Every year in January, our city staff, our city council and all members of the planning commission meet for 2 days to discuss what has been accomplished the previous years, items still in process, goals to look forward too and other concerns or issues.
The January 2019 retreat is an interesting one to listen to. There are many great things being discussed and there are lots of great conversations. I would recommend listening to it, it is very insightful.
That being said, there is more discussion and information about South Bench Drive. I am going to summarize some of the things I found that I feel is good to be aware of.
Here is the outline of the retreat and what I'm focusing on.
In audio 1, about minute 53:30-55:00 City Engineer Brandon Jones is talking about South Bench Drive. He states:
“Old fort road...that kind of grew and developed and with the support of the city and the council to be renamed South Bench Drive. We’ve worked on a new alignment with that. In conjunction with that, in order to get some funding we needed to be functionally classified with UDOT and the state, so we went through that process and I was happy to see – they typically don’t classify a new road unless they feel fairly confident that it will actually happen - but if you get on UDOT’s maps it is actually functionally classified all the way from 84 up the hill and connecting over into Layton so I think that’s a big win.
"...As I mentioned we have turned in a few funding requests Davis county prop 1 money we are still hopeful that we will get what we requested and then just last week we turned in for two different projects for South Bench drive, one at the at the new intersection on South Weber Drive (where SBD and SWD meet) and one for the section that would go up the hill - some of the more costly portions of the project so this would be with Wasatch Regional Council. This would be federal money...when you have a project that big that is usually where you have to go.”
Mayor Jo reported in a September meeting that they received Prop 1 funds for SBD phase 1. I am not sure if they got the federal funds they were seeking. But once again - these funds are going to a PROPOSED road. In 2014, the road to Layton was very nearly removed entirely from the general plan. However, it was added back in on two conditions: it could only move forward if it could be done at an 8% grade and if it was changed from a collector road to a **local** road. At this point in the process of this retreat, there still had not been ANY public involvement. Very few in the city even knew about it.
The retreat later goes on to add ideas they want to see happen within in the city. On the attached screenshot, you can see all their ideas. SBD in some form or other comes up several different times. They are then directed to check mark their personal top 5. Those top priorities are then listed, SBD being number 4.
In audio 2, at minute 1:20:00 a discussion takes place about the huge opportunity if we could having tying into a north gate on HAFB. The amount of growth of jobs on HAFB, the safety and egress this would bring to South Weber, and the commercial opportunity of annexing the slopes of Layton in conjunction are all discussed.
While I am glad that we have a council working together and exploring options and having discussions about the potential of our city, and while I absolutely have to give them credit for the synergy of the group, what I am so disappointed about is that their constituents-we the people- knew nothing about any of it. How many random citizens would listen to 2.5 hours of audio to hear how the retreat went? Probably 1 in 7,500. But how many of us desperately want our voice heard when it comes to these major decisions? I think all of us! I feel that to some degree, that they may have forgotten that they are here to represent us, not make decisions for us. I feel that if they remembered that aspect, they would have actively invited us to participate in the process, let us know what is going on and communicated it to us, like the many other things they have done that on. It is getting frustrating to me to have them tell us things like "this won't be a major road" "this is decades away" "this won't even get passed" only to find out through digging and searching they are actively working on making it a possibility, and not only that, it most definitely is intended to be a major road! The biggest problem I see here isn't even the road, the problem is their lack of involving the public. I'm going to say that one more time so that I'm not misunderstood.....The biggest problem I see here isn't even the work on the road, the biggest problem is their lack of involving the public.
Those of course, are just my thoughts. What are yours?
P.S. Not to make a long post longer, but if you're interested in jumping down another rabbit hole, property tax and the new public works building (estimated at 5.5 million) is discussed on audio 2 minute 1:55. Spoiler alert - property tax wasn't even added to the board of ideas, and it wasn't brought up by any of our elected officials.
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