No new bills out yesterday. The major bills are frantically being worked on according to the report given in the League’s LPC meeting yesterday. There’s even some discussion about combining the housing bill and the transit station area plans bill, which would make for one behemoth of a piece of legislation!
Cameron Diehl and his staff are doing a heck of a job on this major land use bills. Cam will really be a planner in all but name by the time he’s through with this. Wasatch Front RC staff are really helping on this too. So here’s some information that will be helpful if you’re interested in what’s going on behind the scenes on these major bills right now.
First, here’s a white paper (draft! Because the bill is not yet finalized) by Karson Eilers of the League staff. Karson too is becoming a psedo-planner after dealing with all this. He’s done great work here summarizing what will be contained in this housing bill, often referred to as SB34+, because it adds on to the moderate income housing bill from a couple of legislative sessions ago.
On station area plans, here’s the summary from yesterday’s meeting that lays out some of the main provisions of that bill. There is ongoing discussion on this with the communities that have rail transit stations, including a big conference call today as this bill continues to evolve.
1) All cities w/FR, TRAX, or BRT (or bus hub
outside of UTA) must do a SAP
1) May use existing transit-oriented plans (e.g. Cairns in Sandy)
2) ½ mile radius for FR & TRAX (66 stations)
2) Cities must update general plan & zoning to
implement SAP in aggressive but doable
time frame
1) Exact time frame still being finalized
3) State objectives for SAP
1) Housing affordability and availability
2) Sustainable environmental conditions
3) Access to opportunities
4) Transportation choices/connectivity
4) SAP implementation
1) Stakeholder engagement
2) Current and future land use opportunities
3) Current conditions/impediments to
development
5) Incorporate SAP into SB 34+ review and req’ts
1) City plans and adopts
2) MPO review to confirm state objectives are met
3) Mandatory menu item under SB 34+ with DWS
confirmation
6) Incentives for cities that adopt SAPs
7) Increase referendum standards for SAPs and
related legislative acts (i.e. zoning)
8) State and MPO technical assistance to do SAPs
The key thing to keep in mind here is that all bills are required to be through the legislative chamber they originated in by the beginning of next week. That means all House bills have to have had a committee hearing and then been passed by the House and sent over to the Senate by the beginning of next week, according to legislative rules. Same thing in reverse for the Senate. For bill that aren’t even out yet (as the major planning bills are not), that means a very compressed timeframe to get everything done. If there are issues identified when the bills come out (and there usually are, especially with bill as big and complex as these are going to be), that doesn’t leave much time to resolve them. So. It’s going to be a hectic week and a half coming up.