City Council

Yesterday, we had a meeting at work to help us come up with a game plan to talk with Doug Kiser when he comes in all of next week. Since it seems we are going to be going with him, it was thought that there has to be some kind of timeline that we can come too rather than the time line that Teresa is pulling out of nowhere. I mean, she gave us a deadline (who knows how many deadlines she has given us since her first deadline in June of this year). The problem is, we have a deadline with no kind of roadmap of how to get there. It may be interesting having Doug here next week, and we are pretty certain he will be a bit nervous. He knows we are not comfortable with his abilities already, and yet he is somebody that we have to work with.

Monday evening, we got my son to call around to some of my family to see how many commitments he can get for coming to the Happy Factory. Now, if I can only get him to the computer to come up with a flyer on it (I tried to do that today, but failed).

Well, after arriving home from work today, I talked with my son for a bit and then prepared some sloppy joes for dinner. Soon after eating, I got my son into the car to go to a city council meeting (he was supposed to go with his Teachers quorum, but they were meeting at 6:30 while the meeting starts at 6:00. We arrived just in time for it to start.

The city council meeting started out with Bingham High School being recognized as State champions in football. The whole team was there, and it was fun to see them being recognized. Then they got down to some of the business. We were there because of an appeal that was being done about the Daybreak community that is right behind my community. Some things there that we don't agree with. All of the business that the city had to take care of before this was mind numbing. We sat there until around 8:40 going through the agenda, and hadn't gotten to our part yet. At this time, they called for a 10 minute break (it lasted 20 minutes). Of course, we were next on the agenda. We had a lot of people there. I even met one of our newer neighbors at this time. He is Indian, and I talked to him about his religion (he is a member of the Sikh sect). He told me that the Sikhs are similar to Hindus, but they only believe in one God. He also told me that they don't drink alcohol... Oh wait, I better amend that, we aren't supposed to drink alcohol. I thought, how true is that. There are so many things that we aren't supposed to do, that we do, despite it all.

Back to the meeting. The teachers quorum did finally get to the city council meeting around 7:00. They left at around 8:30. I told my son to see if he could get a ride home with them, but he didn't want too. He said that they wouldn't have room for him anyway. He also did not want to be at the meeting. Well, now it's about 9:00 and they are ready to talk about the Daybreak community. Greg Nelson was the name on the appeal and he gave a nice speech about the problems we are having with Kennecott Land, and some of the problems we see in our neighborhood based on what's going on on the hill behind us (they are actually tearing it down). Vibrations of our homes is currently happening. We are also worried about the influx of traffic, an alley that is a nice place for crime, verbal promises being broken, etc. He did a wonderful job talking about all of this. I think the city council was impressed with what he said. Since time was running long, they only wanted people to speak that had other concerns besides what Greg had given. There were a couple of other people that stood up and spoke. One man is really angry with Kennecott Lands, and the fact (his own opinion) that the City of South Jordan is in bed with them (I think there is some truth to this, although not to the extent that he believes). Since Kennecott was there, they pulled them up to talk to them about some of these concerns. Leona Winger, got onto a soap box and lectured them about trying to get along with their neighbors (us). She gave it to them fairly hard, and got some clapping by us out in the audience (we of course were told not to applaud by the Mayor). They did basically say that they hadn't been listening to us (even though there was a meeting) because things were too far advanced by the time they held the meeting with us.

As these discussions are taking place, we pretty well had the city council on our side, but they also have their hands tied. It is up to Kennecott Lands on how they accomplish things, and they don't need to consider our wants or needs. They can do whatever they choose. Mayor Money did strongly suggest that they meet with us, and try to come to some compromises because there is a major problem right now between us. In the long run, the appeal was denied, but they did tell the Daybreak community that they had to come to the city council for final approval of their plans to creating this particular plat. This all ended at 10:15. My son let me know that it was a dang long time to be sitting in a meeting.

Anyway, although the appeal was denied, we fell that we did win, because we feel that Kennecott would be foolish not to have some dialogue with us, and change their plans a little bit on this plot of land. Time will tell if it has done any good or not. Here is an article that was in the paper the following morning.

City asks developer to alter plan for subdivision

South Jordan: Kennecott Land agrees to hold talks on establishing buffer

By Rosemary Winters The Salt Lake Tribune Salt Lake Tribune

Article Last Updated:11/22/2006 10:12:41 AM MST

SOUTH JORDAN - The City Council on Tuesday asked its largest development partner, Kennecott Land, to "tweak" one 74-acre parcel in its mammoth 4,100-acre Daybreak development. At the same time, it denied an appeal lodged by more than 100 neighbors of the parcel near 4400 West and 10200 South, asking the council to rescind preliminary approval for the site. But they still felt victorious. "We basically won," said Teresa Goodner after the City Council meeting. Goodner and her neighbors, residents of Oquirrh Park and Ascot Downs subdivisions, say they were misled by Daybreak advertising that indicated - up until last month - a 300-foot swath of open space would buffer their homes from Daybreak housing. They also say plans for upscale homes on the parcel have been replaced with higher-density housing, including quadplexes. They worry an influx of people will bring increased traffic and lower property values to their area. Homes in Oquirrh Park cost around a half-million dollars. "The vast majority of the people in Oquirrh Park bought their homes counting on that space being an open space based on information told to them by Daybreak," Oquirrh Park resident Greg Nelson said in an interview. "We've been trying to work a compromise so that Daybreak gets what they need and we get what we need." At the meeting, Mayor Kent Money said he agreed that plans for a 20-foot, gravel-covered alley between the developments could detract from the neighborhood and even invite crime. Council members unanimously voted to have final approval for the Daybreak parcel be up to them, instead of city staff. Kennecott Land executive Bruce Snyder said at the meeting he would be happy to consider an alternative buffer between Daybreak and neighboring subdivisions and arrange a meeting with neighbors. Vicki Varela, the company's vice president of public policy, said in an interview the open space shown in its earlier master plan was moved inside to create neighborhood parks - where all neighbors are welcome - and to integrate Daybreak with surrounding subdivisions. "That's consistent with the way the City of South Jordan asked us to build this community in the first place," Varela said in an interview. "The idea was that Daybreak should not be a gated community that either holds people in or excludes people, but it should be highly integrated with the neighborhoods around it. As a whole, we think this evolution of the land plan achieves that purpose." South Jordan created a new zoning category for the entire Daybreak development called "planned community," which allows a mixture of commercial and housing development. Thirty percent of the land in Daybreak has to be reserved as open space. rwinters@sltrib.com