City council puts Comprehensive General Plan decision on hold

After two years of work on the Comprehensive General Plan, it will have to be put off a little longer.

Before staff could give a prepared presentation at the Dec. 8 city council meeting, Mayor Melissa Johnson said she had some questions she wasn’t able to have answered because of the lateness of the questions, and asked the adoption be postponed.

Her major concern is that property owners, or developers, have specific guarantees that are provided in the general plan so that in the future they can develop their properties in a certain way.

“I don’t want to just throw out this West Side Master Plan and say, ‘well it was a good exercise, we used it for a few years, a very few years, and now we’re going to go back to before we had this West Side Master Plan’,” Johnson said.

So she asked Community Development Director Tom Burdett earlier in the day about the possibility of adding a sub area of the city that takes precedence over the outline of the general plan.

“I’ve been doing a lot of talking with the Economic Development Corporation of Utah, and the Utah’s Governor’s Office of Economic Development, and all these people to push economic development in the city, and they are talking about foreign trade zones and different things we can do as a city to encourage job creation,” Johnson said.

She acknowledged her questions required a legal opinion, and wondered what the ripple effects would be if they adopt the 2003 density tables recommended by the General Plan Committee.

“I’m not suggesting that we don’t adopt a density table that the council wants to have adopted,” Johnson said. “I’m just saying that we do it with our eyes open, knowing what those ramifications are going to be for other things that are happening in the city, and I don’t believe that we have that information with the current staff report.”

Councilmember Ben Southworth agreed that there might be some ramifications that he doesn’t understand.

“I need some more information so I have a full understanding of the decision I am making,” Southworth said.

When Councilmember Clive Killpack attended the final meeting of the General Plan Committee the previous week, it was a unanimous decision by the committee “that those density tables be cut and dry and not overdone,” Killpack said.

As they were compiling information, particularly for districts three and four, the committee members were told overwhelmingly by residents that they were tired of the high densities, and wanted to see some reasonableness in the density tables restored.

“I don’t know why we have a General Plan Committee if we aren’t going to even use their recommendations,” Killpack countered.

Councilmember Kim Rolfe pointed out that the General Plan Committee has worked two years on this plan.

“I think they spent a lot of time representing the citizens they represent,” Rolfe said. “I believe it’s time to move forward with this. They’ve given their recommendations on this and there isn’t anything that can’t be changed in the future.”

The vote passed 4-3 in favor of the motion to postpone, with councilmembers Jim Lems, Rolfe and Killpack voting against it.