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March 13, 2007
City Plans are Important because they can increase kindness
Today’s lesson began with a brief history of how the “states have become slaves to the Federal government”. Once our instructor finished with his conservative rant, he went on to describe the police power which states hold over counties, and county-city relationships.
Sadly the lesson got a bit boring as we covered a lot of zoning issues, laws, and learned how cities in other states can take your land away to make room for such city necessities as a Walmart.
Cities must have a Master Plan in order to incorporate county land into an organized city.
Utah County has seen the establishment of Eagle Mountain, Cedar Hills, and Saratoga Springs all within the past decade.
Each city’s plan must address:
-Land Use
-Housing Needs
-Movement of People and Goods
-Community Facilities and Utilities
-Energy Conservation.
While discussing each of these in detail, our teacher shared with us that he had noticed that Spanish Fork is intending to build a commercial airline here in southern Utah. This would trump Provo Utah’s current attempt to open a commercial airport, which has been slow in coming about due to lack of land. Airports mean money to cities, as things such as Rental cars bring in huge amounts of taxes.
He then warned that water is a serious issue here in the west, with only a select number of cities (Provo and Orem) actually possessing enough water for their populations. All water rights in Utah are already owned in some form.
Our instructor then shared his opinion that California should cede its rights to the Colorado river and get their water from the ocean. While that would be incredibly noble of California I personally don’t imagine that happening.
Most city websites share their comprehensive plans online, including codes and city regulations.
We were then shown the Orem City Plan, and shown one unique aspect of the plan dealing with Student Housing. Most cities do not address such, but with two Universities at close proximity, this is a major issue for Orem.
One of the other somewhat humorous parts of the plan, besides the constant rhetoric about how the city of Orem hopes to do nothing but good, was Orem’s designed plan to integrate their motto “Family City USA” in all city projects, signs, and references to Orem, to provide good housing to everyone and also to be kind. Orem (Family City USA) can be silly.
We then went through maps of all the cities with Utah County, with the teacher explaining that Draper has crawled into Utah county, though it finds itself unable to share sewer lines with any other city in Utah County. Cities such as Orem (Family City USA) do not appreciate cities in other counties annexing Utah county land. They do not show kindness to that.
Counties can occur as an islanded area surrounded by city limits. This occurs when other areas of the county ask a city to be annexed, but the remaining area does not. Cities on the other hand, cannot annex islands unless they already exist surrounded by the city itself. As long as the land is not annexed by a city, it remains part of the county.
Zoning ordinances restrict use of land and structures within designated zones:
These provide for:
-Permitted Uses
-Building Height
-Lot Sizes
-Setbacks
-Style and appearance of structures
-Density
-Protection of Natural Resources
Zoning Restrictions are in place in order to meet certain objectives:
-Residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural and multiple use.
-To establish buffer zones
-Bulk Zoning to control density
-Aesthetic zoning to control neighborhood appearances.
-Incentive zoning which is meant to encourage neighborhood improvement.
The mention of Incentive zoning brought about a story about a relative of the instructor who was working with two brothers who wanted to develop a supply warehouse for various hotels in need of food supplies. He found an area where several freeways crossed that he judged to be ideally located, so he contacted the city manager who he knew (always a big plus if you plan on development), and received funding from the city of Las Vegas to exercise eminent domain, and seize the homes by paying ‘fair market value’ in order to put up their new warehouse. Essentially, Las Vegas bought the land for the new food warehouse for this relative. They tore down people’s homes to make room for a warehouse.
Eminent domain has been used he in Utah for some time. State Street in Utah used to be the only main highway, but some time ago as the government put up the Interstate freeway system, many land owners lost their land, and often had their farms cut in half in order to put up the highway. This was explained as being a good and necessary use of eminent domain. I’d imagine the farmers who lost their farms would disagree.
Our instructor shared, that Utah has recently passed a law restricting the use of eminent domain to only public development.
This will hopefully limit the abuse that can run rampant when private groups are able to convince a city to exercise eminent domain in order to fund the private projects.
Complaints regarding a zoning issue are addressed at a zoning hearing board.
This brought about a discussion of Nonconforming use, which applies to properties which once conformed with zoning requirements, and have been grandfathered in as legally zoned, though they could potentially lose their zoning privileges if their use is changed.
For example, a duplex in a neighborhood full of rental properties may be able to continue to be a duplex, even as the zoning changes to prohibit properties from being anything but single unit.
Variances are permanent exceptions to zoning ordinances. They must be requested, and are rarely granted.
Conditional-Use Permits are granted to a property owner to allow a special use judged to be in the public interest. These are generally temporary, such as in the case of Firework’s stands.
We then moved on to discussing Subdivision.
A subdivider is someone who purchases acreage and divides into smaller lots for sale.
The Developer is the person who constructs improvements on subdivided parcels.
Utah uses a block based street pattern, often using either a gridiron block system, or a curvilinear system which adjusts to a curved street or river.
Class concluded with a description of Private Land-Use controls, such as CCNRs (Contracts covenants and restrictions) which a developer can create to restrict land usage on the subdivision.
These controls are in place to control and maintain the desirable quality and character of a property.
These can be enacted through deed restrictions, such as an easement.
Restrictive covenants can restrict the type of building on property, the use to which the land may be put, and the type of construction.
The regulation of Land Sales is restricted under the Federal Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act.
This was intended to prohibit subdividers from splitting up land and selling useless land to people in other states, such as swampland. Although such restrictions now exist, it’s still horribly stupid to purchase any real estate without seeing it in person.
Buyer beware on all land marketed in another state. There is a reason why it’s being sold to those who can’t ever reasonably inspect it prior to sale.
Our instructor concluded with a story about how many in Utah suffered some years ago from such scams, with many Utah citizens buying up useless portions of privately owned Florida Swampland.
That did it for the day, and I was grateful to be done. Some of this stuff can be pretty boring.
read comments (2)
March 15th, 2007 at 5:45 pm
I think eminent domain can be scary. All in favor of a 200% of market value rule???
March 15th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
Of course, then the city will just say Fair Market value is half market value.