As we move forward

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.-Elected officials who will eventually decide on the new Comprehensive Plan said this week that they place wildlife high atop community priorities, and also favor putting a cap on development to control the rate of residential growth in Teton County.

A sit-down between town council members and county commissioners on Monday began a new chapter of discourse in the community’s Comp Plan. Board representatives said that the meeting marked the first time the elected boards, as a whole, have “substantively” weighed in on priorities identified by Jackson Hole residents and groups concerned with development and preservation in the valley during the next 10 years and beyond.

“We’ve had a couple of meetings, but I don’t think they were quite as good,” Teton County Commissioners Chairman Andy Schwartz said after the joint hearing. “Some people told me we should have had this kind of meeting at the beginning, but my sense is it’s kind of like a chicken and egg thing to say what should go first.”

Since Jackson Hole broke ground on Comp Plan revision nearly a year ago, electeds have opted to focus mainly on polling for community input through phone and online surveys, public meetings and opportunities to provide written feedback. On Monday, though, they began directing staff towards what will inevitably be a long road of drafting and redrafting the  Comp Plan, as well as the land use documents that support its vision.

Representatives of Jackson and Teton County’s planning offices debriefed the joint board of electeds, guiding them through a breakdown of points of community concern culled from the thousands of public comments received through the end of July, when the public comment opportunity closed for that stage of revision.
Overall build-out of town and county, growth rate, development patterns in South Park, wildlife, workforce housing, total commercial area and plan complexity are the prevalent themes identified by planning staff and consultants with Clarion Associates, the national planning firm advising electeds on the Comp Plan rewrite process.

While each issue did not receive consensus – and electeds chimed in at will – the idea of placing wildlife as a top priority to the plan received widespread support among electeds.

“Wildlife is viewed by many as the most important part of the town,” Commissioner Leland Christensen said, adding, “It’s the gate we’re passing through to figure the other [priorities] out.”

Commissioner Ben Ellis agreed: “It is the overarching theme we need to figure into all our land use patterns,” he said.

While some issues have been pitted against each another in the public discourse – some affordable housing projects have taken flack for impacting open space or community character concerns, for example – electeds largely acknowledged a need to identify appropriate overlay zones for affordable housing. Additionally, they said a goal to keep a relatively high percentage of local workforce housed in the valley should be integrated into the Comp Plan.

“I absolutely believe we need to maintain 65 percent of our workforce in the valley,” Councilwoman Melissa Turley said, echoing the recommendations of the 2007 Housing Assessment Needs study. “That keeps us a community first and a resort second.”

Turley proposed raising from 15 percent to 40 percent the housing exaction rate imposed on new commercial developments.

Town Councilman Bob Lenz said that focusing on a few areas identified to receive new affordable housing developments is not the best way to pursue the proliferation of workforce housing.
“I have an adage,” Lenz said. “Workforce housing is an opportunistic product. It has to do with where you get the cheapest land.”

Schwartz said he did not feel a goal of 65 percent of workers housed within the valley to be a realistic number.

“We need to be careful putting in goals we can’t achieve in the Comp Plan,” he said. “I don’t want to set 65 percent, realizing we can never meet it. But we need to do more.”

The joint board favored ways to create new workforce apartments  – the Rendezvous Point apartment redevelopment of the Days Inn, for example– and sustain existing ones as a favorable way to house workers locally.

The issue of workforce housing has implications that reach beyond Jackson Hole. Elected officials in at least one nearby county, citing the wave of valley workers commuting to homes in neighboring communities, implored town and county officials take steps to address Jackson Hole’s housing situation.

A letter from county commissioners in adjacent Lincoln County asked Teton County Commissioners to “take a serious look at ways to resolve the issue of affordable housing to slow down the tide.”

Lincoln County commissioners said they, too, are trying to preserve their own scenic and wildlife resources, and said the influx of Jackson Hole’s workforce threatens to impact those community characteristics.
Further, as local workforce housing proponents argue, “When all of your nurses, teachers and deputies live in remote locations, providing basic services becomes difficult,” Lincoln County Commissioners wrote.

The predominately pro-affordable-housing rhetoric at Monday’s meeting is at odds with some of the valley’s free-market capitalists who favor letting the market take care of itself. Some, including prominent members of preservation stakeholder groups, have criticized the valley’s affordable housing entities – the county’s Housing Authority and the private Housing Trust – and equated subsidized housing to a facet of communism.

Strange bedfellows to those free-market capitalists are often those who feel the density bonuses that encourage developers to seek significant up-zones with significant affordable housing components impact community character with dense development proposals.

While there was no was no discussion of those controversial planning tools that have come under fire by residents and planners for “lack of predictability,” Councilman Mark Obringer cautioned that affordable and workforce housing should be approached carefully, with the issue tied to interconnected growth issues, like transportation plans.

“I think this is one of the more important chapters to fine tune,” Obringer said, adding that, “it can be one of the most contentious issues on the broad spectrum.”
Rich Bloom, a South Park resident and neighborhood organizer who opposed the 500-unit Teton Meadows Ranch proposal, which died under the county’s subdivision moratorium imposed earlier this year, said he was pleased to feel the county was at least listening to his concerns.

“I think it was actually a recognition that the planners are looking into public comment.” Bloom said.

Others welcomed the new phase of substantive dialogue among the electeds but said it should have begun months ago.
Franz Camenzind, who heads up the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, while heartened by the overall tone of the dialogue, said he was “frustrated” with the timing of the electeds’ discussion.

“I was not surprised to hear some of this conversation that should have occurred six months ago,” Camenzind said.

The Conservation Alliance director said he wanted to hear more about the transfer of approved densities from county into the Town of Jackson, an idea officials have eyed as a means to downzone parts of the county while offsetting market impacts to private landowners.

County planning officials announced ahead Monday’s meeting they would not look to intensify residential development in the southern and middle regions of South Park. That came as welcome news to Bloom and other South Park residents.
Planners said about 200 acres within a half-mile south of High School Road, south of town, was the most appropriate area to receive the bulk of new development in the county.

Councilmember Abe Tabatabai, citing the town’s 2002 annexation of the Porter Estate, which was handily overturned by voter referendum, asked county planning staffer, Alex Norton, why that area seemed riper for development now.
“Six years later we are talking about moving in that direction,” Tabatabai said, “what’s changed?”

Norton said a lot of public comment supported keeping middle and southern South Park rural but that the north end, along High School Road, did not receive that kind of opposition.

“If any place is appropriate for growth it’s right there,” Norton said. “That was the tone.”

Camenzind, who opposed the 2002 Porter annexation, said he did so at the time because that project was the “wrong mix” of commercial development. Now, he said, a greater intensity of workforce housing passed muster.

“If the community decides growth is going to happen, it’s best to put it along High School Road,” Camenzind said.

Schwartz, however, said he was skeptical that town-level densities on portions of the Porter Estate along High School Road could handle the full brunt of new county residential development.

“From a transportation perspective, we’re already talking about a road that at time is at service level F,” Schwartz said. He added, “It’s a development and transportation pattern doomed to failure.”
The commissioners chair said officials should consider an approach that identifies a number of potential nodes.

“[Electeds need to] find a plan that all works together and is not just based on ‘as close to town as possible,’” he said.
With regard to total build-out, numbers under current permits and building bonuses, planners have suggested there could be as many as 2,300 new residential units in town and 5,200 in county. There currently are around 11,300 residential units built in all of Teton County.

Bill Collins, a former Teton County planning director now with Collins Planning Associates, told electeds to figure in an average of 2.3 people per household to quantify the valley’s population.

He said going through Land Development Regulations to project build-out potential is, “an arduous process that takes time.”

Electeds, including Commissioner Hank Phibbs, told planners they needed to know with more certainty the potential for build-out numbers for both residential and non-residential development.

Phibbs said staff should narrow in on a more nuanced and fleshed out number to avoid “reducing [build-out] down if it wasn’t a real number to begin with.”
Town and county are not at the moment fully aligned in the revision process, with town lacking a completed draft of a future land use map that on the county side is currently receiving comment.

“The point of consensus [from electeds] is going to be a discussion of what a build-out number means,” Town Planner Tyler Sinclair said after Monday’s meeting. Sinclair said he did not get a sense from elected officials to explore the relocation of densities from county into town.

“Our first focus as we move forward is on the character of town,” Sinclair said.
Town and county officials will next reconvene on the Comp Plan on Sept. 8.

Illustration Nate Bennett
Assessing the state of the  Comp Plan rewrite, pt. 1

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As we move forward | Planet JH News Article: Cover Stories

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