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East Side General Plan reworked

Caroline Kingsley, The Park Record

It’s always good to have a game plan, but the majority of the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission’s (ESCPC) game plan is over 16 years old.

To remedy that, mayors from Henefer, Coalville, Oakley, Kamas and Francis have come together to discuss an update to the ESCPC General Plan in accordance with the changing population, economics and development pressures.

The ESPC is working on an update to the east East-Side General Plan, recognizing that some of the practices in the past have lead to some issues today," Summit County Planner Kimber Gabryszak said.

For example, one-acre parcel zoning has lead to a series of driveways coming onto roads, continuously increasing traffic.

"So you’ll have driveway after driveway after driveway," Gabryszak said. "It’s led to a strip pattern of development, which is not necessarily the best for transportation and traffic in the future."

The ESCPC is looking for alternatives to eliminate this problem, establishing a zone to allow higher density residential development that have several parcels with only one shared access point onto main roads.

"They have also been talking about where it would be best to locate such a zone," Gabryszak said. "Being that it’s a rural-agricultural county, it would usually make more sense to put more density close to or even inside the municipalities. But that has been an issue because the municipalities are dealing with their own problems, such as lack of infrastructure, sewer and water capacity to accommodate that growth."

Because the needs and infrastructure constraints are different for each city, the ESCPC felt a one-size fits all plan might not make sense, Gabryszak said.

The General Plan was last updated in 2010, the culmination of a two-year process, but only the mission statement, goals and objectives were altered. The rest of the plan, adopted in August 1996, remained untouched.

A work session was held on Sept. 6 for a preliminary discussion on the General Plan and setting a meeting timeline, with more work sessions and public hearings coming down the pike.

"Their discussion revolved around the future for Eastern Summit County and how the ESCPC, the municipalities and the county in general can work together to have a good vision and plan for the future that takes into account the different needs of the municipalities," Gabryszak said.

The residential plan is only in the conceptual stage. The ESCPC and city’s plan to have additional meetings where ESCPC representatives will meet with each city’s mayor, city council, planning commission and planning staff.

"Then from those individual meetings they will try to come up with a plan going forward," Gabryszak said.


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