Tuesday’s Heber City Council meeting primarily focused on discussing code approval of the North Village Overlay Zone, commonly referred to as the NVOZ.
The meeting attracted a couple of hundred virtual participants, with the Heber City Council taking input for 3 hours. The comments included traffic concerns, storm water runoff, air quality, housing density, crime, preservation of the rural lifestyle, and a lack of infrastructure. Heber City Council Member Heidi Franco has held strong on her wishes to get as much negotiation on the expansive 13,000-unit development which will go in north of town. The decision to annex the land and development rights into the city has not been made. The Council has yet to approve the zone changes. Franco said she wants more detail outlined in the NVOZ before it comes up for a vote.
“I think anyone can see the amount of negotiation that happened with Sorenson. The Sorenson annexation or any annexation, there's so many, many, details in annexations and zone changes and such, that I believe the stronger the code is, the easier it is to negotiate on all the other things. I would prefer the NVOZ code to be as strong as possible so that we don't have to negotiate on and on, because what happens is fatigue."
Franco said they could not vote on the NVOZ in Tuesday’s meeting because they were missing council Member Wayne Hardman who was out due to illness.
“Council member Kahler and I are definitely willing to wait. We have some strong concerns about traffic, environmental impacts, as well as the high densities that are being proposed. Councilmember Johnston and Stack seem to go forward with a few more changes that were discussed after the three-and-a-half-hour public meeting.”
Franco said some council members have agreed to groundwater protections in advance of NVOZ approval. She said private well protections are needed because they feed into the Heber aquifer in the North Fields. She said Heber City and the Health Department would continue to monitor groundwater and adjust recommendations as needed.
Franco said there is a lot of confusion about what densities were granted by Wasatch County and what Heber City has agreed to accept. She wants to explore a transfer of density rights from the North Village to downtown Heber City.
“We’ve never come to an agreement on what the County had really entitled. And yet, the storm water or other slope concerns, or environmental concerns, perhaps limit those. Maybe those densities can be transferred to a TDR—transfer of development rights program into our downtown area. We are seeking to revitalize our Main Street in downtown. We're bringing forth the community redevelopment area for the downtown that will have hopefully tax increment financing.”
The current North Village code allows two-units per acre, which is outlined in their current annexation policy plan. Franco said she voted for that plan.
“You can see the two-units per acre that I had voted for originally you know for our annexation policy plan is a lot different than the very high density that's been asked for now as annexations are pending. But we still have that whole negotiation of actual density that will happen in the actual annexation agreement.”
There is a County Ground Water Study that indicates there is enough water for an additional 30,000 people.
The Sorenson developers donated 60 to 70 acres to the school district, but Franco said there must be a collaboration between the school district, the other developers, and the city.
Franco doesn’t know when the council will take a vote on the NVOZ.
