The oversupply of real estate by fools like this drive down the price, and therefore the equity, of every other home in the area. Theirs, yours, and mine. Our equity will not return until the market comes back into balance. That will take long enough by itself. The fact that the idiots running the various P&Z office around the area keep approving more and more of these debacles, in a misguided attempt to re-inflate the bubble, just exacerbates the problem and lengthens the recovery time.

PC Developer = Liar

EDITOR NOTE–No delight, just hate to see an economy built on GROWTH, because it is bound to fail. AVIMOR, TAMARACK, CLIFFS, were all bound to fail because they didn’t have the up front cash to do as they promised. We predict the same for the one in Garden Valley as well. See next comment.

A PC in Ada County is intended to operate as a starter city. In fact, once a PC acquires more than a small number of qualified electors as residents — they can begin the process of incorporation (even if it is over the developer’s objections). A PC’s development and regulating plans are all that are needed to qualify as a new city’s Comprehensive Plan and Zoning Ordinance. And a PC’s financial plan is more operational than most of those found in the existing cities in Ada County. Some of the proposed PC developers even planned to push for incorporation as soon as possible. I suspect just to get out from under the required biennial County development review all PC’s are required to undergo. No other development type in the region is subject to as much scrutiny, or have as many conditions of development placed upon its fiscal solvency.

The purpose of regional planning is to encourage reasonable and fiscally sound development that contains the cost of tax & fee supported public services. The PC Ordinance is only one tool that does so, by tying the permissible development of internal phases of the PC to fiscal benchmarks. The PC Ordinance, and the number of private developers who appeared interested in submitting such an application, had a curious (and not altogether unpredicted) effect within the existing cities in Ada County. They began to seriously look at ways to better serve the taxpayers within their respective boundaries. It also kept them at the table as the region tried to forge a new future through the Communities In Motion (Long Range Regional Transportation Plan) and the Blueprint for Good Growth.

Without the pressure of the “Barbarians at the Gate”, it would have been extremely unlikely that the six cities, ITD, VRT, and the Ada County Highway District would have gotten as far as they did through the process. And, there would have been significantly fewer people showing up at the various public planning meetings.

Since all the hubbub regarding PC’s started around 2004, the only one still building is the only one that existed before 2004 — Hidden Springs. And, even Hidden Springs wouldn’t have been approved under the revised PC Ordinance used to approve The Cliffs. And, not a dime of existing taxpayer money was spent reviewing the applications. Unlike all the over-built subdivisions developed within the cities during the bubble, the PC’s impacts were contained to the developer alone — and if they failed to build on the approved schedule they surrender their provisional land entitlements. Unfortunately, this can’t be said of all the excess Sprawl parcels approved by the cities in Ada & Canyon Counties during the same timeframe. We will all be paying for those approvals for years to come.

As far as I am concerned, I was happy to play my small part as the “aggressor” since I knew that the supposed threat of the PC’s (which could become their own cities, with their own Areas of City Impact) would keep the existing cities in the region at the table to forge the Communities In Motion Plan — and provide support to ACHD to help it develop its Livable Streets Design Guide.

These two achievements cannot be separated from the PC discussion. In fact, few of the meetings for either the CIM or BGG happened without the obligatory railing against Ada County and its contemptable stance on PC’s.

My only regrets are that we couldn’t keep the pressure up long enough to force meaningful concessions on regional Agricultural & Open Space protection, or achieve some kind of sensical ITD stance on getting developers to pay for their impacts on the State highway system, or get Canyon County to the Blueprint negotiation table.