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Teton Valley commissioners call for development moratorium

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Teton County, Idaho, commissioners called for a moratorium on all development for the next six months at Monday evening's meeting that went on until 1 a.m. Tuesday morning. In the end, commissioners voted 2-1 in favor of the moratorium.

“It was an emergency moratorium,” said Commissioner Alice Stevenson, who first proposed a hold on all new rezoning, subdivision and other land use applications – “with some exceptions” – at Monday’s afternoon meeting.

“The straw that broke the camel’s back for me is that our deputy planning administrator resigned last Tuesday,” Stevenson said. The planner was the third person in as many years to vacate that position. “She said her work load had doubled from December ’06 to March ’07.”

By statute, an emergency ordinance such as a moratorium can be issued only in response to an “imminent peril to public health, safety, or welfare,” Stevenson explained.

“I think it’s really a travesty to this county,” said Nolan Boyle, executive director with the Teton Valley Alliance, a group that advocates for landowners’ rights. “It has nothing to do with moratoriums or land use or lot splits. The travesty is the wedge that it drives right down the middle of our valley. It pits neighbor against neighbor.”

Stevenson and Commission Chairman Larry Young voted in favor of the moratorium. Commissioner Mark Trupp voted against the measure.  

The moratorium, which can last for a maximum of 182 days, could also be called off before that time by vote of the county commission.

“During that time, the intent is to work on a lot of planning tasks,” Stevenson said Tuesday. “[Before] we could not quite get everything accomplished, because we are so inundated with development applications.”

Teton County adopted a comprehensive plan in 2004 that still lacks many of the appropriate ordinances to mirror its language.  

Tuesday night’s meeting saw a mass of vocal opposition, including nearly 80 people who signed up to speak against a moratorium, though not all of them actually addressed the county commission.



PERMALINK:
Teton Valley commissioners call for development moratorium | Planet JH News Article: General News

Reader Comments

The discussion was fired up- definitely some very pragmatic and concerned new comers were pitted against some of the most pissed off ranchers I’ve ever seen. A few ranchers got up and flat out threatened the commissioners for bankrupting their family and trashing their retirement(overstated!). One old timer’s sale tanked as a result of the proposal. He was angry. It’s a well intentioned issue and development in Idaho is definitely disfunctional, but the way it was handled is pretty backwards. Makes you feel like you’re working with a redneck Podunk community in rural Idaho or something. Says something when one person quits the town hall and government stops for six months.
Jim Wilson

An emergency is when something unexpected happens, an earthquake, a flood, a bad storm. I live a 1000 miles away from Teton Basin and saw this development boom coming over two years ago. You mean they didn't know the applications for permits were coming? Come on! Something is fishy.
Neal Wickham

This is nothing more or less than the bleeding heart liberals rather transparent attempt to stop any develpment at all so they can continue to hug all the trees they want to up here. This is not the first beautiful area to take a turn from sleepy ranch town to swanky resort town. Other places have maintained the integrity of their ecosystem and this place would as well. The ranchers of Teton Valley have slowly gone bankrupt on their crops for generations, and now a turn in the economy which favors them and promises to redeem their years of struggle could be stonewalled by an ignorant, liberal special interest group.Alice Stevenson and Larry Young are VARD lackeys! They should savor their ill-ceived ill-gotten victory, because they will not enjoy their positions for long.
Patrick Davis

I have sat in Teton County Commissioners meeting for 13 years now. Month after month the schools have infrastructure problems and are shut down because boilers breaking in the winter; the roads and bridges department is overwhelmed and cannot provide road maintenance any where near what is need; the hospital is overwhelmed; the ambulance needs garaging; the fire department has troubles; the Sheriff's department is in constant crisis for staff, equipment, prisoner handling etc. The county's planning and zoning is overwhelmed. Nearly every application seeks to bend the definitions in its favor. Development is driving the economy and the crisis in every department. The County commissioners have been negligent in planning for these issues for decades. Alice finally bit the bullet and took the very difficult stand of saying let's get our house in order before someone else's house burns down because the fire department couldn't get there in time, or the classroom sizes hit 40 kids, or the city's water and sewer systems are overrun by county development. The opposition are composed of the people who sold their land and have been in power for decades doing nothing to plan for the influx the sale of their land is creating. They should be the ones rolling up their sleeves and joining all of us who have been working our butt off trying to make the county's boom work for the long haul and not just for the quick windfall.
Ginny Newsom

The commissioners plan to shut down the process while they think things through shows thier lack of management ability to handle the situation. If a business is overwhelmed by customers, they don't shut the doors and try to figure out a way to solve the problem over several months. They continue to server thier customers while at the same time working on the solutions for the future.
dpotter



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