I'm glad to be back from two weeks in the Southwest, including Tucson, a land of poor, hapless urban planning. National treasures like Bryce, Escalante, Zion, and Red Rocks offer incredible rock formations carved by water, wind, and rain over the eons. This was my first ever visit and I was dumbstruck by the colors and shapes, the soar and stretch of violently intersecting limestone strata. In the end, though, I wanted the varied relief of mountains, lakes, creeks, sage plateaus, and forests accessible from virtually all points in all four seasons.   

I kept up with local news, however (sort of), and want to spotlight two items. First, the Sun Valley Economic Development (SVED) group held a "members only" meeting about the status of our local economy. Why, I wondered, was it open only to members? Isn't everyone eager to know how our economy is doing? Aren't we all in this together? And isn't the group funded mostly by public money, including a $150,000 travel grant from the Idaho Department of Commerce and taxpayer funds from local jurisdictions?

As I recall, one SVED promotion piece said something like "Become a member and you too can learn about the economy." I hope the SVED in future shifts to an "we're all together" approach to sharing information, rather than informing just its membership. After all, SVED's ostensible purpose is to build the region's economy - i.e. to help all businesses grow and prosper - not to boost just its own membership numbers. 

The second item was the County's address to right-of-way (ROW) issues concerning the roads it owns in several subdivisions. The County and Hulen Meadows got into a spat two years ago when, in early spring, the County demanded that 14 feet of its right-of-way on either side of the road be stripped clean within two weeks or homeowners would be subject to $150/day fines: perhaps a $1.5 million project in an impossible time-frame. Then, the County would trench four-foot ditches throughout the neighborhood to hold plowed snow. The order came from Char Nelson, the new Operations Manager. She explained in a public meeting that she had received three complaints about road ice and sanding trips were expensive. Therefore, it was time to enforce ROW regulations.    

Hulen Meadows (HM) challenged the order on several grounds:

• ROW regulations had been ignored for more than 30 years as home and landscape designs were approved by the County across the 171-lot neighborhood;
• Other older subdivisions with County roads posed similar, if not worse, icing and snow removal issues;
• There had been no previous admonishment of any sort to HM homeowners;
• HM appeared to be singled out because of the three complaints to the County;
• HM roads were not built properly, i.e. don't have crowns to drain snowmelt;
• Lacking money to manage far more critical road repairs, why would the County spend time and dollars to trench both sides of HM's substandard roads?  

The positive outcome of the spat was the Commissioner's decision to address ROW issues county-wide. At least they decided to approach the matter without prejudice to one subdivision, although wouldn't the time and money be better spent on actually repairing our deteriorating roads? Why jump now after 30 years of doing nothing?

According to Commissioner Schoen, "that the county wasn't super strict in enforcing its right of way doesn't mean that it relinquished its right to enforce it." Forget "super strict;" the County was just plain negligent. And, of course, it still has the right to enforce its ROW, but exactly how is the primary question.

Should it be super strict now and require massive homeowner expenditures to produce stripped roadsides in lovely established neighborhoods? I think not! More reasonably, it should use a grandfather mechanism - only requiring ROW conformance going forward with new construction or home renovation? It could specifically identify trouble spots and work with homeowners to remove their causes, e.g. shadows from large trees well back on a homeowner's lot out of the ROW or a large rock in the way of the snowplow.  

In the Mt. Express article about the County's upcoming proposal, Derek Voss, County Administrator, says, "I don't think this works unless we have cooperation from the public, and there's no need for us as representatives of the public to write this as an edict," he said. This is a very positive statement - not fully echoed by the rest of the article - but one that, if true, would make resolution of the ROW issue a collaborative win-win, rather than a rancorous, time-consuming fight. Reason, common-sense, and an open, honest, well-managed public process could have us all working on the same page.

Until next week...Jima Rice