The Summit County Council Wednesday got an update from the landowner committee working on a Village Overlay zone in the Hoytsville area. The group also came with a request for the Council.
The group is looking to set up a new interchange, at the spot where Creamery Lane crosses under Interstate 80. They asked the Council to support putting the project on the Transportation Infrastructure Project List for UDOT, which is known as the STIP.
Council Member Doug Clyde told us they’re supportive, but the Overlay project is still in its early stages.
“They can’t even tell us how many units they’re asking for at this point,” Clyde continued. “They’ve just got a bubble diagram, which is appropriate. That’s what they should be doing. But we don’t even know at this point how much traffic they’re going to generate.”
He said an interchange is appropriate in that area of North Summit, since the two nearest interchanges are eight miles apart. But the Village Overlay still has a long road ahead.
“They as a committee need to come up with their strengths and weaknesses and opportunities and constraints, and work through those things,” Clyde said. “And again, I think they’re just at the very beginning of that process.”
Clyde said his biggest concern is that the Weber River runs through the proposed Overlay area.
“The river is out of compliance with federal water quality standards,” Clyde explained. “We the county is largely responsible for cleaning up the Weber River because most of the impacts are land-use impacts. And so if we’re going to permit a new project in that area, it is going to have to be defined to the highest standard for storm-water management that currently exists. So, my point to them was, this is not going to look like your grandfather’s subdivision. This is going to look like an entirely appropriate storm-water management that is not anything we’ve seen in the county. We just haven’t had any big development since the laws have changed.”
On another item Wednesday, the Council received the completed independent audit for the county for 2018. One item said that their General Fund was over budget on some transportation projects. But Clyde said that’s more a matter of fiscal timing than it is a significant concern.
“It happens when we have a budget year, right,” Clyde continued. “And so, we budgeted certain expenditures on transportation for 2018, and we didn’t get them all spent. So, some of them moved over into 2019.”
