Hayden approves comp plan

The Hayden City Council approved a comprehensive plan this week, unanimously voting for the document they anticipate will guide the city’s growth in the decades to come.

“The plan is really more of a guide,” councilman Matt Roetter said. “It’s really more of a way for us to plan ahead as we grow.”

That growth appears inevitable. The hands that went into developing the comprehensive plan included the Kootenai Metropolitan Planning Organization, Imagine Hayden and city staff.

The groups used models to estimate everything from future traffic density to how many parks the city will oversee in the future.

KMPO predicts Hayden will more than double its population in the next 20 years, from today’s — or, at least, from July 1, 2019’s — 15,434 residents up to an estimated 34,955 residents in 2040.

It’s an issue that Roetter said remains front and center as Hayden balloons.

“With all the growth that’s happening, who’s going to pay for it?” he asked. “It’s not fair that the people who live here now pay more taxes for people who are going to move here. When these builder-developers are long gone, the people of Hayden will still be here paying for it.”

Roetter stressed impact fees should remain a tool in the city’s tool box, something the comprehensive plan is holding onto. But the plan — through Imagine Hayden’s lens — is also anticipating the city’s tax base to grow over the next few decades, particularly with light industrial expanding near the airport and agriculture growing along the northern edges of the city, though agriculture currently reflect less than one percent of the city’s industry.

Mayor Steve Griffitts said after the meeting that the comprehensive plan’s success will also depend in no small part on the involvement of the Hayden Chamber of Commerce and other economic groups.

“Over time,” he said, “in partnership with (forces that drive) economic development, in partnership with various relationships with chambers of commerce, the chamber’s role in our future is not only welcoming businesses in, but offering businesses a small synopses of what our community is like, and also understanding what professional gaps exist.”

Griffitts went on to champion one of the visions the comprehensive plan foretold: privately-run by city-encouraged neighborhood nodes strategically placed around Hayden to generate community engagement while maintaining a small-town feel. The commercial nodes would hold a handful of small-to-medium-sized businesses in pedestrian-friendly atmospheres.

Under the plan, those nodes would be found in the southwest corner of the city near the future school and Carrington Park area off Honeysuckle Avenue, the corner of Atlas Road and Honeysuckle Avenue, the corner of Honeysuckle Avenue and Ramsey Road, the corner of Prairie Avenue and Fourth Street, the corner of Honeysuckle Avenue and Fourth Street, the corner of Maple Street and Miles Avenue, the corner of Maple Street and Wyoming Avenue, and the corner of Government Way and Lancaster Road.

“These neighborhood nodes are going to help the city be strong and self-sustaining,” Griffitts said. “Any communication and investment by citizens is absolutely invaluable. I hope that communication and partnership will come together to help this city grow responsibly.”

The business community isn’t the only voice city planners are listening to. The comprehensive plan was crafted after a series of public meetings and workshops to understand the wants and needs of the public, as well, most recently including orientation interviews over the summer with leaders in economic development, emergency services, health care, recreation development, real estate insiders, school employees and airport management. The November 2019 community festival at Atlas Elementary was also a venue for people to participate, as well as through social media polls, community surveys and public comment periods.

“We are so grateful for the public input,” Griffitts said. “The public gave us an astonishing amount of information to work with, and this couldn’t have been possible without the time they gave to participate in this.”

The theme that emerged from these and other meetings was to direct the comprehensive plan toward a vision of strategic growth, a small-town feel, green spaces, a family-oriented city with a community feel.

“Some of the things I gleaned from the Imagine Hayden (surveys),” Roetter said, “and some of the heartfelt things I believe in for our community: People want open spaces. People want a small-town feel to it. We’re a bedroom community, and I don’t want to see Hayden turn into a high-rise urban area.”

The plan didn't pass without a few corrections. The original language specified that the city should plan to grass over Honeysuckle Beach's boat launch and beach area, two avenues to explore should the park's capacity grow. Roetter moved for that language to be amended — which it promptly was — to encourage options to explore other avenues to grow Hayden's most popular public attraction.

Griffitts said, of all the work that went into developing the comprehensive plan, nothing astonished the mayor more than the work the community development director did corralling the different voices and resources to usher the plan forward.

“It amazes me to see how Melissa Cleveland was able to integrate various aspects of the comprehensive plan into this one document,” he said. “Many times, with city planning, you do one portion of the comp plan, and then do another, and then another. Melissa did a tremendous job integrating everything together. I’m absolutely thrilled at the job she did.”