HAYDEN: Scrutinize long-range plan

The recent guest opinion called “Growth’s Impact on Local Farmers” by Laurin Scarcello was excellent. His comments regarding agriculture, ecosystems, and wildlife are so important.

I live in Hayden and I’m greatly concerned about all of our agricultural land that’s about to be rezoned by the City of Hayden. I’ve been doing research on the “2040 Comprehensive Plan” and “Future Land Use Map” in Hayden, and I’ve discovered that hundreds of acres of agricultural land are going to be affected.

Over 750 acres of agricultural land northwest of the airport are about to be rezoned to Light Industrial and 99 acres are slated to become Mixed Use (apartments and commercial). That’s a lot of our rich agricultural land going away in one fell swoop.

Our agricultural land is precious and cannot be reclaimed in the future. These are just a few of the many changes that will facilitate even more rapid growth, which is causing the densification of Hayden. We will see more people, more traffic, and higher taxes.

Maybe we should be asking more questions before the City of Hayden makes 1,700 zoning changes all at once. Just think, if these zone changes were to be made at the request of the property owner then they would be paying about $2,500 per zone change request. The city is possibly losing over $4 million by doing this city-initiated revision.

We need to slow down and take account of what we are doing before it’s too late.

SANDY WHITE

Hayden