Revised Draft Regulations - Post Planning Commission Hearings

February 7th, 2024 The Board of County Commissioners (BCC) must follow the planning commission's recommendation to deny the Northern South Park (NSP) Neighborhood's draft regulations. There are so many loop holes for developers to abuse the plan by building the money maker large McMansions over affordable homes. We cannot let vague language stand that doesn't link affordable homes to market rate construction. More importantly, for existing High School Road neighborhoods and schools, the vague language for the East West Connector leaves it in limbo as an easement, so developers can escape helping to pay for its construction, pushing it off onto existing taxpayers at a much higher price, later, when the developers are long gone. Sound familiar. It should. It is exactly what we are dealing with now, with the Tribal Trail Cutoff (TTC). Leaving that an easement has allowed the developers of Indian Trails to take the money and run, while leaving the public with a much larger construction bill and a cut through road that doesn't make sense now, adding more traffic to a soon to be traffic dumping ground on High School Road. Building the East West Connector (EWC) is a must before the first house is built, whether market rate or affordable restricted. It must be located just behind the high school, new field house and new Central Wyoming College (CWC) campus to divert all construction traffic, the TTC traffic and a good portion of school traffic, to keep it from overloading High School Road. Placing the road any farther South, it will wind up an overly designed, expensive and restricted road for the multimillion-dollar mini estates. High School Road cannot handle 20 years of construction traffic, more enabled single occupant vehicle traffic and tourist traffic, using it as a cut through from the West Bank for food shopping and a scenic route, linking Spring Gulch Road with South Park Loop Road (SPLR) for recreational vehicles and other vacationers. Spring Gulch is already heavily used by tourists since it's improvements and paving. There is no money to beef up SPLR beyond the TTC. There is no money to deal with High School Road that the 2 landowners for NSP state in their applications will be adequate for their development WANTS, without building an East West Connector. Well... what about our existing neighborhoods' and schools' NEEDS for a safe High School Road? What about school Superintendent Gillian Chapman's warning that more land will be needed for another school and more park/open space, which is woefully missing and again, vague, in the present draft regs. This draft must be denied in favor of a draft that addresses these issues with clarity, not vagueness, to be conveniently ignored by developers at the expense of community needs. I talked with a consultant for West Jackson modality last night at the Transportation Expo. I was very disheartened to hear that turning High School Road into a four-lane road would be economically cheaper than building the East West Connector. Really?... Sure... the only tradeoff is the safety and health of school kids and families along High School Road. That is a very dangerous alternative. This draft, as is, will enable careless and dangerous thinking like that. You must deny.