Residents from Ada and Canyon counties packed Star’s public meeting on proposed changes to the city’s comprehensive plan at LifeSpring Christian Church on March 27.
Local residents raise their hands to ask questions during Star’s community meeting on the proposed changes to the city’s comprehensive plan at LifeSpring Christian Church in Star on Tuesday, March 27, 2018.
Residents from Ada and Canyon counties packed Star’s public meeting on proposed changes to the city’s comprehensive plan at LifeSpring Christian Church on March 27.
NICOLE FOY / IPT
Local residents raise their hands to ask questions during Star’s community meeting on the proposed changes to the city’s comprehensive plan at LifeSpring Christian Church in Star on Tuesday, March 27, 2018.
STAR — A hostile crowd of approximately 300 residents faced off with Star city planners and staff over a proposed northern expansion included in the city’s comprehensive plan.
Residents from Star, Middleton and unincorporated areas of Canyon and Ada counties voiced concerns about how the comprehensive plan’s proposed northern expansion called for more residential development in mostly rural land and seemed to disregard Middleton and Canyon County’s plans for the area. Many rural residents were angry that officials they did not elect — and from a city in which they did not live — seemed to be making decisions they had no power to vote against.
The proposed expansion of Star’s comprehensive plan identifies 684 acres of Canyon County land for low-density housing and 4,343 acres for medium-density housing, according to Canyon County Development Services Director Patricia Nilsson.
No elected officials from Star were present at the meeting. City planner Mark Butler and other staff ran the interactive meeting and tried to reassure the crowd that a comprehensive plan expansion did not expand Star’s area of impact. He frequently insisted the plan was only Star’s “dream” for future expansion.
“This is a comprehensive plan expansion,” Butler said. “It is not an annexation.”
When pressed by the crowd, Butler acknowledged that including areas in Star’s comprehensive plan could have future impacts on the city.
Attendees shouted questions, interrupted staff presentations and loudly disputed staff assertions on transportation plans, density requirements, during the nearly three-hour meeting in LifeSpring Christian Church in downtown Star. Although the formal public hearing is not planned until April 19, staff circulated a microphone around the crowd and took extensive notes on feedback from community members.
The community meeting was intended to gather feedback for Star city officials on the whole comprehensive plan, but speakers frequently cited Willowbrook Development’s contested plans to annex 1,550 acres of rural land into the city of Star.
In a hearing in Jan. 18, Boise-based Willowbrook Development proposed to annex, rezone and develop the large swath of land in the Purple Sage and Kingsbury Road corridor — including nearly 800 acres in rural Canyon County — into the city of Star. At the conclusion of the hearing, council members voted to revisit the application on May 1.
Butler, who is not certified by the American Planning Association, said he told Star City Council that he believed the proposed plan and development needed a longer process, beyond the May 1 deadline.
An hour into the meeting, one woman stood with a simple question: Does our input and opinions influence your plans?
Butler said he couldn’t answer that question, but emphasized their job was to relay information to the Star City Council.
Tom Foster, 80, told staff that he moved to the Star’s city impact area in the 1940s and had watched Star grow from a “village” to today.
“The people involved in this should have a say in it,” Foster said. “That’s my bottom line.”
Nilsson, speaking from the Canyon County planning perspective, told the Idaho Press-Tribune that Tuesday’s meeting was an indication that Canyon County would need to review its comprehensive plan in relation to that of Middleton and Star’s.
Nicole Foy covers Canyon County and Hispanic affairs. You can reach her at 208-465-8107 and follow her on Twitter @nicoleMfoy
