Lakewood city leaders are wrestling with how to roll out one of Colorado’s most contentious slow-growth initiatives in recent memory, just weeks before they’re due to begin implementing it.

The thorniest issues are what to do with the flood of building permit applications filed with the city in advance of last July’s vote to impose a limit on new home construction and the measure’s potential impact on Lakewood’s efforts to add affordable housing.

Councilman Charley Able took a hard line on the issue at a meeting Monday, hammering the point that what voters in Colorado’s fifth-largest city unquestionably wanted when they passed Question 200 last summer was a limit to growth in Lakewood.

“Does anyone doubt that the voters expect a 1% growth cap in 2020?” he said, holding up a copy of the ordinance. “The thing that is crystal clear about this is that the voters said 1% growth cap. If we exceed 1% in 2020, we’re in violation of what the voters approved.”

At issue are more than 1,300 building permit applications that were submitted to the city by developers in the weeks leading up to the July 2 special election.

Under Lakewood’s new law, the city projects that only 696 new homes — 1% of the city’s 69,613 dwelling units — will be allowed in 2020. The measure also requires that any residential projects containing 40 or more units must get specific approval from City Council before moving forward.

Council members argued over whether building permit applications already in the pipeline should be exempt from the growth cap — a legal construct known as “authority to continue.” Ultimately, they were unable to agree on what to do about those pending projects, choosing instead to meet again in January to discuss the issue.

“None of these options seem amazing,” Mayor Adam Paul said in exasperation.

Lakewood’s Strategic Growth Initiative officially kicks in next month, when the city finalizes the number of new homes that can be constructed in the city in 2020 — and how many of those will be allocated to affordable home builders.

City leaders have been wrestling for nearly half a year with how to implement the complex law, which mimics housing restriction measures passed in Boulder and Golden — efforts designed to counter the relentless pace of growth along the Front Range.

The state demographer’s office projects that of the 2.4 million new residents expected in Colorado by 2050, about 1 million will locate in metro Denver, 600,000 in Larimer and Weld counties, and 400,000 in the southern Front Range.

A potential 2020 ballot issue that would impose a 1% housing cap on 11 counties along the Front Range, including the entire Denver metro area, got fresh legs earlier this month after the Colorado Supreme Court denied a legal challenge to the measure’s language.

Lakewood’s own ballot question was challenged in court for more than a year before a judge finally ruled that it could go to the voters.

Several residents spoke before the council Monday night, warning the city not to defy the will of the voters. Cathy Kentner, a Lakewood school teacher who spearheaded the Strategic Growth Initiative, said the city should not be trying to change the new law before the first allocation for new homes has been issued.

“The one thing I hear loud and clear is to please implement it and live with it — if there are problems, then deal with them,” Kentner told council. “But please, accept the will of the voters and implement this as intended and as written.”

Several developers warned that Lakewood’s slow-growth ordinance could jeopardize housing projects that are in progress, especially ones that serve a lower-income population. Doug Elenowitz, principal with Trailbreak Partners, said completion of West Line Village near the Sheridan light-rail station could be in danger even though building permits for the project were sought before last July’s election.

“If the City Council does not address this issue, it’s possible that the last 44 attainable homes of a multiyear project of 185 homes to meet the housing needs of the city of Lakewood could go unbuilt and jeopardized,” Elenowitz said.

Tami Fischer, executive director of Metro West Housing Solutions, told the council that the new ordinance could have the effect of making Lakewood’s housing authority uncompetitive in the quest for affordable housing tax credits from the state — unless a certain number of housing units is guaranteed to the agency.

She said there are 9,000 households on a wait list for affordable housing in the city.

“We would see that these restrictions that are placed on residential development by Ballot (Question) 200 would effectively prevent Metro West from undertaking new affordable housing financing and thereby prevent it from fulfilling the governmental purpose to develop affordable housing for the residents of Lakewood,” she said.