Dozens showed up to testify on houses in the Boise Foothills. No one had the chance
Eighteen people signed up to testify at Tuesday’s Boise City Council meeting where more than 100 people came, but not a single person had the chance.
Neighbors wanted to weigh in on Eyrie Terraces, a controversial neighborhood that would bring 30 new homes to the Boise Foothills.
A project of Colin Connell, a Boise developer, Eyrie Terraces would effectively level a ridge in the Foothills, cutting and filling hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of soil. Residents of nearby homes told the Planning and Zoning Commission in September that they worried about the settling that could lead to, as well as potential fire danger.
Eyrie Terraces would sit near Connell’s existing development, Eyrie Canyon, where North Villa Way and Winter Camp Drive meet northwest of the Hillside to the Hollow Reserve, near Quail Hollow Golf Course.
Planning and Zoning commissioners recommended denial of the project, but the City Council hears appeals and has the final say. The council makes those decisions based on evidence brought before the Planning and Zoning Commission.
The project went before the council on Tuesday, but the meeting was ultimately cut short when Council Member Scot Ludwig moved to abate, or postpone, the hearing before it was open to public comment.
He wanted the chance for council members to go and look at the land the new houses would sit on — a move that Ludwig, who has been on the council since winning his seat in 2015, later said he had never seen the council do before.
“I just believe that with an opportunity to do that, and then reconvene the public hearing, the good points that all of you are going to make that you have made, but the good points on these things ... would be a lot more clear to all of the people that are going to be the decision-makers, I guess,” Ludwig told those in attendance.
After confirming with the city’s legal counsel, which attends every meeting, that such an option would be possible, members of the council debated the validity of seeing the site as a group.
Council Member TJ Thomson called the idea “very intriguing,” saying he supported it because it granted an additional opportunity for the council to make the right decision. Council Member Lisa Sánchez said she would also vote yes because she considered it “common sense ... to try to take in as much information as you can.”
Council President Lauren McLean and Council President Pro Tem Elaine Clegg opposed the idea. McLean said a visit would be “changing the way we work with this record” upon which the council bases its decisions. Clegg said after the meeting that she simply didn’t feel it was necessary.
“Maybe it’s just my experience with mapping, but I felt comfortable with that I knew enough without having walked on it to understand it,” she told the Statesman. “I can understand that other people might not have a pretty good feel for that kind of stuff.”
The council postponed the hearing until its meeting on Tuesday, Dec. 10. The council will go to the site during its work session at 3:30 p.m. The hearing will be held during the regular meeting that starts at 6 p.m. The vote was 4-2, with McLean and Clegg against.
Gathered audience members made clear they were not happy. They intermittently cut into the council’s discussion with their own comments.
Attendees were not allowed to speak for the record, but they expressed concern about what the weather would be like at the site visit and about why they weren’t allowed to speak as they had planned. After the meeting, a line of people waited to talk to Ludwig about his motion.
Officials assured those gathered that they would be allowed to weigh in Dec. 10. At Clegg’s request, Mayor David Bieter agreed to make sure the Eyrie Terraces meeting was first on the agenda for that night’s public hearings.
Clegg said after the meeting that she could see Tuesday’s vote leading to similar decisions to make site visits in the future. Clegg said there likely were only “two or three” hearings a year that would justify such a decision, which meant she wasn’t worried about the precedent.
She said she hoped members of the Planning and Zoning Commission would make trips out to particularly contentious sites in the future, perhaps with City Council members joining them.
Sánchez said deciding to get more information would allow the council to make better decisions not only on Eyrie Terraces but also on future projects.
“At the end of the day, you know, those are our Foothills. That’s our gem,” she said. “That and our river and our Greenbelt. I think anything that we do to make sure that we have the information as possible to help us make the best decision that’s gonna have an impact for generations — yeah, I say. Let’s do it.”
This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 10:31 PM.
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