Hayden City Council approves subdivision

Approving the 53-lot subdivision at the former Hayden Meadows Soccer Complex wasn't something City Council members saw as a reprieve from community growing pains but as a step to solve them. 

The vote was 4-1, Councilman Matt Roetter opposed.  

Concerns raised throughout the application process over traffic, safety and density were the leading drivers of discussion at the meeting. Public comment was not accepted at the meeting, however testimony from the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting was taken into consideration.

Roetter specifically called attention to the protection of young children attending Hayden Meadows Elementary School due north of the planned development. 

Roetter expressed a personal connection to the issue, as when he was in grade school, one of his neighbors died after being hit by a car on a busy street. 

"I'm very aware that problem existed for a while. The problem is that fixing the probe will be very costly," Roetter said. "It's a safety problem now. I don't see how putting that many houses in is going to fix the problem."

The applicant representative, Scott McArthur of McArthur Engineering, noted that the development plans to install a gate on the project's north end as a safety measure. He also anticipated neighborhood children to walk through the subdivision instead of on the busier Maple and Finucane roads. 

"As staff point out, (Maple Street) was already a problem. We're not creating that problem and making that problem worse," McArthur said. 

Frontage improvements to Maple Street were also not required as part of the project in exchange for installing an oversized sewer line from Secretariat Lane to the north edge of the subdivision to aid capacity issues identified in the Hayden 2020 Collection System Master Plan Update. Staff expressed this was a more valuable exchange as the city of Hayden does not currently own any other Maple Street right of way, and total costs would be approximately the same for either project.

"The benefit to the city is much more than that because we don't have to go through and tear up Finucane," Community Development Director Melissa Cleveland said. "It's a huge cost saving for the city, and for the developer, it's pretty much a wash." 

According to the Hayden 2040 Transportation Strategic Master Plan, adopted in January, Maple Street needs an upgrade from 2030. Identified as Project 212 in the plan, Maple Street improvements will include widening lanes, striping, and curbing, with gutter and sidewalk amenities from Honeysuckle to Hayden Avenue. 

Staff and McArthur pointed out that the right of way purchased by the developer is only one chunk of Maple Street. Therefore, any road work completed as part of the subdivision would be "frontage improvements that go nowhere," McArthur said in the June Planning and Zoning hearing. 

As part of the proposal, the applicant purchased the right of way on Maple Street to facilitate future city improvements. 

While the supporting council members did not invalidate the worries of Roetter and the 14 public comments received by the city — three neutral and 11 opposed — they saw the project as a step in the right direction. 

"Maple is probably the most extensive and difficult street for sidewalk widening and (other improvements)," Councilman Roger Saterfiel said. "With the approval of this, we now have a small section (of Maple). We're not going to have sidewalks right now, but we have a small section to work toward, and we didn't have that before." 

Councilman Dick Panabaker, former mayor of Hayden and lifelong resident, noted that residents had echoed similar growing pains for decades. While he sympathized with the individuals who longed for the days of cattle and fields, Panabaker said the city could not stop all the people from moving.

"If we sit up here and turn (developers) down for no other reason than that we don't like the way they comb their hair, that doesn't work. It's all right to complain about it, but you have to have something on your side when you make decisions like that," Panabaker said. "And you better be right because we get sued."