Zoning and property rights

I was asked today to describe my feelings on zoning, the need to respect property rights and how do you still plan for a growing city? Below is my response.

What I would like to do is make sure that the zoning is represented with the lowest limits on individual rights and allow people to build and create wealth with their investments, while ensuring the minimums.

I am for reducing the zoning and moving it out of the commissions hands, but moving it to a local level control, so the commission isn't always able to step on people's individual rights. For example, there are farmers that have their properties zoned for one type of crop, but they have to get special permission to move to a different crop, which costs time and money, while a neighboring farm is free zoned and does not have that kind of restriction.

Also, if that same farmer would like to add some small manufacturing to his area, so he can process his own crops, the whole area could be rezoned as manufacturing, instead of just the small area where the manufacturing would take place.

The County should still make sure and have a basic idea of the zoning of roads and future growth, but in a way that those who sell and those that don't aren't forced into changing what they do with their land. Let me give you an example, in North San Diego, at the beginning of the 80's they planned a whole series of cross freeways to join the I-5 and I-15, as they run more or less parallel to each other. Now at that time, there was no one selling the land, and not a whole lot of need for the freeways, so what they did was to give them right of purchase when someone wanted to buy the land where the freeways would be. This gave the city the chance to save for the purchase, bought the land when the owner was interested in selling, and knew what kind of businesses or housing would go into the area, because it was determined by the buyer, not the city. They planned for several cross freeways, and those that sold first were the ones that were developed, some of them were abandoned, because the need was no longer there.

So that is what we need to do for Utah County, I hope that you will take this into consideration. It is always nice to talk to people that have expertise in an area.

Many of my ideas come from a book called, "The Seamless City,"by Rick Baker. It takes on the redevelopment of a city in Florida using conservative methods.

John