Support for Preserving Midway Lands

Gather all Tools in the Toolbox

by Robin M Johnson

Colleen Bonner opened the public hearing held Wednesday, June 28, with this statement. "It’s really more of a public town meeting, but I want to handle it like we do our public meetings. I want you to be respectful to one another, none of the clapping and cheering, that takes a lot of time, there’s a lot of people here tonight who want to talk, so I would prefer that we just make your statements. 

"If somebody has already made a statement that you agree with that you really like rather than reiterate that whole thing you could just say I support so and so’s comments on that. I’m hoping we can do this in an hour, but I don’t really want to limit tonight’s time, I feel like this is just important enough that we hear the information. I would like to limit the time on the speakers, if we could limit that to a couple of minutes so that everybody that wants to can make comments."

Public comments on bonding in this article fall in three general categories, those who are all for bonding, those who see bonding as one of many tools that can be used to preserve open space and want to explore all options, and those who prefer looking at other options to preserve open space rather than bonding. Regarding the timing of the bonding there are two camps, some are eager to get the issue on this year's ballot, others prefer taking it slow and educating the public before putting the issue on the ballot. 

Paul Berg, citizen and local engineer, was first to comment. Berg set the tone for the meeting by stating that there are many tools in the toolbox for preserving open space. Berg said, "Twelve to thirteen years ago I served on a land use committee and we tried to come up with solutions for open space. We actually thought this day would never come. It’s great that this is being proposed. As someone who represents most of the developments in Midway, not all, I would welcome the opportunity to have this as an option; I guess in the tool kit, so to speak, of land use to have open space that’s bonded for, that option. I will say one thing about bonding, having helped several school districts in the state with their projects and their bonding process, normally it takes at least six months, and sometimes a year, to really get the word out so that a bond can be successful. I’m a little fearful that his might be too late for this election. And sometimes with bonds you only get one shot; so we ought to keep that in mind too, you really want to get the education process out there and not just have it be a quick thing. In case this bond fails, which I hope it succeeds, but I would like the council to kind of consider two things in regards to open space.

The biggest take away from the public hearing was there are many
tools in the toolbox for preserving open space. Bonding is just one tool.
Photo credit: (not my) toolbox, by Erich Ferdinand, Flickr
link to photo: https://www.flickr.com/photos/erix/6788494881/

"One, the best existing tool that you have right now is the planned unit development (PUD) model. Any planned unit development comes with 50 percent open space. However, there have been some slight changes in that ordinance that have made the development of PUD’s a little bit tougher. One is the fact that it has to have at least 40 units in it. The fear is that the home owner’s association won’t work if it’s less than 40, but when you consider a lot of the areas are developed as PUD’s only have two units per acre, or one and a half units per acre, but yet there’s a ten acre minimum, well, you’re only going to have twenty units or fifteen units. And so those properties end up going towards the subdivision that optimally only has fifteen percent open space. I think we need to do more to encourage, or at least not make it so difficult on PUD’s, simply because they come with 50 percent open space."

A few days after the meeting Bonner said the challenge with PUD's under 40 units relates to road maintenance. In a PUD roads are private and maintained by the Home Owners Association (HOA). In city code the road standards are loosened for a PUD, for example the roads are not as wide, there is no curb and gutter, and they generally only last about 15 years, where roads built to city standards and maintained by the city last twenty years or more before they need to be redone. 

Bonner said about fifteen years after PUD's began to be allowed in Midway the smaller PUD's, some with only five or six units, others with about twenty units, the HOA's started asking the city to take over their private roads because they couldn't collect enough money to pay for replacing their roads. The city then decided a PUD needed to have enough units to spread the cost of road maintenance between and lessen the financial burden for home owners. 

Berg suggested a second existing tool for open space. He said the ordinance is still in the code, but the 2009 version is the best. 'The open space requirements may be met by purchasing or providing property, development rights, or conservation easements on other properties deemed of value to the community and approved by the city council on a value for value ratio. Such areas may be hillsides, stream corridors, agricultural lands.' 

"I find this one interesting they had the foresight of this back twelve, thirteen years ago 'fields on Main Street, and other open space areas within the city limits.' Then it goes on to explain 'a density bonus of one unit per acre could be afforded to a project within hills and byes, open space areas that are of value' ... This is largely been neglected, and the few attempts in the city to make this work to preserve areas have just kind of been met with some bureaucratic issues; yet this is a fairly straight forward ordinance that was put in place, or recommended by that committee in case bonding would never happen. So I think we have some other tools, it would be great if bonding was added, but I think we ought to look" at tools already available. 

Nathan Lowry said, "I appreciate the things Paul Berg brought up ... I am a member of Pure Midway. I am a strong proponent of individual property rights, it’s caused me great consternation to talk about all these things, I am not in favor of taking land from people, I am not in favor of forcefully reducing density for property owners. I want to see Midway full of farmers, I don’t care for city parks, I want to see farmers. Open space, to me, is hay fields and cows and horses, so that’s what I hope to get at. I am strongly in favor of the open space bond because, as a proponent of individual property rights, I think this honors that. It fairly compensates those individuals for what they have."

Michelle Todd said, "I agree with the gentleman before, with what really I’m interested in seeing, the hay fields, and the horses, and the cows that there are here, in spite of my hay fever ... Two points I want to make: One, I don’t know if there’s a reason why we couldn’t do this, but whenever there is fund raising for the things that I give money to, there are frequently matching funds and it seems to me that as individuals, some of us are so passionate about it ... I’d give a contribution if somebody could raise that money for these purposes ... that’s what I would like to see happen is some ability for us to contribute outside of our taxes. 

"The other point I want to make is I’ve heard about this resort tax before, and I know that in larger cities, and in the state, frequently when you’re trying to get a certain business you give tax incentives, and I don’t know what the occupancy rate is for Homestead and (Zermatt) … it seems to me ... if there’s a possibility to get another resort here then we should try to do that."

Leslie Miller said, "I think this is a great first step, in discussing whether or not we want to bond for open space and really talking about the value of open space in this community. I think that before you even decide whether you can bond or want to bond that yes, the gentleman earlier said, yes that bonding is a tricky deal. You need time, you need to be persuasive, there’s a lot that goes into bonding. I don’t know if there is enough time before the next election, however, I do think there’s enough time for a charrette, and I do think that that would be a valuable practice for this community is to have like an open house, maybe bring in a few people to, experts on open space, on bonding, the value of it, and talk about some different ideas. Talk about what you want to prioritize, do you want agricultural land, do you want land like corridors, do you want parks, do you want wetlands parks, I mean there is such a range of not just types of open space, but uses for open space. 

"I hope that the council will initiate another opportunity for the community to get together and actually have, sort of a working plan, you know, put together some things and say, this is what we would like as a community, or this isn’t what we would like, but that would be really, really beneficial, I think, in guiding us forward. 

"Even if the community decides to bond, that’s just a leverage; there are so many other opportunities

that are exciting for the community to engage in. Non profits that will contribute, fund raisers that will add to that, so it’s not just the bond, that’s just a piece of the greater puzzle. So I just want to conclude by saying that I think that there are private donors, I think there are opportunities for conservation easements, and if we don’t act soon it’s just going to be too late, you’re just going to lose your beautiful little valley here. I think everybody senses that. And I think this is a great way to preserve the rural character of Midway, our community, and it’s an investment in our future. I am an advocate for open space, I have worked for probably most of my career and my life for open space, and I totally would support an open space bond, but I do think we need to have a charrette, and probably an open space committee needs to be established and start talking about these sort of things."

Regarding bonding Rob Dallas said, "While it may be a good tool, it doesn’t also buy you a lot, there’s no way you can bond for all the open space in the city ... You can get little pieces, and you can get stuff that makes sense, but I think there are other things ... we can do in how we do the planning and ... zoning." 

Dallas said when the master planning was done last year the land use committee he served on talked about other options that may be available; an overlay zone, for example, zoning that overlays other zones in the city designed to protect view corridors. He said coming into Midway on River Road there is open space on Dutch Fields before the round about and at the round about and there’s also Lacey Lane with open space after the round about. 

"You drive through next time and imagine, Lacey Lane on that round about, if those houses were right up next to the road you wouldn’t be able to see Timp like you do today ... but because of how that subdivision was created, ... it still maintains somewhat that rural feel, what I think that many of us are after, we want the views of Timpanogos, we want the views of Snake Creek. We want these things to be maintained, but there’s ways to do it, other than just bonding. 

"I think bonding may be a good tool, but I think there’s a lot of other things that we can look at that long term may have a greater impact. And they were able to create a Lacey Lane the same density they would have if they had a subdivision where all the lots were just one acre … so there’s other tools we can look at and I’d just like to encourage that we do stuff like that. And look into overlay zones and help create some of that, maintain some of that rural feel."

Bonner asked Michael Henke, city planner, "to share just a little bit about how our code works now and some of the incentives that we do have that are in place already as far as preserving open space, in the way the code is today."

Henke said, "Currently in our code we’ve got different types of subdivisions, there’s the Planned Unit Development, when there’s 50 percent open space requirement, the standard subdivision with 15 percent open space, then we have the rural preservation subdivision and we’ve had a few applications for that where there’s one unit every five acres. So that’s really low density. 

"We have a moratorium in place right now to address those specific issues. What can we do with our code to extend setbacks on collector roads, for instance, so we can keep those view corridors ... we are going to work on enhancing our code to lower density and create more open space as we go through this process. So we have a pretty aggressive agenda the rest of this year to address code text amendments."

Bonner said most of the ideas to work on came out of the discussions during the general plan revision. The moratorium gives the city time to implement the things Rob Dallas mentioned. 

Ken said, "I was actively involved with the community that passed the first open space program in the state of Oregon. And it was a fantastic program. And when we did a lot of research prior to moving forward with that I had an opportunity to go to Boulder, Colorado, first city in the nation ... to preserve their green belt area, their forest land. They were concerned about urban sprawl. That was 1967, 1972 Jefferson County, adjacent to Boulder, Colorado, passed an open space program to preserve scenic vistas, agricultural land, and many of the things that they felt was important for their community. 

"We had an opportunity in Ashlynn, Oregon, much like Midway, in that I would attend planning commission meetings, with the planning director, and at every opportunity, every meeting we went to in the late 80’s there was discussion about development. Every one opposed the developments that were being proposed, even though the land use laws allowed that. So a group of us got together and decided: What can we do? How can we change this? How can we preserve open space and still allow development? What we learned from other communities, I think this is a key, is that it involves the community. 

"We held about six different charettes in the community to build support for the open space program. What we looked at, first of all, why do we want to preserve open space? Everyone got together and came up with why it was important to preserve open space in our community. Number two was, what criteria should we use to determine what open space is, ... again that decision was made by the community ... that was sort of our guide, our guiding point. 

"The third thing we did is ... developed an open space map. They determined what properties were the most important to preserve, based upon the criteria ... the community decided on what property was important to preserve, whether it be agricultural, scenic vistas, whatever it is. With that information we were able to organize a group of citizens together and went forth and passed ... an official open space map that designated property that we wanted to move forward to purchase. "

"We also had the opportunity to be the first ones to talk to land owners. If they were on the map we had the opportunity to approach the land owners, they don’t have to sell to us, they don’t have to do anything, but we had the opportunity to talk to them first about the potential of selling the land to the city, donating the land to the city, whatever it may be. 

"Now the rubber meets the road because we had to come up with a funding source ... We looked at all different options, including buying the land, in Ashlynn we passed a five percent food and beverage tax. The only sales tax in the state of Oregon. When you went to Ashlynn you paid five percent on your prepared food and beverage at the restaurant. The reason we could do that, we had over 300,000 tourists that visited our community every year. 

"If you look at every community that’s been successful on an open space program it starts with the grass roots, it starts with citizens like this meeting, moving forward and presenting ideas, getting support from the community, and then move forward and put it on the ballot and so forth. And so as one lady said, I’m a strong advocate, 

"We probably never will get it on the ballot this year, but we will have an opportunity for buy in by the community, support of the community. So that would be my recommendation is that we move forward and outline a process, a public involvement process, to engage the entire community in this very important decision. We should aim high, we should have vision, and I think this is the way we should go about doing it."

Bonner said, "Ken, thank you, and I appreciate the support of doing it in a process that’s not a speedy process, but one that’s very methodical and very thought through. So I appreciate your comments."

Later in the meeting Ken added, "I can say without hesitation we never lost a piece of property that’s on the map, that we went after, to a developer. The reason is because once you have the money, whether it’s bonding, or sales tax ... the most important tool in the tool box is tax free interest. ... because you have the power to do it, you’re a city, you can offer that."

Ken said the second tool  is capital gains tax. If a property owner donates half the property to the city it would greatly reduce the capital gains tax. Developers do not have these tools, in many cases cities can buy land cheaper and provide better benefits to the land owner. First the city must "have the resources to do that. That is the whole key. ... I can honestly say we purchased a lot of beautiful land, hilltop land … we never lost a development because we had the mechanism in place to go forth to do it, and I think that’s a very important point." 

Beth Lawrence said, "I am totally in favor of floating a bond ... As far as raising revenues for this, and as a part of the bond or aside from the bond, I would like to know if the state does buy General Obligation Bonds, of this type, do they buy open land bonds?"

Brad Wilson said, "I have never heard they do. But I could certainly contact organizations like the impact fund board and ask if they do. It would surprise me if they did."

Lawrence said, "Another thing, you know we’re worried about the entertainment, resort community tax going away, well, Midway, if we preserve our open lands and keep it as a place that everyone wants to come to do their recreation, perhaps we should have a really more, a welcoming type of, we would welcome more resorts to come into the valley, that are done well and beautifully, and that would take care of that problem. And it would also alleviate more development and a lot of commercial that we don’t want.

"I guess I would say that I would be happy to have my taxes raised pennies a day to preserve the agriculture, and I want to say, too, that a lot of people are saying, well, we can do this with how we do our zoning, but my point about that would be, yes, I think we need to address that, too; but I know that if a PUD has 50 percent open space I don’t get in the car and go to a subdivision to walk around, personally. I would rather have open space, actually, that I can use and enjoy. So I really think that for me I would rather pay for, to support open lands bonds rather than have my taxes raised anyway because C-4 developments are coming in and more people are coming in and we need more schools, more post office, more everything, and infrastructure that we would have to pay for with our taxes. So thank you, and I’m very encouraged by this tonight."

Amanda Peterson said, “One that I have not heard mentioned or looked at in the code is what’s called TDR, which are Transfer of Density Right, which I think is an excellent tool for once you take the zoning code and you identify your open space, whether it be through linear parks, or the agriculture, whatever, is that then that density that the code allows gets moved to a receiving zone, so you have a sending zone and a receiving zone so that you accept the fact that you are willing to have high density commercial in certain areas, or residential, and that if somebody has that zone they can take that density right and put it over there, but first you have to come up with that map, but that transfer of density right works really well.

“The second thing is I think …  connective linear parks are helpful. I am very concerned about the increase of traffic and children on the roads and bicycles, and how dangerous it has become, so linear parks, or trails can connect open space and get people in a safe, non motorized transportation corridor.  I think through this next six months if you can look carefully at how to manage the density and move it to places where you want it to go and keep the open areas that you like, I think it would be of significant value.”

Bonner asked Wilson if when he talked about buying density was that the idea, to transfer density from one place to another?

Wilson said, “I was talking about buying the density outright.”

Henke said, “In our general plan (it) talks about TDR’s. That’s something we’ve looked at in the past; the county’s looked at it also in the north fields. You have to set up, like Amanda explained, a sending zone and a receiving zone, and so we would identify on a map areas where we want to move density off properties, and relocate that density somewhere else in the city. Usually there is a multiplier that comes into play with this type of a situation because you have to match equal values to make it work, and so overall you’re really increasing density when you use that mechanism. And that’s acceptable sometimes, that’s something to consider, if you want to have open space in some areas of the city.

“There was a large study done on the north fields from out of Washington D. C., I have a copy of that in my office, and really, the end result of that is it’s very difficult to make that work on the north fields. You really have to make density a commodity that is sought after in order for it to work. And so you have to have low density in certain areas so developers will want to buy that density. It’s a difficult thing to make work, it’s not impossible, but it’s something we have discussed, and it’s something we need to consider exploring. There are a lot of tools out there, besides what we’ve talked about tonight, where we can gather open space."

Katie Nobel said, "I am a member of Pure Midway, and I guess I am a bit of a hypocrite because I was all for putting on the brakes on C-4 and when it comes to preserving the open space I just want to put my foot on the gas and say, Let’s go before it’s all gone. So, I wrote a little statement here that I wanted to read."

Nobel's statement, "We’re all here because we love and care about Midway. Whether you live in a condo in The Hamlet, a Watts development, a historic home or on a farm, whether you moved in last week, or your ancestors settled the valley, your love and your voice is equally powerful. Everyone in this room has been working tirelessly to protect Midway’s rural heritage. There are many ways of doing this and a bond can be a powerful tool to preserve open space. It’s just one tool of many. 

Also a bond can be leverage to get agricultural grants and other matching funds. Those dollars can further be leveraged by buying development rights instead of buying land outright. There is also a very high tax write off for developers who donate a portion of their development rights. So the way that we see this done typically is that if the city buys development rights, maybe they buy a hundred development rights, a developer would donate the other hundred and they get a tax write off equal to fifty percent of the gain. If they operate as a farm it’s a hundred percent. The tax stuff is really complicated, it’s confusing, I’m not going to go into it, it’s on our website and it’s worth understanding. As a result the bond dollar can be stretched in triplicate. 

"Plus bond funds can reserve large amounts of contiguous space. Zoning is a powerful tool, but it doesn’t always preserve contiguous open space, which is critical. If you go to Park City there is the ... Swanner Nature Preserve, the area around the White Barn and Round Valley were all purchased, I believe they were all purchased with bond dollars and with a kind of a community collaborative.

"What we don’t want to see is the bonds negatively affect people who are struggling to pay for it. We’d love to explore the opportunity for people of means to put money into a fund where people who can’t afford the bond could apply for a grant to offset, so if they can’t afford the extra hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, however much it is, then that fund would help them afford that because it isn’t fair to make people who can’t pay for the bond, and we’d like to see if that’s a possibility. 

"Open space can make a lot of financial sense for the city … when you look at studies they show that for every dollar spent on open space a city will gain between four to ten dollars on tourism in a year. So that’s a powerful figure to consider. What we really need to be careful of is that we don’t introduce both bonds at the same time because it could end up killing both bonds, so I’d really like to see that we co ordinate with Wasatch County."

Mickey Oksner said in last year's general plan revision meetings most of the things discussed tonight were addressed in favor of preserving open space. "We changed the R-1-23 zone to include 50 percent, which didn’t exist, sensitive areas have been modified, setbacks have been increased, in virtually every committee there was a discussion about how can we preserve open space. A linear park is included, going from Burgi Lane and all the way down to Main Street."

"I want to ask a really quick question, if we agree to bond can we take it out in parcels, do we have to take all ten million or six million at the same time? Or can we take two million out and purchase, and then come back for another two?"

Wilson said, "Could we say bank some of the money for awhile and spend two million, and use another two million later, is that what you’re saying?"

Oksner said, "Yeah, are we obligated for the full six million or ten million from the get go or are we obligated going forward as we purchase?"

Wilson said, "If we get a six million dollar bond, yes, everyone would be obligated to pay that, if we chose to say let’s do a two million dollar one this year, and then maybe another two million dollar bond two or three years later that would be another option."

Oksner served as planning commission chairman until March of this year. He said of all developments that came before the planning commission, he doesn't think there was one that built to the maximum density allowed for their zone. "Almost everyone that came in if they put ten units in they could have put twelve, something along those lines."

In regards to the C-4 zone Oksner said it is an integral part of the general plan. "If we can take six million dollars and buy this land, we can intelligently develop the C-4, get the revenue to offset the lost revenue from the resort zone, and still take six million dollars out and purchase additional property ... This is an all of the above scenario that we need to work with, we need to use the C-4 zone intelligently to develop, maybe include 50 percent open space in C-4. No reason it has to be 55 feet (height limit), it can be 35 feet. But that needs to be done to offset what we may lose ... It’s not just the bond, it’s not just the C-4, it’s all of the above. And I think that the commission and the council worked pretty hard to arrive at a reasonable path going forward. And it is, as one person mentioned, three generations forward, we need to think about that. I do think we need to bond."

Lloyd MacIntosh said, "First of all I’d like to thank city council for allowing this meeting, and to thank the forefathers who did such a good job of setting all this up. Now we’re allowed this blessing, the fact that we’re all here is a blessing that you shouldn’t take lightly."

MacIntosh said he is not against bonding but expressed concern that open space be clearly defined. "We have a little document called wetlands ... they are not buildable," He thinks developers are trying to use the wetlands as their open space on their developments. 

MacIntosh said, "We’re kneeling to the developers. Our forefathers didn’t do that. They ran Midway like they ran Midway. The Bonners, the Kohlers, the Probsts, the VanWagoners, you guys have been here for life, and your families have been here for life, and you know what, they did a great job. So I don’t envy the responsibility you have ... the reason I’m here is because of what your families did. So I’m humbled by that and I don’t want to make light of anything, I think we just need to manage this in a well thought out way, and not let the developers take advantage of what we have, because we don’t get it back, once we give it to them, it’s gone." 

Rene Holm said, "I have lived here for twenty four years and I do not live in a Watts development, I live on a piece of property that I know the farmer was grateful to get rid of, because it’s wet. And he was grateful that I would buy it. 

"We have a group of people, however you feel about Pure Midway, I happen to be on the board, ... you have a group of people who are very willing to do a lot of work, and have already done a lot of work on this, free of charge. I mean, we care about this place and we care about people like, Lisa, your brother who is farming. We want to see him be able to farm. He is losing grazing lands hand over fist. I mean, it feels like it to me." 

Holm said the tools funding would provide could help someone who wants to remain farming. The McAllister Fund multiplies money by providing a grant that requires matching funds. She said, "We hope that the city would say, oh, here, you came up with that money, here we’ll give you some money. And that’s not necessarily true, but if we had that in our toolbox, we had that money in our toolbox we could use it for different things. She said it doesn’t "have to be just for purchasing land ... maybe just a very small portion of it will be used for purchasing actual land."

Going back to her original point Holm said "This is kind of like a war. And we’re willing to help you fight it."

Bonner said, "When we look at it, I think we all have to work together. I think ... you take the concerned citizens and you put together a committee maybe to look in to investigating some of this information and then maybe use the brains of those who’ve done it before, and have some good insight ... "

Holm said, "We can’t do it unless we all work together."

Bonner said, "I really do think that if we are going to do it and get the correct tool box and the correct means, then we need to take our time and do it right so that it’s done with some well thought out experience from others and before we jump into maybe just quick doing a bond, and then wish we’d have done things differently, because all of a sudden we have a bond and then what do we do with that money? I think it’s kind of putting the cart before the horse, maybe, but that’s something that maybe needs to be discussed."

Holm said, "Another way to look at it is you have momentum right now and you have people willing to work very hard, a lot of people to work on this who have already done a lot of the back work on it, and who are willing to go out and inform the community. ... So, you know, we can look at it both ways, maybe we do need to slow down, but maybe we just need to do it. You have a lot of communities if you read on, if you study about other areas that have passed open space bonds, they’re amazed at how quickly it happens. And people jump on board and say, amazing, do it again. Those are the stories we’ve heard."

Bonner said, "Appreciate that. Okay, I think we’re good, tonight, for the public comment time. We will have other opportunities for the public to voice their opinions. I appreciate the turn out tonight. I appreciate the comments that were made, the well thought out things that we’ve heard; a lot of good information for us as a council to go back and to make some decisions." 

Two follow up articles are still coming. One on public comment against bonding. Another on the council's take on what they heard and the direction they think open space preservation should take in Midway City. Also, look for an article on Property Taxes, it has been updated to include public comments made during this public hearing.