Be that as it may...I will address some of the
issues raised in the article.
My comments were not meant to draw a line in the sand. However,
I would like the City (and I don't mean Dale per se) to provide
the answers to the following questions to have crediblity in this
discussion. I have an open mind--honest.
1) Why is the City P&Z not working with the County P&Z,
or better yet, with citizen representatives located in or
near the area of impact in planning for the area? Decisions
without representation makes for poor politics...unless
one can get away with it, of course.
2) According the draft, areas within a quarter mile of
the city are considered imminent for development. And yet,
just 2 weeks ago the City Council suspended an ordinance
requiring the provision of services because it would
have to fork out money to connect services to a
development at considerable taxpayer expense. And
this is a City that wants to "aggressively annex" areas
next to the City? Who is going to pay?
3) Dale and I may have to disagree on the protection of
open space afforded by Goal number 9. Identify, protect,
and "where possible" acquire lands is the language. First,
the city does not have to own/acquire the land to protect
the open space. The City is struggling with
its own linear parks...how is it going to ever have the resources
to acquire land in the area of impact?
What we would see with this goal is the City development model,
a few acres of park here, a few acres there--applied to a large landscape.
A piecemeal solution to a larger scale issue.
Second, the burden for protecting natural and scenic landscapes
should not fall entirely on the City, but rather should
result from cooperative arrangements with County residents.
Some residents (such as myself) are more than happy to protect
open space if we are led to believe that certain areas will be
protected. If we are not given such encouragement, we will
take the money and run. We all lose with this scenario.
4) As a measure of the City's resolve to work with the
County in the area of impact, how many applications to
circumvent the 40 acre Ag/Forestry zone have been requested since its
passage and how many exceptions has the City granted?
I have personally observed at least 2. I suspect several more.
-- Greg Brown (gregb@uidaho.edu) Computer Services and College of Forestry,Wildlife,& Range Sciences University of Idaho Moscow, ID 83843 (208) 885-2126 Fax: (208) 885-7539