As I’ve noted in earlier posts, the Unified Economic Opportunity Commission has become the primary body at the state level looking at growth issues and what to do.  That’s been borne out again in the Commission’s meeting last week.  https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/852955.m4a

The Commission, chaired by the Governor, received reports from its various subcommittees on who their members will be and what issues they will be addressing through the remainder of the year https://www.utah.gov/pmn/files/853203.pdf.

Some of the highlights of the reports and subsequent discussions:

• the Growth and Transportation subcommittee will be looking at the structure of funding for transportation infrastructure, including for the first time for long-term investment in public transit.
• The G&T subcommittee will also be looking at what changes to policy and law might be made for land use around transit stations, beyond what was put in place in this year’s legislative session
• The sentiment was expressed that planning for water infrastructure and water management is now as or more important than transportation infrastructure, and that significant effort needs to be put in here.  Water will ultimately control how much more we can grow, or at least in what manner.
• Plenty of discussion about how landscaping for new growth needs to be modified and restricted considerably, beyond what was put in place with this year’s Water Wise Landscaping bill passed by the legislature.
• The Housing Affordability subcommittee, formerly the Commission on Housing Affordability, reported on the largely unacknowledged issue of housing availability in rural Utah.  Many areas around the state outside of the metropolitan areas are growing economically and in population, but often there is very little new housing available.  Needs to be addressed.
• Housing subcommittee co-chair Steve Waldrip also talked about the current effort underway to attempt to develop a metric to measure the shares for housing affordability among communities.  This is a tricky and loaded issue, as I’ve noted in previous posts about regional fair share histories in other states. It will be interesting to see how this will be addressed here.

The Commission then also heard a brief report from State Planning Coordinator Laura Hanson about the plans being developed for conducting the Statewide Conversation on Growth, funded by the legislature to the tune of $1 million.  See the link above for the slides she presented.  This will be interesting to have this going on at the same time as all the work underway by the Commission subcommittees; the land use policies discussions conducted by the land use law non-profit funded by $250,000 from the legislature; the water planning projects funded by the legislature; the planning required of local governments for water, transit station areas, moderate income housing, and water wise landscaping; and the on-going efforts of the land use task force.

2022 is truly shaping up to be the Year of Planning. The question will be, will it result in any positive changes?  In the meantime, we continue to grow https://www.standard.net/news/local/2022/may/26/west-haven-population-grows-by-15-4-second-fastest-rate-in-utah/