Group aims to slow development

Art Lang was first motivated by hearing a bulldozer early in the morning. For Sancy Leachman and Craig Eroh, it was a development that threatened the rural aspect of the school their children attended. The founding members of the Citizens for the Alignment of Growth an the Environment (CAGE) may have their own unique motivations, but they all agree that if the current rate of growth and development continues in Summit County, it will no longer be the place they fell in love with.

CAGE was established as an off-shoot to the group Preserve P.C., which was formed by neighbors of the proposed Discovery CORE project. When the Discovery project was approved by the Summit County Council in November, Eroh, Leachman and Lange turned Preserve P.C. into CAGE and filed a lawsuit against the county to stop the development.

"A hillside that should only have three buildings on it was suddenly about to have 225," Lang said. "And when we started to fight against it, the County Council and Planning Commission told us this had been in the planning process for three years and was now past the point of us being able to do anything about it."

Although CAGE’s first action as a group was a lawsuit, Eroh said that is not their intent.

"As soon as I began to come to the meetings and learn the process, I was shocked at how things worked," Eroh said. "There was very little input from the public and what there was didn’t seem to be taken into consideration too much. It is the county planners’ jobs to get developments through the process, so by the time public input is taken, these projects are a freight train going full force ahead."

So the members of CAGE decided to focus on encouraging public input from the very beginning, whether it is asked for or not, to ensure that residents voices are heard, not just the developers.

Lang said that when the CORE development guidelines were being created, it was developers who showed up to the meetings and gave the County Council input, which resulted in guidelines that reflected their interests. As the new development guide is created, Lang said the members of CORE will be providing more feedback than the county wants to make sure they have an influence over the outcome.

CAGE, which currently has 400 members, according to Leachman, is aiming to have 2,000 by the end of 2012. Leachman doesn’t think this will be hard since most people in the Park City area are committed to their town and want to make sure it remains the kind of place people want to live.

"People think we are in a development lull right now, but there are almost 3,000 buildings approved that haven’t been constructed yet," she said. "And yet the county is approving more things when we don’t know how those 3,000 new homes will affect our way of life, including our schools, environment and roads."

CAGE plans on creating a website that provides easy to find information, including Summit County’s Citizens Survey and recaps of County Council and Planning Commission meetings, things they say are "difficult to find" on Summit County’s website.

"We want to encourage political activism, oversight of the governing bodies and encourage the community to come together to protect what they love," Leachman said. "We want to encourage dialogue between people because we think that is the best way to find solutions and create a stronger community."

CAGE’s next meeting will be Sat. Jan. 21, at 6 p.m. at Shepherd of the Mountain Lutheran Church. The meeting will have a Sundance theme and feature a one-hour film, Subdivide and Conquer, A Modern Western, about urban sprawl.