Latah County Comp Plan Revision

I attended (briefly) a meeting gathering input on aspects of Latah County that were valued by the community. This is part of a process to revise the county Comp Plan.

Two points struck me:
1. Several people spoke to the idea of valuing the unique character and qualities of the various communities in the county -- Moscow being just one of those communities. As part of that, they sought to preserve the community schools, business core, history and other attributes that make the towns unique. I think there is something in this idea that connects to my recent post on cultural sustainability.

2. There were also several mentions of the desire for urban densities (including housing (Legacy Crossing was mentioned by location)) without causing sprawl. Virtues that were listed in support of this (in addition to urban amenities) were preserving farming, open space, avoiding McMansions on hilltops, and concentrating commercial/industrial activities (another way to avoid sprawl). A virtue not mentioned might be that urban densities make the provision of utilities relatively cheaper and lower the multiple costs associated with transportation in low-density communities.

Moscow Water Budget Questions

The issue on the table tonight at P&Z was a request to annex a 1.04 acre parcel and to amend the Comprehensive Plan and rezone the parcel to R4.

The current (1999) Comprehensive plan says this about water:

"Future planning decisions concerning any new development in the Moscow area should consider the amount of water to be used by the development, the nature of the water use, and the source of the water supply. The city should establish guidelines for water usage based upon the nature of the new development."

I asked, Does the city have a water budget that would help P&Z think about these "guidelines for water usage?"

Mr Belknap indicated that the 1992 PBAC agreement is the closest thing we have to a water policy, its the only action the city has taken relative to the issue.

I asked how much water will be used by this new parcel in either the SR or R4 zoning

Mr Belknap indicated that in SR zoning (which staff recommended), one dwelling/acre would amount to 106,000 gallons/year and R4, guestimating 15 dwellings/acre wold be 1.6 million gallons/year. This is rule-of-thumb data, not based on observed water consumption patterns in Moscow.

The Comprehensive Plan goes on to say this about water: "Finally, the city should develop mechanisms to insure that new developments continue to meet the established guidelines as set forth in the management plan."

Mr Belknap had previously indicated to me that the only "Management Plan" as referenced in the Comprehensive Plan is the Ground Water Management Plan September 1992, the so called, PBAC agreement. In that plan the City agrees that it will "require developers to project water use."

I asked Mr Belknap when this water use projection should happen: annexation time, rezone time, or plat time? and he indicated at the time of rezone. He also indicated that while this is effectively City policy, it is not adhered to in practice.

Which brings me to the real focus for this post. If the PBAC pumping limit is the closest thing we have to a water policy and we have a 30-50 million gallon headroom (in recent years) between consumption and the cap (and the margin of variation year to year is large enough to drive the City over the cap) how do we proceed to manage our water budget?

My good colleagues on the Commission could see the direction this questioning was headed and argued that we could not take this issue out on any one land owner, that it was a policy question, and that as a community we needed a solution to the problem. To which I agree -- but there is no policy-making action and the PBAC agreement, which is the closest thing we have to a water policy, is not adhered to.

Which begs the question -- if we don't like implications of the line of reasoning above, how do we develop a water budget that spreads the burden around the community and yet not abdicate actually addressing the issue of a scarce resource?

Here are two ideas that come to mind:
1. Approach it like carbon credits, allow a would-be new developer to buy water capacity for their project by implementing structural changes that lead to conservation in other areas of town, for example, buying low flush toilets to replace existing, installing xeriscape to replace water intensive landscape, etc.

2. Adjust water rates based on the previous year's pumping experience. If pumping exceeded the PBAC cap, prices would rise the following year by an amount calculated to reduce water demand to the cap level. (There should be some life-line usage level that is exempted from this.) This would lead water users to develop more conservative practices to the extent that they feel market pressure. It might also raise additional revenue to be used to augment the supply.

The former approach hits the developer, and requires organizations and mechanisms that presently do not exist. The latter will hit the resident and create a new inflationary pressure on the cost of living. Is there another mechanism I'm not thinking of?

If the PBAC cap is not really the carrying capacity of our aquifer, is there a plan that would help us gracefully transition to the level of usage and types of sources that would be sustainable?

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Note. Per suggestion of Commissioner Shilberg, I have replaced my term "de facto" in the first version of this post with the phrase "the closest thing we have to a water policy is" which is closer to the language used by Mr Belknap.

Moscow Comp Plan rewrite process

This came out by email following a recent open house

In my mind, a flaw with the Comp Plan feedback process is that the community can't see the feedback being collected, nor is there any evidence of how the feedback is being responded to.

Hello Community Members:

Thank you for attending our Comprehensive Plan Open House last Thursday, March 20, 2008. If you would like to review the draft of the Comprehensive Plan in more detail, it is located online at www.visionmoscow.org. The site also contains an electronic comment form so that you may provide us with your thoughts and ideas on the draft Plan. We would appreciate hearing from you.

To benefit your understanding, we’d like to quickly review the public process for you:

The Steering Committee was selected especially for the review of the Draft Comprehensive Plan, and they have spent many hours reviewing it as it has been received from our Plan Consultant, Kendig Keast Collaborative. This Committee will continue to provide comment review and document revision, completing the Draft preparation by early Summer 2008.

The Planning & Zoning Commission will review and fine tune the Draft Plan during the summer months to develop the final Draft. They will conduct Public Meetings and Hearings in late Fall 2008 to receive additional public comment and testimony, and will provide a recommendation for adoption to City Council.

The Moscow City Council, along with the Mayor, will receive Planning & Zoning’s recommendation and will review the final Draft of the Comprehensive Plan Update before its adoption. Their consideration will consist of public meetings and hearings to receive final public testimony in late Fall of 2008 and early Winter of 2008 and 2009.

We appreciate your being a part of this important living document and its revision process.

Thank you.

Merrilie Larsen
Community Development Secretary
221 East 2nd Street
Moscow ID 83843
208 883-7035 phone
208 883-7033 fax
mlarsen@ci.moscow.id.us

Paradise Path Spring Planting Day 3/29/08

an email from Roger Blanchard

Saturday, March 29th
8:00 – 11:00 a.m.

Volunteers will be planting 33 hackberry trees along the path between Blaine Street and the east city limits

Parking is available at the east city limits just west of Carmichael Road
or walk or bike

There will be shovels available, but feel free to bring your own tools if you like

Refreshments will be provided


Roger Blanchard

Parks & Facilities Manager

City of Moscow

Creating Community Character

I'm reading the minutes of P&Z for Feb 27 where Bret Keast was holding forth on ideas in the new Comprehensive Plan. The term he was using is "community character" and it strikes me now that creating/maintaining community character is an element in boyd's "cultural sustainability" that I noted previously.

What Keast was driving at was to move away from the Euclidean approach to zoning and toward a more forms-based model where the desired character is specified and the specific use(s) are allowed to range more widely. We get a first chance to look at these ideas in the Legacy Crossing URA (final plan in huge PDF) and the overlay zone currently making its way through P&Z. What we saw at the previous P&Z meeting was ideas about setting the form for the development but being more open to the use(s). In fact, mixed use is the expectation for the area, with rentals, condos, and commercial (and structured parking) all expected on th site.

Cultural Sustainability

danah boyd goes beyond the environmentally sustainable theme I've advertised for this blog to look at "cultural sustainability." What is interesting about her thought is that it gives voice to another dimension in the conversation about big box stores in Moscow. Its the kind of words I was looking for in the Yes Moscow No Superwalmart days. She is talking about ideas that get outside the current economic models and look at the cultural heart of the community.

Tree Moscow

Last April (2007) Tom Lamar, Amy Grey and I talked about an effort to increase tree planting in Moscow.

We had three different, but potentially overlapping interests in this activity. Tom through PCEI along the lines of habitat restoration, esp along creeks and wetlands, Amy, through Backyard Harvest for planting of fruit trees. My goal was driven by my response to Inconvenient Truth, a desire to contribute to carbon sequestration by planting large growing, long lived, and self-propagating trees in places where they have a chance of spreading.

Amy designed a logo but we never got the project launched. Working with Roger Blanchard and the PPTF, Karina and I planted planted and tended trees east of Blaine last spring and again this year. This year, I'm putting out an oak that is reproducing itself in the Travois linear park, seedlings from a sycamore maple that has grown in my yard since before 1926 (and spreads well where I don't want it), and a delicious pie cherry that sends up suckers in the yard if I don't mow it. All these are going along the path east of Blaine.

Purpose of this blog

I'm starting this as a forum and workspace for Moscow ID residents (and friends) interested in the intertwined issues of water supply/conservation, Cool Cities, Comprehensive Plan revision, Smart Growth, and Urban Renewal Agency/ Legacy Crossing and probably more.

The problem we are addressing here is making Moscow more sustainable: environmentally and economically, both as a local concern and as our way of thinking globally and acting locally.

I intend to recruit co-authors to the blog on these topics and we invite your comments and trackbacks.

The rationale for a blog comes from the work I'm doing at Washington State University on the use of electronic portfolios for learning. We are exploring what we've come to call "learning portfolios" which are problem-solving workspaces that invite a community to join with the learner in working on a problem. Unlike a showcase portfolio, which might be more like a resume, a learning portfolio is really the portfolio of the solution of a problem rather than the portfolio of a person. This blog will attempt to learn from that work and apply it to this problem in Moscow.