Wasatch County's Open Space Plan

Working to Decrease Density

by Robin M Johnson

Mayor Colleen Bonner invited Steve Ferrell, Wasatch County council member, to share information from discussions in Wasatch County council meetings over the last couple of months regarding open space, density, and annexations from the county into local cities and towns. Ferrell took about four minutes of Midway City council's regular meeting during a public hearing on bonding for open space on Wednesday, June 28. . He followed Brad Wilson, city recorder, who outlined issues the city would face if they pursued a bond for open space. Bonner said,  "I’m going to turn the time over to Councilman Ferrell."

Ferrell said, Thank you mayor. The county’s been very concerned about this open space issue for quite some time. In our June 7 meeting we took a vote and we decided to explore the option of going out for a bond, either for 2017 or 2018 to help preserve farm land or agricultural land here in the valley."

Ferrell said the council was scheduled to discuss the possibility of creating the Wasatch Open Lands Board at their regular meeting on Wednesday, July 5.  Ferrell said the board would be an Interlocal Agreement between Heber City, Midway City, and Wasatch County. The purpose of the board is to serve as an advisory council to the Wasatch County council. 

Ferrell said the Wasatch Open Lands Board will "explore and advise the council on what properties to consider and on how to go about purchasing the development rights, or the use rights, on these parcels. We’d like to use the idea of preserving agricultural land, because that way all we’d be doing is putting a conservation easement on the land, or putting a deed restriction on the property in perpetuity, that has to be used for agriculture. The property owner will maintain the property and keep it in production."

The county is proposing a board made up of seven members, two citizens from Heber City, two citizens from Midway CIty, and three citizens at large from Wasatch County. Ferrell said, "We hope we can get things moving there, our purpose, our idea is that once we get some seed money we can go to the USDA and look at the possibility of getting some help to preserve agriculture through the farm fields, or work with the state through the agricultural fund, to get some help on buying these rights. We don’t want to buy the property, we want to buy the rights to development."

Concerning density Ferrell said, "We’re also looking at slowing growth. In our last meeting we did away with all the discretionary density in our zones, so right now anything on the valley floor that has access to a sewer in a base zone is 1.3 acres per unit. If it doesn’t have access to the sewer it’s five acres."

Wasatch County council is currently working with Utah State Senator Van Tassell to pass legislation giving the county council the right to declare Wasatch County an Urban Farm Area. Ferrell said, "Right now a farm that isn’t anything over five acres is taxed on use value and not on market value. That helps to keep it in production. But as soon as you put a house on it, it no longer qualifies; you have to have six acres, one acre for the house and five acres" for the farm. Use value taxes are less the fair market value taxes. The acre the house sits on is taxed at market value, the five farm acres are taxed at use value.

North Fields with Memorial Hill and the Wasatch Mountains in the background.
Photo taken June, 2011 (c) Robin M Johnson

According to Ferrell this gives the property to create a green belt. Declaring the county an Urban farm area would allow it to reduce the amount of property allowed to qualify for the use tax and possibly create more open space and a larger green belt. Ferrell said, "We would like to do what Davis and Salt Lake counties have done and extend that to two and a half acres; so if a person has a five acre lot and he builds a house, he’s not taxed at market value on the other four acres, and that may encourage them to keep that as open space and not necessarily be forced to sell it because he can’t afford the tax burden that’s added to it."

Finally Ferrell addressed the issue of developers requesting annexation into cities in order to increase the density allowed on their proposed development. The county is looking into creating an annexation policy by working with local municipalities like Heber City, Midway City, Charleston, Daniel, etc. The goal is when a request is made to a municipality fir annexation into a city or town that the property owner is required to annex at the base zone of the county for that particular parcel or group of parcels. The property would stay at the base zone until the municipality can demonstrate to the county a need to change the zoning. 

Ferrell said, "Right now we’re seeing a lot of people annex into the cities to get increased density and we’d like to slow that down somewhat. So that’s where we’re headed, we’ve got to certainly work with Midway City on that."

Bonner thanked Ferrell for the county's perspective on open space issues. 

The next two articles will focus on public comments to be followed by council members statements.