Monday, August 31, 2015

City Council 25-Aug-2015: Town Center Overlay Changes Workshop

The council and planning commission met together for the first of several workshops to discuss what, if any, changes should be made to the Town Center overlay zone. The mayor, 4 members of the city council and 8 members of the planning commission were in attendance. One resident, Devirl Barfuss, attended the meeting.

The 1 hour meeting was facilitated by a well regarded city planning consultant. He asked a series of 5 questions. We were given colored post-it notes to write our responses to each question (in some cases we could only provide one response, in others two or three). The responses were put on the wall and organized into general themes. I thought it was an interesting exercise and the results will provide a foundation for future meetings.

Below are the questions that we asked and as many responses that were given as I can recall. Please feel free to share your thoughts by responding to the poll questions and/or by using the comment section (e.g. if you selected other and want to share what that was).

1. What about Highland makes you want to live here forever? Select 2 options.

2. What makes Highland different from other small towns (not necessarily better)? Select 2 options.

3. What would you like to see more of in Highland? Select 2 options.

4. What do you want to see less of in Highland? Select 2 options.

5. Imagine Town Center 20 years in the future. What do you see? Select as many options as you wish.

Below are the top generalized responses to each question from those in attendance.

What about Highland makes you want to live here forever?

  1. Values / family friendly (9)
  2. Large lots

What makes Highland different from other small towns (not necessarily better)?

  1. Large lots / views (9)
  2. Well educated / affluence (5)
  3. Sunday (3)

What would you like to see more of in Highland?

  1. Recreation (5)
  2. Business (4)

What do you want to see less of in Highland?

  1. High density development (3)
  2. Traffic (2)
  3. The rest of the responses could not be generalized

Imagine Town Center 20 years in the future. What do you see?

  1. More business (13)
  2. Community center / Library / Parks (11)

7 comments:

  1. We appreciate the Parks Department and they do a good job, but we are a little disappointed about the lawn in the Wild Rose Park. There have been problems with the sprinklers. It appears that they have been fixed. I know that they are working diligently to get them right. Also, I wish that the city would sweep the gutters more frequently. I know that North County Blvd and 92 are state roads, but the city should sweep them anyway to make the community look nice.

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  2. We moved here 25 years ago, there is nothing about Highland today that makes me want to live here forever. Highland has become almost identical to it's neighbors, Lehi and American Fork. Lots of business, town homes (apartment buildings), and lots of traffic. The only thing we don't have that they do is commercial business openings on Sunday. I know there is no way to go back, however you asked what makes us want to live here forever, and right now there is nothing. Kudos to all those who have moved in and developed the city into what they want.

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  3. Nobody wants to put single family homes on large lots next to businesses. And nobody wants to pay the high property taxes that will be required if we don't have businesses. We need to have a thriving business district to help pay our municipal expenses and we need to have high density housing (such as town homes) as a buffer between the businesses and the single family homes. I fully support town homes around the community center.

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  4. We moved here years ago for the amazing views, the parks and trails, limited retail development and the values that we shared with the many wonderful people that we met who already lived here. However, we also moved here to escape from the plague of high density housing, which is so rampant in many other cities. Parks, trails and green space serve as great "buffers" in between single family homes and businesses. Let us do all that we can to keep the high density housing out of Highland!

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  5. We wont have much of a city to enjoy if we don't start to fix the infrastructure in our city. There is not enough budget to do so. The best, if not the only, way to fix it is by accessing more to the citizens, or attracting more businesses to our city. I struggle with having these businesses on the border of our city, most of their revenue coming from our city, then getting little to no benefit in return.

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Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts regarding this post.