Even though it will be within city limits, you can add Harris Ranch expansion to your list- approx. 3000 homes. Application will be filed next month.

Time for changing of the guard at Ada County. Lets elect commissioner’s that will listen to the public they serve and not just those with blueprints, bulldozers & building permits.

Guardian, my perception is that the readers of your web page are in general agreement with Joanne. Does anybody think Boise and vicinity just keeps getting better and better, the more people we have?

I’ve been particularly disappointed with Mayor Bieter. I voted for him, primarily because he’s a lifelong Boise resident (as am I), and I expected him to be much more protective of our small-town persona than he has been.

It sickens me, almost literally, when I go on a bicycle ride in what used to be rolling meadows, or sagebrush country, or spearmint fields… and now the land is occupied by seas of identical 3-tab rooftops. And the quiet little 2-lane country roads I used to ride have been replaced by 5-lane arterials, with congestion at every intersection.

But, on the other hand, I’m conflicted because I generally support the notion of people being able to do with their property what they would like, and what will maximize the value of the land. Why shouldn’t Ma and Pa Boondocks sell their acreage to some deep-pockets developer, when he comes dangling the cash? (As long as Deep Pockets knows he’s got friends at City Hall, the cash will keep on danglin’.)

Another question. Where do you draw the line? Do the “Hidden Springs” folks have any grounds to complain that the land surrounding THEM is being developed? It smacks of bitter irony when I see the folks who have put down roots at “Harris Ranch” complaining about the traffic that will be generated by new development farther east. For most of my life, Harris Ranch was occupied by cows and the Harris family! (When I attended Roosevelt Elementary, I used to stand “safety patrol” at Warm Springs and Maple… and it was a rare occasion when there was any real need for a safety patrol, because there wasn’t that much traffic on Warm Springs. Of course, back in those days the debate was over “Warm Springs Mesa,” rather than “The Cliffs.”)

OK. I’ve seen plenty on these pages on what to advocate against. I agree we don’t want to look like Phoenix. But we just marked the day when the country has 300 million people living in it. Growth will continue to happen and we can never go back. So what ideas are being ignored by P&Z to which we need to call attention?

Personally I liked that the Mayor is seeking to focus developer’s attention to SE Boise for future development. I can’t think of a single reason workers at Micron couldn’t live close to their workplace which should be much more desireable with rising gas prices. Are the rules regarding density out of whack? Do we need to revisit certain ordinances? Do we artificially raise the cost of developing in certain areas?

I like to gripe as much as the next guy but its a fairly negative post. Its easy to point out the bad things. How do we make life better in the Treasure Valley given that growth will be a constant? I mean, if growth is the gripe, shouldn’t you all be advocating for Planned Parenthood? Or we could set up some Californian Abatement Districts and spray for ’em.

I am always amazed at the response concerning growth. I am also amazed that most of it comes from people that they themselves have transplanted to the area. Why did you move here? Why shouldn’t someone else have that opportunity? In fact I am very sure the Native Americans said the same thing when the Europeans came over. Who says that Ada County, Boise, Eagle, etc is yours and only yours to be shared with no one?

Why bash on Ada County, when Eagle, Boise, Star and every other city is always trying to acquire more ground to incorporate into their city for uh oh, the nasty word, DEVELOPMENT.

Do we not live in a free country that says that EVERYONE is entitled to life and liberty even in Ada County? Planned communities are the only way to go if you are planning an entire development that will bring in a large amount of people. They are held to a higher standard and must meet requirements that normal subdivision don’t have to.

It is also very easy to sit and complain from the sidelines especially when you have not been to all of the meetings nor have all of the facts. Also when Lucky 13 moves to Harris Ranch I don’t want to see any of you there enjoying it because it is in uh oh, a planned community.

The biggest issue is water. There is not a current water inventory report, potential impact on existing wells, etc.

The Snake River Adjudication process and watermaster should have primacy over any development as the Boise river system is already mired in legal challenges and there is not an accurate ground water inventory to accurately estimate where the static water level is and what will happen to it when the new wells go in to supply the new development.

We live in a desert and do not have the dam capacity that the developers could fall back on in CA & AZ.

Last year was the first year in 7 that we enjoyed above average precipitation – prior to that we were in a record setting drought. The long term forecast is for a drier & warmer than normal winter. Going into a prolonged drought may be the best thing to limit growth….

Didn’t realize I was advocating for anything but something for which to advocate. But thanks Mr. Logic, you’ve given me something to sink my teeth into instead of just saying: “growth bad”. I’m not against attracting business but certainly I’m not too keen on the idea that a housing boom is what’s needed to drive the economy. I guess if we want to talk about the the goal of specific local government policies I’d grapple with it but merely giving us a picture of the quantity of growth coming our way, well, the problem ain’t news, the solutions would be.

Sis,

Your comments are right on target. Let’s be solution oriented. By working together amongst all stakeholders, solutions will come along that will satisfy most involved in the process. Look at the recent efforts in the Owyhees and CIEDRA. Not perfect, but everybody worked together to protect more lands.

Okay, okay…

53% of Ada County is owned by the State and Federal government – permanently.

What should spook folks is not the groups interested in building developments that require an additional 10% of their landmass to be permanently set aside in natural open space, and which require the creation of an additional 10 acres of developed parkland for every additional 1,000 residents (or 1 acre for every 40 homes – which equates to 1 square foot of parkland for every 5 square feet of residential land).

But it should be the indescriminant sprawl that is currently processed by each and every city in the valley that should greatly concern every thoughtful person. It is NOT the planned communities that spell doom for the valley, it is the 20-100 unit low-density sprawl developments that drive our quality of life down and rob the public coffers. It is this type of suburban sprawl development that steals the farmland, gobbles up natural open space, and leaves a pattern of development that destroys our youth’s future. I am at a loss as to why anyone would equate this type of true sprawl with a development pattern that values open space preservation and which improves human habitat.

It should not be lost on ANYONE that the politicians who are crying the loudest about the “horrors” of planned communities, are the very ones that are literally picking our pockets by approving low-density sprawl at every public hearing. And, it is these same politicians which insist that any development that plugs into a municipally run sewer and/or water system is inherently better than a development required to build & pay for their own systems – who cares that the public debt increases with every main-lined development.

Higher-density, mixed-use development actual generates less traffic than the sprawl developments being approved by the cities. If the demographers are correct (and no one has offered any reason to doubt their population growth projections), the Treasure Valley will grow by 480,000 people within the next 25 years. If these people end up living in what the cities’ view as reasonable and “sustainable” development – we will all be impoverished. There will be no open space, no parks, no verdent tracks of farmland, no clean air, no clean water, no transit.

Let there be new cities built – each with its own employment base, and each surrounded by natural open space. Let’s keep the valley from becoming one giant “rurban” mass of undifferentiated housing tracks.

It appears that elected officials/planners/developers are indeed creating a problem, for which there is NO fix.

Curious George,
I would love to believe you about the powers of the County with regard to planned community developments. Requirements for approval are one thing, enforcement is another. I’m afraid that the County’s Ordinance 621 is toothless. Go ahead, have a good look and tell me it ain’t so. These communities are to be reviewed periodically but what are the consequences for deviation? Zip. Further, requiring a wildlife mitigation plan does not ensure that said plan makes sense or is endorsed by Idaho Fish & Game, who ought to have veto powers over the unworkable. With regard to roadways, yes, ACHD can exact extraorinary impact fees but what about ITD? There is currently no mechanism in place for ITD to accept impact fees and this issue needs to be brought forward to the legislature. Where does this leave us? Gridlocked, unless the County is willing to look at the foothills regionally before considering individual PC applications and follow Blueprint for Good Growth and COMPASS recommendations jointly. While I have serious doubts that individual PCs won’t cost the tax payers plenty (the track record here is not good in other cities), I will guarantee that unless all PCs in a sensitive, infrastructureless area such as the foothills are considered in toto before approval, the price to all Ada County residents will be devastating with regard to traffic, air quailty, habitat and wildlife loss, recreation loss, quality of life loss (it’s the foothills that make this valley great, get it?) and water (there is no substitute). And yes, it is sprawl, because believe it or not, the vast majority of Hidden Springs residents are not making their mortgage payments by working at the Merc… they go to town! Phoenixization is not the answer, my friend.

Having just returned from the second night of meetings involving the Eagle foothills (attended by hundreds of others taking an interest in the process), I thought a great deal of planning is going into the decisions that would allow development in the foothills. For one thing, the numbers being cited for future development by M3, Avimore, Kastera, and Connolly are a whole lot less than originally requested. If you look at Eagle’s past development, those proposing subdivisions have received substantially less than requested (and cried all the way to the bank when they got it). Eagle’s planning for the foothills is looking at involving citizen groups (not the developers themselves) in the study of transportation, open space, wildlife, pathways, density, water, schools, police, fire, sewer, design and a whole lot of other aspects of planning issues before proceeding with the approval of the projects. Interestingly, the developers came to Eagle because they anticipated there would be a need to involve citizen input if they were to be allowed to proceed and they knew that had worked before. Before raising too much hell about what you THINK is happening, get involved in the process by joining groups like the Northern Foothills Association and actually working on proper planning for that area. I see it actually working.

Stephen,
I agree with you that becoming involved and really understanding the issues is key. The North Ada County Foothills Association (www.nacfa.net), the Dry Creek Rural Neighborhood Association (www.savedrycreek.com) and Save The Plateau (www.savetheplateau.org) are wonderful places to get information on how to be involved. The foothills are under tremendous pressure and have never needed public input and support more. At least the ACHD is beginning to pay attention!

Trip capture is a wonderful concept, and planned community developments promise reduction from the usual 11 vehicle trips per household per day to 7.5 vehicle trips per household per day. Hidden Springs is a shining example of planned community trip capture, right here in our midst. Would anyone out there like to hazard a guess as to how many vehicle trips per day per household come out of that development?

From what I heard, Joanne, M3 originally went to the County, but was surprised (and disappointed) at the lack of professional experience they found — enough that they didn’t think proper planning processes they had used on developments elsewhere were included in the County approach. Supposedly they like the “look” of Eagle and felt a development that would include more comprehensive planning, community involvement and an up scale appearance was more to their liking. (They actually said that at one meeting).

The reason Eagle is looking at the foothills rather than the county is because the developers came to the city seeking to use them for their planning process and annexation. (That’s what one of the NACFA people who also prefers an Eagle vs. Ada County planning process said at a meeting). As several people at the Monday and Tuesday night meetings said, being able to plan the foothills when all the developments are considered at one time instead of just as lots of little pieces over a period of time is more likely to provide more reasonable (less) density where building is allowed, more interconnection of open space, and better transportation planning.

If it’s going to happen (and since the land is private there’s likely to be SOMETHING happening), at least try and do it as good as you can. Hopefully — again with community involvement and input — that will be the result of the foothills plan as the process evolves (doing it as good as you can, that is).

And yet a round trip from just about any city in Ada County to any other city will still be ten or more miles, in many cases much more (except for Garden City). Per the US Census, the average commute time in Ada County is 20 minutes. This is each way, meaning that the average worker in Ada County is driving about ten miles to get to work, and another ten to get home (longer if they are using the freeway with its higher speed limits). Any development that reduces this trip length actually improves the overall road system efficiency and decreases air pollution.

Note that no developer is permitted to “make up” what their trip generation rates will be. They are required to use the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ “Trip Generation Manual” – which is nothing more than a compendium of case studies of actual built projects. I believe The Cliffs’ traffic engineer used the known trip generation rate for a Planned Unit Development. Although a PUD would demonstrate LESS trip capture than a planned community, since a PUD does not have a mix of land uses (only a higher density of housing), it appears to be a good conservative figure to use. If The Cliffs developer were to use the trip generation rates of the known housing mix in their proposed development the generation rate would be even lower than a PUD – some attached housing product has trip generation rates below 6 trips per dwelling unit.

Comparisons to Hidden Springs are futile, since such a development could not be approved in Ada County today – it doesn’t have enough commercial or enough density (and would not create enough trip capture) to pass muster as a PC. And, although the per dwelling unit trip generation rate for Hidden Springs (9.29) is well above a PUD’s – it is still below the county average and still below the ITE manual’s given rate of 9.57 trips per day for the average detached single family home.

Is The Cliffs less than ten miles from major employment centers (downtown Boise or Micron)? I think that Suncor’s PC was only four miles to the intersection of State & 55 – and was closer to downtown Boise than the City of Star, and a lot closer than Nampa, Caldwell, or Emmett.

This all goes to the point of what is meant by leapfrog development, and how nearly impossible it is to create leapfrog within the boundaries of Ada County.

Joanne is completely right and as eloquent as usual. I am Chairman of the North Ada County Foothills Assn (NACFA), focused on the foothills north of Eagle, between Highways 16 and 55. Given that the vast majority of this land is private, there seems little doubt that there will be some degree of development here…and we accept that reality. However, everyone (county, city, ACHD, ITD, Compass, citizenry) is grappling with how much.

One limit on this growth MUST be the ability of our highway/roadway system to handle the traffic. The fact of the matter is that ACHD and ITD funding is somewhere around the billion dollar mark IN THE HOLE in terms of making roadway improvements based on plans that show NO development in the foothills. The problem seems to be that the land use decision-makers, especially at Ada County (Mr Armstrong and Mr. Tilman in particular) choose to ignore this reality and run around town literally promoting the planned communities Joanne references and telling whomever will listen that they will do what they can to make them a reality…actually, a developer’s dream come true.

Just consider the name of Mr. Armstrong’s department: “Development Services”…that pretty much says it all…as it stands right now, Ada County “planners” are acting like an adjunct to developers consultant teams (in this case paid by us).

We are at a major crossroads (pun intended) in the Valley: Either [1] allow ourselves (our leaders on our “behalf”) to slide right into the same mess we see in Phoenix, Los Angeles, Seattle and countless other places–simply because we don’t have the backbone to say NO to developers or to truly require that they pay their way IN FULL, or [2] actually stand up and set an example for rest of the country–we WILL protect our quality of life; we WILL make sure that unmanaged growth for its own sake does not ruin the place we prize; we WILL NOT sit for hours of our lives at stop lights, in traffic jams, and start wanting to shoot one another because we are so D…ed mad that all these cars are in our way…

It is time for a change in leadership. If you want to know who I am voting for, check the updates at the NACFA website…

Clancy,

You are very right. I wrote that at a weak moment (i.e. the part that names names–not the part that addresses the intimidating problem we face in tranportation infrastructure, etc.). This has been and remains a big struggle; we (NACFA) have been at this for four years now. Our organization is commited to collaborative solutions. On the other hand, one way or another, we need to get our elected land-use decision makers (either incumbent or newly-elected) to stand up and be counted. They need to quit squabbling (County v. the Cities and visa versa), ratchet up the “weight” given to protecting our quality of life in balance with growth, and do some spade work to defuse the growing impression that they are pro-growth at pretty much any cost.

I hope this helps…it’s just that patience can wear thin from time to time.

JP

Clippityclop,

I think the entire budget of the county’s development services department comes from development applications and building permit fees. Another way of saying that it doesn’t use taxpayer money to operate.

Many cities, by comparison, use such collected fees to underwrite basic public services – making these cities completely dependent on development approvals (and not the tax that will be eventually collected from the improved properties) to provide such basic services as police, fire, and even mayoral and city council salaries.

What’s more objective? A single department (which has no development approval authority) which can be reduced in size as development declines (with no impact on basic services) – or a system that is completely dependent on rubber-stamping development to get the fees to pay the decision-makers’ salaries?

This unfortunate latter scenario wouldn’t necessarily spell condemnation for a larger more established city (like Boise) that already has a substantial tax base, but for eager-to-grow smaller cities (Star, Eagle, Kuna) and larger cities trying to grow basic services (Meridian) it means one thing – their development departments are the cities’ cash cows.

Please note that regardless of where a development gets approved (within city limits, or area of city impact, or out within the “county”), the county’s “cut” of the collected taxes remains exactly the same. This cannot be said of the cities.

I believe the county’s decision to separate the operational costs for running its development services department from the general fund was a very tax-wise move.

We should always be concerned about the objectivity of any public servant. But we should never assume that a staffer automatically goes around acting unethically.

The best firewall I can think of to ensure such objectivity, at the very highest level of office (in case someone isn’t exactly as ethical as they should be), is to put into place a budgetary wall that keeps development money out of an organization’s general fund.

Though this possible temptation “may” still exist at a staff level within the county’s organization – the way the cities have structured their departments’ budgets extends the temptation all the way to the upper tiers of office. And, if county staff may be tempted by developer money, keeping a municipal development services department on the general fund does not create a reverse firewall for city staff.

I think a much more precarious situation exists when an elected official who counts on the funds generated by development to pay for his/her salary (or less nefariously, counts on the money for a portion of the city police department’s budget), can apply pressure on staff to render a favorable decision.

It’s one thing to lose a job because the funds dried up, it’s quite another to get sacked (and blackballed) by a municipal official because you took an ethical stand by refusing to rubber-stamp a bad development just to get the application and building permit money.

Look very closely at the various city budgets to see exactly how large this temptation is. I believe a recent mayor in a nearby city even publicly declared that approving development (contrary to the city’s own comprehensive plan, and the county’s comprehensive plan and ordinances) was absolutely necessary to pay for city services.

Uhmmm.

If we assume that corruption is running rampant – that any temptation is succumbed to – then the organizational structure of the cities virtually guarantees that the public hearing process is damaged. Not because the staff person may answer untruthfully on re-direct because they are worried about next week’s paycheck – but because they are worried about their career.

Of course solutions are abundant. “Remove all decisions from the political process”; this is done in Vancouver, BC where the Mayor & Council have no say in land use decisions – though in a litigeous US this may not work (and may run against our representative democratic sentiments). “Combine all land use decisions into a single regional process”; this is done in the Portland area via the Metro (a regional land use & transportation planning and decision-maker). This latter option was tried in Ada County almost thirty years ago via ACOG (Ada Council of Governments) and resoundly rejected by the electorate, AHCD is the only hold over from that period (and it’s not uniformly loved by growthaphobes).

It’s still possible that an ACOG-type organization could still work (fully underwritten by tax payer money) – and still stay compliant with the Local Land Use Planning Act state statute. Per the statute the cities could disolve their respective planning & development departments (and commissions) and allow the county to take over the entire process. This would remove the local jingoistic bickering, any funds collected for fees would be redistributed to the respective local community (and spent however they wish), and no staff person could feel threatened by a mayor or councilmember. Each city would still have its own comprehensive plan, yet that plan would never be at odds with the best interests of any other community. Growth decisions would be made on the basis of what is best for the region, not what may be best for a single jurisdiction. Of course to work most smoothly, all transportation planning and development would have to be combined with this county-based development services department. This would inlude ACHD as well as COMPASS (as the federally designated Metropolitian Planning Organization).

Now all you have to get is the cities and the county to agree to agree. Good luck 😉

Clippity, Your statement, “forced to play with a stacked deck.” is your assumption on how this issue will play out. Your thought proccess and decisions will always be skewed when you believe your statement above.

John P’s organization seems to be on the right track in working with all involved. The opposite of this is Savetheplateau.org. It has snide remarks and commentary aimed at both Skyline and the county all over it. Some of his tactics have worked while others have not.

Thanks to George for talking about the funding for Development Services, I agree with his points. But to further expand, Guardian’s library idea would work very well with a Ada Council of Goverments. Let’s just create an all encompassing agency to govern all – libraries, police, land use, etc…. Forget about the apes and gorilla, here comes King Kong.

Clippity, I was trying to point out the different presentation techniques at both websites and not the content.