20Complaint%20Statistics%20for%20Norman%20Lederman.pdf http://magnoliaroad.net/~greg.ching/Ching%20ZON-06-075/Lederman-non-complaint.pdf We certainly feel Boulder County Land Use's complaint-based enforcement is part of the problem. If you feel this is true, please comment to the Daily Camera before this Friday (June 8th) noon! You can follow the instructions listed here. http://dailycamera.com/news/2007/jun/06/virtual-editorial-board-complaint-driven-enforceme/ I have an audio transcript of the Feb 7th hearing which will hopefully be up soon on the Press section of our website - www.aspenmeadowshc.org. I will also try to get the audio transcript of Tuesday's public comment as well. Thank you for all your support. Debbie and I would have quit long ago without your encouragement to keep house concerts alive in our community. Peace, greg www.aspenmeadowshc.org - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - June 1, 2007 Folks, We’d love your help in filling the public hearing room at 11 AM on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at the Pearl Street Boulder County Courthouse during the Boulder County Commissioners meeting public comment period. We were turned down by the Commissioners when we requested a specific meeting to review the February Board of Adjustment decision. The Commissioners will not let our house concert comments run too long so it should be fairly short (maybe only 30 minutes but certainly under 1 hour). Our goal is to respectfully encourage the Commissioners to move faster on reviewing the proposed draft house concert land use code amendment we submitted in early April. At this time they have told us they will not begin the lengthy review cycle until September at the earliest. That's 7 months after the Board of Adjustment recommended that the land use code be amended to allow house concerts. The review cycle could take another year beyond that! We are not looking for many 3-minute (or less) speakers but need hands to go up when asked if you came to support house concerts. We do not want the Commissioners to feel intimidated but we want to politely remind them that this small code change is important to our community. One fear they have is that allowing house concerts will open up the door to raves and loud kegger parties so we need to demonstrate we are a thoughtful, law-abiding community intent on protecting our constitutional right to assemble. We are unhappy that house concerts have been singled out when other pooled resource private events such as wine tastings, author book signings, fund raisers, product marketing parties, group lessons, and Open Studios are not held under the same scrutiny. We are frustrated that a software error led to the original investigation. We are appalled how an anonymous complainer can manipulate the system wasting time and money. And we believe this ban puts Boulder County in a poor cultural light as the news spreads throughout the country - http://dfire.org/x5986.xml is just one article. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - We’d like your help in filling the public hearing room at 11 AM on Tuesday, June 5, 2007 at the Pearl Street Boulder County Courthouse at a regularly scheduled Boulder County Commissioners meeting. Please note house concerts are not on the public agenda. The Aspen Meadows House Concerts series (www.aspenmeadowshc.org) was shut down last year based upon one anonymous complaint. The Chings lost their appeal in February but have never been given a public hearing before the Commissioners. They have been told their only appeal option is to sue the County! Boulder County has told the Chings that it's OK to have parties with music but voluntary contributions to the musicians are illegal. Theonly immediate neighbor with a complaint about house concerts has been known to complain in the past to the Denver International Airport over 500 times a year. If you need more background see http://aspenmeadowhc.org/index.php?page=about&display=9 Now is the time to submit thoughtful letters to the Open Forum at the Daily Camera - the e-mail address is openforum@dailycamera.com. Feel free to copy the County Commissioners via commissioners@co.boulder.co.us. Separately, please copy greg.ching AT mric.coop. Please consider writing your letters elaborating on *any* of the following themes using your own words: We appeal Graham's conclusion that anyone in Boulder County "can hire a band, ensemble, orchestra, or other music entertainment and invite people to a concert for a party," provided no one is charged (even if the charge is "in the form of requested donations") for the entertainment. At their own expense, the Chings have offered draft home concert regulation not because they believe the law or the Constitution requires one, but in order to legitimize a community-building social activity "live music in a private home" that should be enjoyed in Boulder County - regardless of one's personal economic circumstances. Why is it that you need to be a wealthy arts patron? Why can't ordinary folks extend a potluck with quiet music especially when taking reasonable care mitigating frequency, noise, and traffic? --- A living room concert is a social gathering, not a commercial or business use. The homeowner does not profit from the event. Donations go directly to the artist and they are freely given by the guests (the host does not require payment). --- From a land use perspective, the independently wealthy should not be permitted to sponsor activities that the less well-off can not afford - the mere fact that guests voluntarily share in the cost (a fact exceedingly difficult to prove without an intrusive invasion of privacy) is irrelevant. --- Had the Land Use Director's interpretation been reversed by the Board on February 7th, we believe that the Commissioners would already have a new living room concert code revision in place. How long will our community now have to wait before the County gets around to creating standards to ALLOW living room concerts? It's hard to believe this is happening in America, let alone in "progressive" Boulder County. --- We feel this whole enforcement has been a serious waste of taxpayer money. Even the initial inquiry was mistakenly interpreted as a complaint due to a software error. While the neighbor who called the County has never apologized she did get the County to admit in writing it was their error.

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