Live, Acoustic, and 'Illegal'
House Concerts Threatened by Boulder County
By Richard Martin, 2-08-07
Update: the Chings lost their appeal to the Land Use Board last night. Below, read Greg Ching’s email to me this morning:
“Well, we had a count closer to 200 than 70! It was standing room only with people sitting in the aisles. The 16 speakers were virtually unanimous in supporting us. The Board of Appeal was on a knife’s edge...up until the last minute we felt it could have gone our way. It was clear that the Appeal Board wanted to approve house concerts but they didn’t feel they had the flexibility in the law. We think if one appeal board member ‘had the balls’ (no women interestingly enough) to support us the others would have gone along. They did agree that Boulder County needs to add language to support house concerts. The Board will recommend that that the County Commissioners change the Land Use Code.
“Much of the evening revolved around the definition of a business. Everyone agreed we weren’t running a business but the fact that the performer was able to make money contributed by guests made it a business. People asked how that was different from hiring a clown to entertain at a birthday party if more than one parent contributed to it. Or if a group of home-schooling parents hired a specialist to teach a lesson for their kids? Since business was never defined in the code, the dictionary definitions cited an intent to make a profit - which certainly was not the case here. For reasons that escaped us, the Appeal Board sided with the Land Use Director. I’d be curious what percentage of the time they actually overturned him.
“The County basically said we can have parties as long as we paid for them entirely. They even left open the option of people giving us money as long we didn’t solicit it. Their fear was that by allowing house concerts they might open themselves up to raves or Rainbow Family gatherings. They did say they could sense the value of the community we built. Even though we lost tonight, we expect to win at the Commissioner’s level either through appeal or by participating in a Land Use Code change.
“Debbie and are sad we can’t host house concerts legally. We felt the love of our community so even though we lost we won.”
This afternoon at 4 p.m. at the Boulder County Courthouse, a hearing will be held that could determine the future of small, informal “house concerts” in the county, and perhaps around the state.
The case involves Greg Ching, a software developer who lives in Aspen Meadows, outside Nederland, and who’s been hosting small gatherings to hear acoustic music by touring singer-songwriters since 1999. Until last August, Ching requested voluntary donations after each show from the few dozen attendees to pay the performers. Boulder County Land Use director Graham Billingsley, deciding that these community gatherings constituted a “home business,” ruled them illegal, and the shows have been suspended for the last five months. Ching and his wife (who met at a house concert in California) are appealing this ruling, and a decision is expected tonight from the five-person Land Use Board. A 4-out-of-5 vote is needed to overrule Billingsley.
This is one of those small, local cases that involve a larger principle. As Ching puts it, “this is really about the right of free assembly.”
It’s also about a county bureaucrat who seems bent on enforcing the letter and not the spirit of the law. Billingsley was apparently alerted to the house concerts by an Aspen Meadows neighbor (who now says she wasn’t actually calling to complain), and without much of a by-your-leave proceeded to rule the concerts—which have occurred monthly at Ching’s house on 2.5 acres and usually drew a small crowd from the Ned and Magnolia hills area—out-of-bounds.
“This could have been solved on a neighborhood level,” says Ching, a soft-spoken guy who is also at the center of the Magnolia Road Internet Cooperative, which helps provide wireless broadband Internet connections to the canyons between Boulder and Nederland. “It’s really a big waste of the taxpayer’s money.”
The Chings’ shows are among around 6-8 regular house-concert series in Boulder County, and as many as 20 along the Front Range—so there’s the danger of a precedent being set today. One hundred percent of the money collected at the shows goes to the performers; no alcohol is served (there’s an optional potluck dinner beforehand); Ching encourages attendees to walk, ride their bikes, or carpool to his house; and, he says, “We’re reasonable people, if we want to have a party we should be subject to nuisance laws that cover noise and traffic. None of those apply here.”
In fact, at the hearing this afternoon Ching is expecting up to 70 people from the area (many of whom are still digging out from the blizzards) to show up in support of the appeal. Among those who’ve written letters to the board in support of the Chings are Clark Chapman, a former Pima County (Arizona) County Commissioner, Steve Szymanski, the co-founder of Planet Bluegrass (which puts on the Telluride Bluegrass Festival, Rocky Mountain Folks Festival, and other events), Dawn Dennison, co-founder of the now-defunct Nederland Acoustic Coffeehouse and wife of former State Representative Tom Plant, and Pete d’Oronzio, a current Lafayette Planning Commission member.
“Unless you count the Nederland Public Library, we don’t have many public gathering places up here,” says Ching. “People can go for months without seeing each other. We’re really just trying to create a sense of community.”
The hearing is today at 4:00 on the third floor of the County Courthouse on Pearl St.
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Time for another teaparty,anyone?