Salt Lake County Planning and Zoning

The Wasatch Mountains serve Utahns  along the Wasatch front as a watershed, provide recreation and a refuge from urban life.  Geographically, the range is very small. Nowhere else in the U.S. can one fine a similar precious natural resource located in such close proximity to a large urban population. It is also easily degraded.

We know development pressures will continue to increase as Salt Lake County’s population is projected to increase from about a million in 2005 to some 1.7 million in 2050. Utah’s population is slated to double its current 2.5 million by 2050.

Increasing population pressure is but one threat. Another ominous trend is the Utah State Legislature’s ideological bias in favor of development. The Utah State Legislature is intent on reducing local government discretion in the zoning and planning process. In 2005 the legislature revised the enabling statutes so as to reduce local government planning and zoning authority. Even worse legislation is being proposed in the 2006 session. Local government control seems to be anathema to our state legislators when local governments attempt to guide and control real estate development.

The County has the power (barring further destructive meddling by the State Legislature) to make the needed zoning ordinance changes

In addition to FCOZ, all the underlying zones that FCOZ overlays need review and improvement. For example, recent changes in the Utah State enabling statute takes away almost all local government discretion as to whether or not to grant an allowable conditional use. Therefore, conditional uses need careful review and limitation. For example, in the Forestry and Recreation Zones (which underlie FCOZ), commercial and private recreation, with no clarification or restriction, are permitted conditional uses. All sorts of recreation facilities will have to be approved, including those totally incompatible with the forest environment. A motorcycle course, water park, miniature golf course, theme park, or amusement park will all have to be approved if a promoter can mitigate the “adverse impacts”, which he will be able to do. These examples are not an exaggeration. In addition, logging, lumber processing, mineral extraction and processing, which can include gravel pits, are allowed conditional uses in the canyons and foothills of the Wasatch.

The only way to prevent these potentially bad outcomes is to delete such conditional uses from the Forestry and Recreation zones or precisely to define the types of conditional uses the County wishes to allow in the Wasatch.

 Just who will conduct this review and re-write of FCOZ and underlying zones? Salt Lake County has to undertake this task. Save Our Canyons is actively talking with Salt Lake County decision makers to move this process along. It will not be an easy process, as local planning and zoning is exquisitely complicated and involves many people and constituencies, all of whom have varying agendas. You can do your share by letting your county council representative and Mayor Corroon know that protecting the Wasatch is job number one.

 We have all got our work cut out for us. 

Articles

Decision delayed on canyon subdivision
The Salt Lake Tribune August 13, 2003.  Salt Lake County postpones a decision on Romney Lumber's approval application; neighbors says developer assurances regarding further development are in absentia, and highlight the County's failures to halt foothills development.