Given the ultra-big-government leanings of Boulder County, I was expecting the worst when I inquired of County Commissioner Will Toor “whether Boulder County will be relaxing any rules, particularly restrictions on size or relatively recent regulations which tend to increase the cost of building a house, for people whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the fire.”

I was very pleased to receive the following response from Mr. Toor:

Hi, Ross. We have some work to do to sort through what we can do to help people with rebuilding their homes. There may be a bunch of other issues we need to consider about how we can facilitate rebuilding, which we will be examining in the near future, but I do have a firm answer on the size question. Can someone rebuild the same size structure even if current regulations would not allow a house of that size - the answer is yes. You can rebuild the same size structure in the same location by right, with no review process beyond compliance with the building code.