Last Week’s Planning Commission Meeting Recap

The first meeting of the month is a work meeting. Today, there were two topics to discuss then advance to further analytical study or final form for the city council to vote upon.

The staff, Niall Connolly and Tom Dansie, presented four potential options in revising the town’s ordinance(s) that would better reduce stormwater runoff and pollution runoff coming from new construction, especially in erosion hazardous areas.

After reviewing of the choices, the commission preferred option number three which takes a proactive approach by editing the definition of “land disturbance:”

“Stormwater Management Permits are Required for the following activities:

• A. Construction of buildings or other structures that are larger than 500 square feet in area.B
• B. Construction of new subdivisions, utilities (other than utility service to a single residence), roadways or bridges.
• C. Mining activities
• D. Any earthwork such as filling, grading, excavation or contouring land that would require a grading permit, as per section 10-15B of this Title.

Notwithstanding, the following activities do not require a stormwater management permit: Preparing a small garden.”

The commission, nonetheless, asked the staff to return to the next meeting with added language to option three that will

• 1. indicate the size of a “small garden;”
• 2. eliminate the washout from premixed concrete
• 3. require proper installation and removal of any sanitary facility (port-a-potty) during construction.
• 4. limit the use of pesticides, herbicides and other harmful chemicals
• 5. define what and how much/many plants and trees may be removed
• 6. state distance of construction from the major waterways (the river) and ravines.
• 7. require the developer to indicate which form of “best management practices” (BMP) has been chosen

The second issue the staff presented to the commission was the ongoing concern of inadequate parking within the town. Commission members quickly decided that they did not have sufficient data. They requested the staff to return to the next meeting with a proposed method to correctly analyze if Springdale truly has a parking problem that is its responsibility to resolve and that would point to one or more possible methods to rectify it.

A representative from the national park, Matt Zink, cautioned that there will never be enough parking to satisfy the number of patrons. Tom Dansie agreed with this assessment from his own experiences and by bringing to the commission’s mind the California freeways that soon become congested even after further lanes have been added.