Sun Valley planning officials took the initial step this week to preserve open space in the city.
"Today is the first day the commission has taken action on open space," said Mark Hofman, Sun Valley community development director.
The Sun Valley Planning and Zoning Commission voted Wednesday, Aug. 30, to recommend that the City Council adopt a unified development code, which includes changes to the city's official zoning districts. The changes provide for two new land-use designations, including open space and recreation districts.
The open space district would preserve environmentally sensitive lands or undeveloped natural areas that have significant value. They would be limited to passive, recreational use. The zone would protect important natural areas from development, such as the meadow stretching along the west side of Sun Valley Road, owned by the Sun Valley Co.
The City Council will consider the open space zone during its Thursday, Sept. 21, meeting. If council members adopt the entire development code, the city will start to rezone lands and implement other changes as set forth by the document.
Before voting 3-1 in favor of the recommended approval, the P&Z spent the entire day evaluating a nearly 200-page document page by page and word for word. By day's end, Commissioner Ken Herich voted against the change, and Commissioner John Gaeddert had left the meeting.
The marathon effort involved smaller housekeeping items such as organizing and clarifying design-review criteria to recommending larger policy changes to zoning districts, riparian building setbacks, wireless communication facility regulations and annexation regulations.
The effort began in January 2006 with a desire to make the city's development code a user-friendly document. The city hired Diane Kushlan, a planning consultant out of Boise-based Planning and Management Services, for an amount not to exceed $10,000, to facilitate the process.
Presently, the development code is organized in three titles: zoning, subdivision and engineering. The overhaul of the document consolidates all ordinances that relate to development into one document.
During the effort to better organize the city's ordinances, a state private property rights-oriented initiative, called Proposition 2, qualified for the November general election ballot. In light of the initiative, Sun Valley fast-tracked changes in the city's land regulations as set forth by the 2005 update of the city's comprehensive plan.
Speaking to the scale of the changes, Virginia Egger, Sun Valley city administrator, said, "Yeah, it's crazy, but one of the nice things about doing it all is we can see the cumulative relationship of all of these codes."
The P&Z will consider changes to commercial mass and scale, workforce housing regulations, design standards for historic buildings, landscape codes and "green" building codes during special meetings, scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 13, and Wednesday, Oct. 4, at Sun Valley City Hall.
