Partnership Hosts Regional Workshop on Quality Growth 11.26.02

The Treasure Valley Partnership hosted a workshop for local elected officials, business leaders, school leaders and citizen activists on November 26, 2002. Over 175 people attended the event, which was held at the Nampa Civic Center.

The focus of this workshop was the final report of the Treasure Valley Futures project, the $510,000 grant from the Transportation and Community and Systems Preservation Project (part of the Federal Highway Adminstration) that had been conducted from 1998 to 2001 on growth in the Treasure Valley. This workshop also addressed the issue of regional visioning by inviting Dr. Keith Bartholomew from the University of Utah to talk about what other regions have done to cooperatively address growth.

This workshop provided hard data about how the two county area of the Treasure Valley, such as most of the dramatic growth seen has occured in the past 6 years with the addition of 77,000 new single family homes in the region. The workshop was concluded with facilitated roundtable discussions with participants to find out what they think of the region's growth and what solutions they would like to see to the questions that were raised. A follow up to this workshop is planned at the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce Leadership Conference in April 2003.

Transfer of Development Rights - An Option for Saving Open Space 7.28.02

The Treasure Valley Partnership held a workshop in July, 2002, to talk about transfer of development rights as a possible way to look at preserving sensitive agricultural and open lands in the valley. A number of speakers attended the workshop, including local planners and citizen activists. While no formal decision was made to begin implementation of such a program, it was agreed that a follow up workshop on the implementation and results of TDR's in other areas would be helpful.

Partnership Holds Monthly Meeting; Urban/Rural Interface Discussed 2.26.02

The Partnership met at the Canyon County Courthouse on Monday, February 25 to review work accomplished in 2001 and set goals for 2002. One of the biggest concerns of the Partnership now is the pressure on rural lands from development. "We can't tell farmers that they can't sell their lands if they want to quit farming, but it would be helpful to know what other options are out there if the farmers are interested in doing somthing other than just selling property for housing" said Commissioner Pat Galvin. Commissioner Todd Lakey added, "We need to know the nuts and bolts of options like Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) and other things that we could offer up to both land-owners and developers as ideas."

The members had a long discussion on this and the requested Executive Director Elizabeth Conner to schedule the April meeting to include an update from the Treasure Valley Land Trust and planners who have worked with TDRs to begin the analogues to finding workable options to the current trend of development.