Land-use limits could be undercut

If there’s one thing at the heart of every controversy about the changing nature of North Idaho in the past decade, it’s growth.

More people, more homes and more businesses mean more cars on the roads, more kids in school, pressure on water and sewer systems, rising public costs that drive up property taxes and clashes between the new and the old.

Now, an initiative on the November ballot would change how Idaho communities approach growth. Proposition 2 would require local governments to pay landowners for lost potential value whenever any land-use regulation prevents them from fully developing their property to its “highest and best use.”

Boise land-use attorney Heather Cunningham, an advocate of the measure, said, “Government has, in my view, gone too far in imposing regulations on private landowners.” If a community wants to keep open space or limit housing density to benefit everyone, she said, “Why shouldn’t the public be willing to pay for it, if it’s a public benefit?”

Planners, government officials, smart-growth advocates and even Realtors and many developers across the state are against the measure.

“It just changes everything,” said Rand Wichman, who was Kootenai County’s planning director for six years, and now works as a planning consultant for private developers. “Instead of worrying about what are the traffic impacts, does this project make sense for the community, what is the appropriate density and that kind of thing, you end up with a whole different set of things to consider.”

Kootenai County’s budget is just over $60 million, Wichman said, so it could never afford to pay a claim for, say, denying a $150 million luxury subdivision. “That’s just not going to happen,” he said. “It really does take conventional planning and just throw it right out the window.”

That’s just fine with Marvin Erickson, who has waged an unsuccessful battle for years to develop a subdivision on local icon Canfield Mountain, where the zig-zag shaped road to his house is visible across the county on the otherwise wooded hillside.

“I think it’s been a long time coming,” Erickson said. “This new law would put a monkey wrench in their actions to thwart and subvert my rights.”

Cunningham said government would have a “free pass” to avoid big payments to thwarted developers. “Government has 90 days to remove the regulation or pay the claim,” she said. “They can remove the regulation and walk away from it.”

But the Idaho initiative, unlike Oregon’s Measure 37 on which it was modeled, doesn’t let local government waive the land-use rule just for that one landowner. The regulation would have to be repealed permanently, for everyone.

If Idaho began repealing its land-use rules in a time of significant growth, the result would be “pretty much chaos,” said Jerry Mason, attorney for the Association of Idaho Cities and for 10 individual Idaho cities. “Those regulations are just part of everyday life today,” he said. “They’re how the built community happens.

“Roads are of sufficient width and sufficient quality that taxpayers can afford to maintain them. Water systems provide us clean drinking water. … We have parks, we have community facilities, we have traffic signals – all these things come about through development regulations,” Mason said. “Without that, it would be a very chaotic world.”

Ken Harward, executive director of the association of cities, said, “Cities would no longer have an ability to control their destiny. … Good city planning is for the purpose of having a good, peaceful co-existence of all citizens and neighbors, and this really threatens that.”

Jon Barrett, executive director of Idaho Smart Growth, works in Boise but traveled to North Idaho over the summer to conduct workshops on zoning code reform. He found people upset about growth and its impacts on their property taxes.

“If our development is happening in an inefficient, high-cost kind of way, that’s contributing to increased property taxes,” he said.

Barrett gave the example of a neighborhood where 500 feet of roadway serves 10 families, versus a more sprawling one where the lots and homes are laid out so that the same road serves only four families. The road still costs the same amount either way, but it costs each family more under the second scenario.

“Smart growth” approaches – accomplished through land-use regulations – can allow basic services to be provided at lower cost, Barrett said.

Proposition 2 backers say that’s no reason to allow government to impact property values. “Under current law right now, governments have the power to regulate your property, reduce its value, and not pay you for your loss,” said Laird Maxwell, head of “This House is My Home,” the group pushing the initiative. “That is a bad hammer that they have in their planning toolbox, and Proposition 2 takes that hammer away from them.”

Barrett said the measure creates uncertainty about how neighborhoods and communities will develop in the future, especially if land-use rules could be repealed by governments seeking to avoid huge payments they can’t afford. Then developers would have free rein, he said. “They can develop what they want wherever they want, regardless of how it affects the community.”

The election is Nov. 7.