Joint Wasatch County Heber City Meeting

On August 14, the county and the city held a joint meeting to discuss issues of growth, annexation and working together. The primary focus for the first half of the meeting was working together to facilitate the Red Ledges development as a joint project.
Below is a 'paraphrase' "transcript" extracts of the meeting - an interesting discussion. The numbers indicate the times from the beginning of the meeting on the recording. (No minutes of this meeting are found on the County website.) Phillips or DP = Dave Phillips, Heber City Mayor; Anderson or MA = Mark Anderson; Heber City Manager; Lange = Terry Lange, City Council; Price or JP = Jay Price County Council Chair; Davis = Mike Davis, County Manager and other members.


9:40 Philips; This is unique (working together) If Red Ledges makes sense and feels right - It’ll be a landmark . It'll benefit the county for a long time. If you are willing to consider we can take it to the next step.

11:30 Phillips: $1.2 million in property taxes to city on the whole project Red Ledges
Price: Cost to city?
Anderson; I can’t say that (have) figured it
??? Red Ledges says 40% second homes - I don’t trust those developers

12:30 MA: was 1800 ERU's down to 1400 their marketing says the number may go done more.
Davis: Could be different because it’s in the valley, most of secondary homes are out of valley
Phillips: They (RL and developers) say more secondary because not much service to secondary homes. (Italicized comments added)

Lange: some history

15:00 Phillips: We’ve shared our vision
Price; Questions from council ??
Farrell; With a joint planning impasse who has final say?
Phillips: We need a fall back plan - this is what we are going to do. We have differences on safety issues

17:20 DP; divide fees based on ERU’s Committee to work on it In the end we're living here, this is for the folks down the road. We’re not getting anything out of it.
JP; what are your fees?
(Most of the discussion seems to center on how much can be collected in fees - NOT how it affects the future)

18:20 City fees way low - Anderson: escrow actual costs.
Price: 5% for engineering 3% for water we get em for 8% Barely covering costs with that.

19:50 Anderson; we see our boundaries as being restricted this provides us with growth areas to west.
PC Zone City; 40% open space 5500 sqft lots 2 units per acre. (New) McCluskey (60 acres/120 units) nw of mcNaughtan (between McN and city)

Davis; Annex to collect city taxes? YES
Davis; You will annex Wasatch View acres. Illegal without that. Will you Annex Gary Conrad above greener Hills.

22:40 Anderson; Annexation plan dynamic. People might want to annex from twin creeks SSD
Davis; Draw a lIne ?
DP; what are you trying to say Mike - just say it.
Davis; we aren't trying to annex Twin Creek into Heber; we have a line at the city.

23:24 Phillips; Response to Jul 6 Co letter County wants TROZ (16.18) hard to do if you can't set city boundary
Phillips; what do want us to say? To annex Burns without view acrew would be a peninsula. (Illegal)
Davis; we need to know where the city will stop.
Phillips; Maybe I’m reading something into this - I apologize you are asking where do we stop.

25:45 Davis; will the city consider the next to the east
Price; Scott just bot that property and will want the same consideration

26: 15 Davis: TROZ offers higher density adjacent to city. M (meant P160) zone is 160 per home when adjacent to city becomes potentially M zone "with the density we are going to see in the Burns development" (RL & mountain Zone not in TROZ)
If it stays P160, $12 million is very expensive for 40 homes, (Actually $300K/ lot is not too exorbitant these days in the valley) If he is adjacent to city there’s a potential for m zone
Shari Lazenby; How big is the TROZ Davis; TROZ = 2 things Heber annexation and adjacent to that area (NO- not clear, seems to want to include RL as adjacent see 16.08.01)

28:49 Kohler; county trying to give comparative density next to city - you allow 4 per acre 1 acre looks good compare to what you’ve got. If the city was not annexing we would not give as much density than is being considering now. How do we get around that?
Lange; We stayed of ? annexation makes your property more profitable. (Why do we continue to worry about the profitability of empty land and not about the taxes caused on the current property owners) Why do we have to fill in Wasatch view acres they don't want in Behind there they may want to - Cove

31:52 Kohler; If the city keeps annexing up the hill how do we get open space anywhere? If we don't do something you will keep annexing.
Lange; Get a petition (for annexation) and let’s talk about it.
Kohler; The assumption is if we don’t do something, you will so we have to do something.
Farrell??; if we have successful joint planning on RL, I don’t know why you abandon it.
DP;. With PPD we can create open space, our PPD give open space - bring your 160 acres and will talk about it.

33:34 Kohler; The leverage is always there (annexation) they can always come to the city and get more. If the city continues to annex to increase revenue. We have two different ideas. (Open space vs. revenue??)
DP; I like the plan for McN because it has open space, not a grid square subdivision. The rest of the Burns property should be more open than that.
Kohler; He didn’t spend $12mill without expecting something We have to break that expectations that higher densities are available.

36:30 Anderson; philosophical differences. SLC, Summit and Wasatch are pro development. It would be nice to have areas to grow into. Avoid the competition, (between city and county) sit down and plan something for this valley rather than add a lot of density
DP; It terrible that you have to make the decision based on us. If all of the growth had gone from the city outward we wouldn’t be having this problem. 50 years from now we have x people maybe we'll say we should have done better. Maybe tonight is the beginning of the game. This may good for Burns but what problem will it create. Next people come along and change everything
Price; That’s a mistaken attitude. County hasn't gone out promoted development. People have come in and promoted development.
??? ; We haven't either.

39:45 Price; Apparently you aren't feeling the pressure that we are getting to slow development. What are Heber citizens saying?
Lange; Developers always want more development.
KC; people say shut it off
DP;: 95% say I’ve got my place - stop. they don't want more subdivision. They want their open space at someone else’s expense.

Price; Mark, you’re saying leave the open space in the county so we can expand into it. We're saying develop in the county at less density.
DP; Take that to RL and work together. They already given up some density since they started. (Actually they started out high). Then we go to the next guy west and say do you want to build something.
I‘d like to see that guy 6th south collaborate with neighbor. for open space. Maybe one acre is the best we can get.

44:00 DP; we need to work this out
Price; OK, How do we deal with the transition to county
DP; county is more open than city. Where does leave us in the city with the property owners that want to develop. If we say let’s develop everything in the county form this day forward where does that leave the city?
Davis; Is it the government responsibility to maximize the profit to someone that owns property or let them develop under guidelines that are socially compatible with the people that live here?

DP; By limiting them to one house per one or five acres we are taking away their property rights. If I’m saying something wrong, let me know.
Davis: City protested Jordanelle. If the guy wants to build on 40 and River Rd. why not let him, why not let him (under your philosophy?

DP; Because I’d like him to build a it out on 12th South.
Lange; back in the pre Davis days, Mathis came to city and asked for support for stopping commercial north of town. We agreed. I voted no on Southfield Rd annexation turned down. We turned it down many times and have been harassed.

49:15 My wife’s nephew wants to develop condos flowing north into north fields on 105 acres. I told him to stop talking. I ask Val and you what’s the density there, I’m still skeptical with the Bypass road thru that property. Because I thought you guys would protest.

50:54 DP; it's property owners right to annex, city makes decision whether to accept. (City has the right and responsibility to set the annexation zone and protect the welfare of the community)

52:26 Davis; we have no say in annexation.