Last week, over 150 concerned citizens attended a open house on changes to the Snyderville Basin General Plan. The General Plan is important because it guides development in our area for the next 25 years. There are some changes that will appear large to some neighborhoods. The next step in the process is a public hearing with the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission on January 13th (at 6PM in the Kimball Junction Library). A draft of the plan will then be sent to the County Council. There will be more Public Hearings and then the County Council will vote on it.

Let’s say you attended that meeting or have read the proposed plan, and don’t like some parts of it. What’s your strategy to illicit change? “What, you say? I need a strategy?” Yes, please have a strategy. We have sat through many county meetings and those people without a plan do no one a service. This is how a public hearing typically works:

In the case of the Planning Commission or County Council, there may be some discussion by the commission/council members and then they’ll open it up for public comment. People will come up to the microphone and speak for “up to 3 minutes.” Then another person will speak for 3 minutes. Then an inconsiderate person will speak for about 10 minutes. Then another person will speak for 3 minutes. Rinse…Repeat. There can be 50-100 people who all want to provide their opinion. Four hours later, our representatives look like they’ve gone to war and just escaped ISIS. What they’ve heard are a few good ideas… Some people criticizing the use of a comma versus a semi-colon … A lot of , “I completely agree with what she said.”… Some personal attacks (“somebody’s got to be sleeping with someone for this to pass”). You even get the occasional person who threatens them (yes, we are not making that up). It’s a free for all.

What’s the outcome? Perhaps an idea or two is incorporated into the plan but its hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. At best, it’s really just another wasted opportunity. At worst, you’ll look back and wonder why you even bothered (and won’t in the future). So what do we recommend? Before we answer that, we think you should first understand your audience.

Generally, whenever you are speaking to one of the above groups about something like the general plan, you need to recognize that it’s extremely likely they have spent countless more hours on the subject than you have. We can count on one hand general citizens that are better informed about these topics than members of the council or commission. If you don’t know if your are one of those people (we know we aren’t), you probably aren’t. Not sure how many pieces of land have development rights already in the Basin? I’m sure there is someone on the Planning Commission that does. Do you know what “1 per 20 means”, in relation to development in the Basin? Why would you? You know accounting, or real-estate, or insurance. That said, these guys do.

So, what do you do? Not show up? Not comment? No. You just need to be smart about it. Speak from your personal experience. Bring up things that they may not have heard of. There will be enough people just saying, “I hate affordable housing.” You can be the one who provides better information. What and how do you do that? We aren’t experts for sure… but we’ll do our best with that in Part 2.

We received an email from a person last night asking whether “we really thought that the Uinta Express Pipeline would be stopped” by low oil prices. The answer to that is no, but it does highlight a position we find ourselves taking more often. In Park City, we believe you can STOP very few things; however, you can POSTPONE them.

A perfect example is the land that the Hyatt Hotel is being built upon in Snyderville. The owner had the rights to build offices and a small restaurant. They had those rights for very many years and built nothing. Then it seems a developer thought they could make more money with a hotel. The neighborhood was pushed to endorse their hotel idea — some would say through fear. Now, old trees are torn down…soon to be replaced by stucco and commerce. Could development of that land have been stopped. No. The owner had the right to build office space and a restaurant there. When would that have happened? Today? No. Next year? Still unlikely (there’s too much of those things right now). Five years? Maybe. Ten years? More likely. Twenty years? Yeah.

So the question is, would you have preferred to leave the land open for 10 more years and then have someone build office space and a restaurant or do you prefer having a hotel now? Unless you were the land owner, the developer, or got the construction job we think we know the answer.

We aren’t crazy enough to think that development can be postponed forever; however, we do know that Park City will probably look different in 10-20 years. Instead of accelerating that time line, why not keep it measured. In other words, you are living in the Garden of Eden. Do you listen to the snake and eat the apple now or do you hold off for a few years and enjoy paradise while you can?

For every plot of land In Summit County, zoning defines what can be built there. Each zone then has acceptable uses. So, for instance, the area by Home Depot is zoned Community Commercial. Then, using the table below, you can determine what is available in the “CC” zone. An A mean acceptable. An L means its OK with a Limited Use Permit. A C means its OK if they can get a Conditional Use Permit.

Some of the various zones are Rural Residential, Hillside Stewardship, Mountain Remote, Community Commercial, Service Commercial, and Neighborhood Commercial. By looking the chart below (provided by the county) you can see (as of the date this was written) what is approved where.

You can then use this map to see how any piece of land is zoned. These are some pretty powerful tools to help understand what can be built where.

USE TABLE