From Deseret News archives:
Developers offer to ease Bluffdale's tax pain
City would have to drop opposition to land transfer
"I don't think that's a good offer," Mayor Claudia Anderson said during a break in the City Council meeting Tuesday where the offer was made. "We want to keep Bluffdale Bluffdale."
The offer came during a heated Truth in Taxation hearing for a proposed tax hike that would double the city's property-tax revenue from $416,242 last year to $832,484 this year. The increase, if approved, will mean an additional $115.91 per year on a $250,000 home.
Calling his offer "a partial way (for the city) to save face," Dave Millheim, a landowner in the southwest quadrant of Bluffdale, said he would give the city $100,000, as would the developers of the Rosecrest community in Herriman, who want to expand into Bluffdale.
That desire to develop southwest Bluffdale, a wholly undeveloped 4,000 acres known as Area 4, led to the 2-year-old lawsuit. The City Council in December 2003 denied the landowners a zoning change that would have allowed for high-density residential and commercial development in Area 4. Some city officials and a group of residents have been fighting the proposal with the rallying cry, "Keep Bluffdale rural." Bluffdale is currently made up mostly of residential lots of at least an acre.
After the zoning change was denied, the landowners filed a disconnection lawsuit, seeking to secede from Bluffdale and ultimately annex into Herriman. The developers won the lawsuit in 3rd District Court, and the city is now preparing to file briefs in its appeal before the state Supreme Court.
Millheim told the council that he and the other Area 4 landowners have tried many times, always without success, to negotiate a way to keep Area 4 in Bluffdale and allow for the development. They got close when the council approved the so-called special-development-plan zone, which would have allowed for the denser development.
But a group of residents calling itself Bluffdale United started a petition drive to throw out the SDP zone. In June, the zone went before a citywide vote and was narrowly upheld, though developers said they had no hope that the council would apply the SDP zone to Area 4.
That's because a new council has taken office since the creation of the SDP. Bluffdale United supported Anderson's candidacy for mayor in November 2005, as well as the candidacy of Nancy Lord for City Council. Both won, and the developers doubt they can work with the new council.
"I don't know if we can stay in Bluffdale," Millheim said during the public hearing. "There's too much mistrust. There's too much water under the bridge."
But Anderson and Lord say that since they took office, none of the developers has made any attempts to negotiate. Anderson said the developers should go before the new council with their development plan and see what happens.
The council will vote on the proposed tax increase today at 4 p.m. in the council chambers, 14175 S. Redwood Road.
E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com
