One of the themes I’ve been harping on in the whole zoning reform drama going down across the country, and here in Utah, is the importance of state-local collaboration.  Top-down state mandates face a lot of resistance from locals, sometimes even downright refusals, if the local officials don’t feel like their concerns have been considered.

By and large, what has been going down in Utah on zoning reform, such as it is here, has been more or less collaborative.  It’s made for slow progress, in the opinion of some, toward zoning reform in Utah, but at least what has been done stands a better chance of implementation, I think.

However, with more than 240 separate city and town governments and 29 counties, it seems pretty inevitable that someone is going not completely buy in to what goes down.  And that’s not necessarily a bad thing – one of the things I talk about in the presentation I’ve given for a number of years on group decision making is that a diversity of opinions in a group is a good thing, even dissent, because it can cause us all to look more closely at what we may think.

One of our more outspoken local elected officials has just recently caught attention for concerns with the current requirements for many communities to adopt moderate income housing plans, the timeline for doing so, and the options that must be considered.  That official is Mayor Troy Walker of Draper.

One thing that is certain about Mayor Walker is that he speaks what’s on his mind, and his mind often works in a somewhat contrary way.  Yesterday, KUTV2 News aired a story about Mayor Walker’s issues with the MIHP requirements.  While I don’t necessarily agree with everything Mayor Walker said, it did get me to think again about whether those requirements would, in the end, accomplish the goals desired. (Disclosure: I’ve talked about some of those very concerns with a number of planners and local and state officials earlier).  The mayor said:

“One thing I think we need is more time to digest these bills,” said Draper’s Mayor Troy Walker, when commenting on the state’s Affordable Housing Mandate.

He said the city’s planning commission scrambled to put together their 2023 Affordable Housing Plan to submit to the state by the August first deadline.

The original law, which mandated cities form a yearly plan to bring in affordable housing, passed in 2019. However, the legislature keeps moving up deadlines. Plus, each time the law is modified, the city has to re-do their report to meet the new guidelines.

“They haven’t thought it through all the way [and] we haven’t been able to think it through all the way,” said Walker.

Fair point, I think.

Mayor Walker also goes on to point out some of the perhaps unintended, or at least not completely considered, consequences of some of the strategies given as options in the bill on MIHPs recently enacted by the legislature – one in particular, namely, the waiving of impact fees.

Reducing or eliminating Impact Fees for developers is one incentive recommended by the state that Draper chose as part of its Affordable Housing Action Plan.

“Every home that gets built has an impact,” explained Mayor Walker, “it impacts our roads, our parks, our police [and] our fire.”

Taking off the tax burden of paying for the impact their development has on a city lowers a project’s expenses. However, someone has to foot the bill.

“If you take out a bunch of impact fees, and we have to cover the impact, we’re gonna have to raise taxes,” explained Walker, “there’s no other way to do it.”

“Raising taxes only drives up unaffordability of housing,” (Rusty) Cannon (Utah Taxpayers Association) commented, “there’s no way around that.”

Walker said he will have no other choice, however, when it comes to making the Affordable Housing Mandate work in Draper.

That’s a concern about only one of the options listed in the code for consideration by local governments for making housing more affordable.

As with many complex issues, maybe we need to do a little more thinking about these, too.