Mutual interests in adopting standards
Garland County and the city of Hot Springs have mutual interests in establishing basic standards for development in county areas close to Hot Springs, Hot Springs Planning and Development Director Kathy Sellman and County Judge Rick Davis said Monday.
Addressing a Brown Bag Lunch gathering at the Garland County Democratic Party headquarters in Hot Springs, Sellman and Davis discussed the city’s existing adopted planning area and extraterritorial jurisdiction, and current efforts between the city and county “to study and agree about who will do what and where regarding future
land development in areas immediately outside the Hot Springs city limits.”
Sellman traced the history of adopted planning areas in Arkansas. She said the Arkansas Legislature “many decades ago passed a law that said because planning and new development have the potential to affect people on both sides of the city limits line, the ability of a city to review development proposals and to set standards for new development shouldn’t be limited to what’s inside the city limits.”
She said the city subsequently adopted a planning map as part of its subdivision code “that applies when you divide land for sale or for lease.”
Sellman said the city has the authority under its ETJ to review and approve development projects within five miles of the city limits.
“After a while, you get to the point where all the easy development is done. All the flat land is developed. The land that’s far away from other people is developed,” she said.
“As people start to be closer to one another in space, they start to be more concerned about impact from other development. So the city, within the last six or seven years, has become more diligent in its enforcement of that adopted planning area. We don’t have any less area in Garland County, but every day we have more people.”
Sellman said the development standards basically cover utilities and transportation issues.
“If you build a private street, you have to meet the same standards that a public street has,” she said.
Sellman said the Hot Springs Board of Directors told the Hot Springs Planning Commission “to drop everything you are doing, our top priority is this planning area.” She said the city board told the planning commission “people are saying we don’t need it.”
“What we’re seeking is a minimum level of regulation that will allow us to balance the needs of the existing development with future development so that we’re not pushing costs or impacts on one or the other,” she said.
Sellman said it soon became obvious during the planning commission’s review of the city’s authority to regulate development outside the city limits that “there was a seat at the table that wasn’t being well represented and that was Garland County.”
“There are a lot of people in Garland County that have an interest in the way development happens, not the least of which is the county judge who has to take over the utilities and roads in many cases that have been developed by private developers,” Sellman said.
“That creates an immense public cost and we need to be sure that the standards have been met.”
She said Davis, in 2011, “came to the table and said, ‘ Yes, we want to be involved.’” She said Davis appointed a study group that has been working with the planning commission.
“One of the great things that have come out of this effort is that we have opened a dialogue with groups that have not consistently seen the city as a partner.”
Davis said that since taking office in 2011 he has fielded “a lot of calls from people in the more populated areas where the county has grown who have complaints about infrastructure.”
“Our roads were never designed to handle the traffic that we have out there now,” he said. “There are needs out there. There are a lot of drainage problems that have never been addressed because the developer develops lots out here by the lake and lays a storm drain down there that’s oversized for what’s down there. Instead of them fixing it correctly, they just built a box around the smaller pipe so it just floods out the neighbors.”
Davis said the county does not have the means to regulate such drainage issues.
“That’s something we need desperately,” he said. “Every time you build something, it pushes water downstream faster and if you don’t address that on the front end, it’s going to damage somebody’s property. Today it seems nobody cares about anybody but themselves. We need a little bit of control to be able to handle that.”
Davis said the ETJ has been a “battleground” between city and county residents for decades.
“When I came into office, my intention was to make the relationship between the county and the city work better because it’s only going to benefit everybody in the county; we’re all in Garland County,” he said. “I think it’s time the county stands up and takes care of its portion of this deal. That’s where we’re headed.”
Davis said rules and regulations governing roads and subdivisions in the county are “my primary deals right now.”
“We really need to take a look at where our population growth is,” he said.
Davis also said that in regulating planning and development “it’s important that we don’t strangle growth and that we don’t strangle businesses in the way they operate.”