021710P&ZMinutes
CITY OF AMMON
PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION MINUTES
February 17, 2010
AGENDA:
CITY OF AMMON
PLANNING AND ZONING COMMISSION
February 17, 2010
2135 South Ammon Road 7:00 P.M.
AGENDA
CALL TO ORDER: Chairman Quinn Simmons
Pledge of Allegiance: Robert Taylor
MINUTES:
January 6, 2010
PUBLIC HEARINGS:
None
ACTION ITEMS:
1.None
DISCUSSION ITEMS:
1.Comprehensive Plan
REPORTS:
1.None
CALL FOR ADJOURNMENT:
MINUTES
The meeting was called to order by Chairman Quinn Simmons at 7:00 p.m. in the City Building at 2135
South Ammon Road, Ammon, Idaho and Robert Taylor led the Pledge of Allegiance.
Members Present:
Quinn Simmons, Chairman
Tom Hunsaker
Steve Richards
Cindy Donavan
Rick Butler
Kurt Roland
Robert Taylor
Absent:
Greg Maeser
Scott Wessel
City Officials Present:
Ron Folsom, Planning Director
Gay Leming, Deputy Clerk
Lance Bates, City Engineer
MINUTES:
January 6, 2010: Tabled
PUBLIC HEARINGS:
None
ACTION ITEMS:
None
DISCUSSION ITEMS:
Planning and Zoning Minutes 2-17-10 Page 1 of 3
A. Comprehensive Plan -
Ron explained what we are planning to do in this session, what a comprehensive
plan is and why it is important. There are eight Community Volunteers that will be participating in the Comp Plan and
making changes. There are a total of 17 people counting Commission members. These 17 people were broken into two
groups, Group A and Group B, to review different sections of the Comp Plan.
Group A consisted of the following people: Commission Members; Cindy Donovan, Steve Richards, Robert
Taylor and members of the Citizen Committee Leo Eaton, Harold Graehl and Karma Brinkman. Group A was assigned
the Introduction Section of the Comprehensive Plan. The following recommendations were made:
In the subsection entitled “The City of Ammon”, the recommendation was to delete the sentence “The city
leaders are accessible” and add the following; It is the intent that City elected officials and staff will be accessible to
all constituents.
In the subsection entitled “Purpose of the Plan” it was recommended that in paragraph 1 the language be
deleted as shown and changed to read as follows: The purpose of this plan shall be to promote the health, safety,
and general welfare of the people of the City of Ammon as provided in Idaho statute 67-6502 as follows: ……..
Groups A moved on to the Public Facilities section. The following recommendations were made:
In the Inventory subsection it was recommended that White Pines Charter School be added to the listing of
schools. Under the Fire subsection it was recommended that the number of full time and volunteer firefighters be
deleted due to the changing number. In paragraph 2 of the Fire subsection the recommendation was made to add the
address of the Fire Department. The recommendation was made to remove the inventory listing of equipment because
of the changing nature of equipment.
Group B consisted of the following people: Commission Members; Quinn Simmons, Tom Hunsaker, Kurt
Roland and Rick Butler. Group B was assigned the Population and Economics section of the Comprehensive Plan. The
following recommendations were made:
The discussion started with paragraph 2. While discussing the City’s growth, they felt over the next 15 years
that the City’s population could at the very most double. There was talk about the decline in growth over the last
couple of years and what the City’s realistic future growth rate might be.
The group looked at paragraph 3. Regarding the Comprehensive Plan’s statement that the size of the I.N.L
work force has stabilized, it was felt that the number of people employed there was actually declining and would
continue to decline for the foreseeable future. This decline is being balanced out by other employers in the area. The
group talked about possibly mentioning a few more major employers, including the two school districts and Melaleuca,
but came to no consensus as to whether this would make paragraph 3 better, or not. It was agreed it would help if it
were made plainer that the first part of the third paragraph was still dealing with history, rather than the present or the
future.
Paragraph 4 was then analyzed. The group worried that the growth rate predicted in this paragraph was
overstated. The group recommended that a sentence needs to be added stating that “Growth is not guaranteed”. The
group also noted that until a few years ago, the lower tax rate in Ammon and the lower electricity rate in Idaho Falls
balanced each other out, so it did not cost significantly less to live in one city versus the other. This changed around
2006 when an energy crisis and the inability to continue constructing additional inexpensive sources of electrical power
caused Idaho Falls electricity rates to increase significantly, thus encouraging more growth to take place in Ammon
than in Idaho Falls.
strd
Paragraph 5 was discussed rather extensively, particularly the 1 and 3 sentences. It was recommended that
the word traditionally be added as the first word in the paragraph and delete the word tied and replacing it with
“related….to county growth as a whole …”.
Group B moved onto the Existing Land Use section. Ron explained that the numbers given in the “Land Use
Inventory” section are all obsolete and closer to publication time will be replaced with more current values.
Most of the “Existing Land Use” discussion centered on the “Parks, Recreation and Open Space” section. It
was determined the sentence stating “The open space designation [on the Comprehensive Plan Future Use Map] would
refer only to those areas serving as part of the recreation system” might currently be true, but in the near future needs to
also include wildlife corridors and similar non-recreational open areas. It was decided that the best place to clarify what
is and what isn’t considered open space is in the definitions section of Title 10, Chapter 2.
The group feels neighborhood parks within walking distance of residents’ homes are desirable. The City has
found these small parks are harder to keep up, partly because loading and unloading of maintenance equipment takes
just as long at a small park, as it does a large park. If small parks contain playground equipment, they are used more.
The group discussed the need for storm water retention areas, and the incompatibilities encountered when
trying to double their usefulness by having them also serve as parks. West Jordan, Utah gave up on this approach in
several parts of their town, and simply fenced the storm water retention areas off, where they have become a refuge for
ducks and other wildlife.
The City is looking into the idea of requiring future storm water retention areas and parks to be designed to co-
exist with one another and having homeowners associations shoulder the responsibility for these small parks. The main
Planning and Zoning Minutes 2-17-10 Page 2 of 3
impediment to this approach is outside of those homeowner associations that are made up of significant numbers of
townhome owners, homeowners associations have not functioned very well in our area. To address this weakness, the
City is now looking into the possibility of not only requiring storm water retention areas and small parks to be owned
by specific homeowners associations, but also requiring a minimum level of functionality from the association by
levying a tax on it to fund the maintenance of the storm water retention area and the small park.
The group talked about the possibility of adding an item to the Existing Land Use section stating how much of
the land in the City is actively being used for farming. Some of the land designated as vacant is currently being farmed;
however, none of the agencies responsible for gathering land use statistics are currently gathering any data about
farming activities within the City.
The group concluded their discussion with the idea that this section might also need a Heritage section, or that
the Special Areas section might need to be expanded to better address this topic. It was mentioned that the best source
of information regarding Ammon history including historical sites most likely is Aleen Jensen.
REPORTS:
None
CALL FOR ADJOURNMENT:
Rick Butler moved to adjourn the meeting. Tom Hunsaker seconded. Voting was unanimous in the
affirmative.
The meeting adjourned at 8:50 p.m.
___________________________________________
Quinn Simmons, Chairman
______________________________________
Leslie Folsom, City Clerk
Planning and Zoning Minutes 2-17-10 Page 3 of 3