Davis gets grant to hire a planner

FARMINGTON — A private group has given Davis County a grant for $100,000 to hire a county planner.

Davis County hasn't had a planner position, which has been vacant for two years, to save money, Economic Development Director Wilf Sommerkorn said.

The Nature Conservancy of Utah is giving the money to Davis County as part of its Shorelands Plan designed to protect wildlife and wetlands on the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake.

The conservancy is more interested in protecting and maintaining biodiversity than in preserving open spaces, said Amanda Smith, director of government relations.

After drawing up the plan, the Nature Conservancy and Envision Utah were committed to finding private money to fund implementation of the plan, Smith said. They found the money at the Hewlett Foundation.

The county planner's job mostly will be to coordinate the transfer of development rights from wetlands, farms and pasture lands to developers who will buy them so they can build higher-density projects on less-sensitive land, Sommerkorn said.

With a small fee attached to the sale of the development rights, the county should be able to maintain the planner's salary and job, Smith said, adding such programs have been successful in other areas of the country.

With the rapid build-out of Davis County, expected to be completed in the next 10-15 years, groups such as the Nature Conservancy desire to preserve as much of the rural flavor of the county, including wetlands, pasture lands and farms as possible, Smith said.

The transfer of the development rights program is designed to preserve undeveloped lands while allowing developers to purchase the rights to build higher-density projects in other, less desirable areas. The program works by taking land in an agricultural zone, such as farmland, and applying a hypothetical density of buildings to it, say one building per 20 acres.

For example, a farm of 100 acres would have five potential buildings associated with it. The land is then considered a sending zone and the rights to the construction of five buildings can be sold to a receiving zone. A developer, in conjunction with a city that desires higher density development on a specific parcel of ground, could buy the rights to the development of five buildings and thus build a higher-density project and have a larger profit on the development.

The Shorelands Plan has been adopted by Davis County and nine cities with exposure to the Great Salt Lake, Smith said, adding the most transfer of development rights is expected in Farmington, Layton and West Point, which have the most undeveloped exposure to the lake shore.

The eastern boundary for the program is the proposed route of the Legacy Highway with the western boundary the shoreline itself.

Sommerkorn hopes to have a planner hired by April. The job position announcement is expected to be on the county's Web site soon, he said.

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