First, let's start with some terms: ESAP and BOSAC. These acronyms stand for the Eastern Summit County Agricultural Preservation Advisory Board (ESAP) and the Basin Open Space Advisory Council (BOSAC).
Both are county committees charged with spending public money to buy and protect open space, though the sources of the money and the committees’ stated purposes are different.
On Wednesday, the Summit County Council discussed whether to continue to use those structures to dispense the $50 million it’s expected to borrow for land preservation, or to establish a new process.
Councilors didn’t come to any conclusions beyond agreeing to convene a debt committee to craft a plan for how much money to borrow and when. There is an early-April deadline for the council to decide how much it wants to borrow if it’s going to do so this year.
Councilor Doug Clyde, among others, said the county should work quickly.
“The damage that is done to our watershed just by routine development is extraordinary. And it is also, by and large, irreversible,” Clyde said. “So I think we need to move on it rapidly.”
Chair Chris Robinson outlined some key questions the council faces. One is how to borrow the money, either all at once or serialized in pieces. The latter comes with more borrowing costs, the former with the pressure to use tens of millions of dollars within 3-5 years.
Another question is where to spend it. Voters in the Snyderville Basin have bonded for open space money before, which BOSAC has helped distribute, but on the East Side, it’s a new proposition.
Clyde said the county should make good on the promises it made in the run-up to the election that the Kamas Valley and Weber River corridors would be two particular areas of focus.
“We made representations to the East Side of the county that they were going to get treated fairly. Now, they've never been treated before, right? They've never gotten a nickel of bond money for virtually anything,” Clyde said. “So what does treated fairly mean? I think we have to put on some more representatives from the East Side to help figure out what that means, as well as some people from Snyderville.”
He recommended forming a new committee with representatives from BOSAC, ESAP and the County Council.
Robinson asked what exactly the county should spend the bond money on. Should it be conservation easements, which he said would cost 80% to 90% of the land’s value? Or should the county buy land outright?
Should the county mandate that the money only be a portion of a project’s cost to maximize the opportunity for matching funds? Or should it be used to finance entire deals?
Robinson suggested the council should consider priorities — whether the efforts should be focused to control growth or protect watersheds or conserve agricultural heritage or for other uses.
“And then another one is, are we allowing or requiring public access?” Robinson said. “... And that could be trails, or if it's like buying another Round Valley, where it's public access everywhere, it's publicly owned.”
Councilor Roger Armstrong suggested the county develop a matrix similar to the one BOSAC uses to evaluate how projects the committee is evaluating conform to pre-selected priorities.
County Manager Tom Fisher said staffers would recommend a course of action for the council to review. A staff report identifies the council’s April 6 meeting as a deadline for the county to decide whether to issue debt in 2022.
