Let's face it

If you are a developer in Estes Park, you hold all the cards.  You get to speak first at the appeal, you get to speak as long as you want, you can trot up every single person you are paying to snowjob the trustees on the project, and eventually win by attrition, even if the project is misguided, illegal, ugly, causes more problems than it "solves", or is simply designed in poor taste.

Until some developer proposes building a adult book store inside the Catholic Church, the town board is going to approve anything and everything that comes before them, regardless of whether the planning commissioners deny the same development proposal unanimously or by a split vote.  And even in the example provided, if the developer of the adult book store is willing to speak long enough and prepare a semi-amateurish Power Point, they have the floor until the end of time, and three of the current trustees will fall asleep or lose interest halfway through anyway, and Ron Norris would approve a whorehouse in a monastery if it allowed him to bludgeon the audience with his fifth-grade "fake interrogation" techniques of staff.