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The Mountainous Planning District is back on track.
After hesitating for a month, the Salt Lake County and Millcreek Township planning commissions have endorsed creation of a new planning district to regulate land-use issues in most of the county's Wasatch Mountain canyons.
Both boards added differing suggestions, mostly involving the potentially contentious question of who serves on the new nine-member planning commission that would make decisions impacting Big Cottonwood, Little Cottonwood (except for Alta) and Mill Creek canyons.
But, most importantly, they provided the County Council with the recommendations it needed to launch a process — complete with public hearings — to establish the district and appoint a planning commission as soon as possible.
County Mayor Ben McAdams wants quick action on his plan to treat the canyons as a geographical region of great importance to all Salt Lake Valley residents. The state law allowing the district's creation has a July 1 expiration date — unless the Legislature takes action next session to continue it.
McAdams has wanted to get the district up and running so it would have a track record lawmakers could consider when deciding on an extension.
But the County Planning Commission, in particular, threw a kink into his timetable when it decided in August to delay action on the proposal until December — after the Nov. 3 Community Preservation election determined how many unincorporated islands remain for it to oversee.
"Ours was not a strategic move to imperil the Mountainous Planning District, and we were not purposely holding the ordinance hostage," Planning Commission Chairman Neil Cohen said in a statement before the matter was brought up for reconsideration at a meeting last week.
Cohen said he and fellow commissioner Tod Young had met with McAdams to discuss their issues and the accelerated process and came away convinced they could go along with the mayor's proposal to move forward.
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Merger • But they also believe their Planning Commission is well acquainted with the issues affecting the Cottonwood canyons, which long have been part of their jurisdiction, and that it would be best if the County Council merged the County Planning Commission into the new district's planning commission.
"There would be continuity brought into the new planning commission — continuity of experience, continuity of historical knowledge," Cohen said. "But there also would be new people on it to bring other or broader perspectives."
County planning commissioners also believe three of those perspectives should come from canyon residents, preferably one from each of the three biggest canyons.
Add up all of those proposed appointments, and there's not much room for other new members. That concerns Save Our Canyons Executive Director Carl Fisher.
He believes the goal is to form a planning commission with expertise in numerous aspects of mountain environments, drawn from the wider talent pool offered by opening membership to residents countywide.
Fisher also has qualms about a County Planning Commission suggestion that a new merged commission also assume responsibility for White City and the unincorporated islands that don't vote Nov. 3 to annex into a neighboring city.
That would dilute the district's focus on canyon matters, he said.
Members of the Millcreek Township Planning Commission had been more supportive of the mountainous-district concept at their August meeting, but had delayed consideration for a month to get answers to a few unresolved questions.
Wilf Sommerkorn, the regional development official carrying this project for McAdams, came back with some clarifications about how the district would be funded, alleviating Commissioner Ann Ober's interest in assuring that the county dedicates adequate financial resources and planning staff to function effectively.
"We've made it clear we want more planners, more support to have this stuff happen correctly," she said. "It's important."
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Canyon representation • The Millcreek planners did not want to take a position on the county planners' merger proposal, but did agree that canyon residents or property owners should have at least three representatives on the new commission.
Rather than county planners' idea of one representative from each of the big three canyons, Millcreek planners opted for "one resident and, in addition, at least two members who either by permanent or temporary residence or by ownership of a residence, business or property, have a particular interest in the area."
So those divergent recommendations are going to the County Council, which will have to sort them out, along with addressing a proposed disconnection from the planning district's anticipated boundaries.
Walker Development has asked the county to remove 50 acres of its foothills land from the Mountainous Planning District.
The parcel is on a bluff overlooking the big Wasatch Boulevard gravel pit that Walker Development intends to develop when its mining days are done, incorporating the bluff property into whatever plan eventually is submitted to Cottonwood Heights, where the gravel pit is located.