Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Hailey completes comp plan

Land Use Section was last component


By MATT FURBER
Express Staff Writer

The final section of the Hailey Comprehensive Plan was approved Monday by the Hailey City Council. The Land Use Section was the last component of the plan to be written and required the most wrestling with language in the nearly yearlong process of synthesizing public input.

"I was very grateful that the council realized how much work went into it," said Hailey Planning Director Kathy Grotto. "I was very happy that they passed it last night because now our work will change to working on ordinances to implement the goals of the comp plan."

As Councilman Don Keirn pointed out, the Planning and Zoning Commission held a dozen public meetings and workshops over the course of the past year to clarify the language for the long-term planning tool.

The section includes an accompanying land use map, which highlights where the city would like to see various types of development—residential versus business—and what land should be protected as green space. Goals for "services centers" are also indicated in the color-coded map, which includes gradations of shading and fuzzy lines but gives a strong sense of the future look of the city.

Increased density in the downtown core, connectivity of neighborhoods and promotion of green space, which involves protection of wildlife corridors and parks and recreation areas, are clear goals of the city, according to the Land Use section's text and map.

The document provides incentives for developers who redevelop existing city core property and adopts an opinion that Friedman Memorial Airport should be relocated. At such time that the airport is relocated, then the city would support a master plan for the Friedman property "that will include community assets such as cultural and sports complexes, in addition to a mix of residential and commercial uses."

The map is a requirement of the Idaho Local Land Use Planning Act. The text of the Land Use section dedicates three pages of the 16-page document to defining future planning goals for the city. It also defines goals for the various land use districts and lays out what percentages of the whole each district makes up and how they can be adjusted in the future to provide an appropriate balance of the various uses.

During the public hearing Monday, Mayor Susan McBryant voiced concern that the document could be too inclusive; if any component of the city had been left out of the document, inadvertently, it could be excluded during future planning. For example, McBryant was interested in using the more general definition of "open space" in place of "green space" for sections that refer to city goals concerning undeveloped land.

Keirn agreed that there needs to be leeway in the document, but added, "we could worry the thing to death."

Grotto said she was reluctant to change language regarding green and open space because the definitions had been hashed and rehashed over many months and are similarly used in four or five other sections of the comprehensive plan.

Allison Kennedy, representing both Citizens for Smart Growth and the Wood River Land Trust, suggested that both terms be incorporated where land use planning language addresses goals for undeveloped land.

Hailey Parks and Lands Board Chairwoman Becki Keefer clarified that open space is defined as undeveloped land and green space is defined as preserved open lands and areas proposed to be preserved as natural areas or developed into neighborhood park space, connective greenways, and/or recreational areas.

"The goal is to preserve open space, turn it into preserved green space," Keefer said.

When Kennedy recommended that frequent use of the word "consider" be substituted for stronger words like "use" or "create," the council chose to remain with the more general term.

"This thing needs to be a fluid document because times change," Keirn said. The planning tool is intended as a general guide for the future look of the community.

"The next thing we're going to work on is a resolution to adopt the comp plan in its entirety," Grotto said. "We need to run it through P&Z. It should be up this summer."




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