March 17, 2005

Forum provides overview of Village land-use planning

By Robert Mihalek

Village Council president Tony Arnett said during a forum last week that increasing the number of people who live and work in Yellow Springs would provide the most impact on the Village’s tax base.

“We need jobs and we need to make it possible for people who fill those jobs to live here,” Arnett said in response to a question about whether the Village would benefit more from business or residential growth.

Arnett, who served on the Yellow Springs school board before he was first elected to Council in 1997, said that the school district, which relies locally on revenue from property taxes and the 1 percent school income tax, benefits from additional residential development.

Because the Village does not receive much revenue from property taxes, he said that home construction “doesn’t do much for us unless you work here.” The Village utilities, however, gain additional customers, and revenue, from residential development. Arnett alluded to this fact when he said, “We like people who pay income tax and use utilities.”

Arnett’s comments came during a forum on March 9 on the Village Comprehensive Plan, the second of three forums Council organized in response to the debate on growth in Yellow Springs. The forum, which more than 30 people attended, also included reviews of other influential planning documents and studies. Most of the meeting focused on the history of the Comprehensive Plan and an overview of the current plan, which went through a minor revision in 2002.

The first Comprehensive Plan was created in 1967, and since then the document has been revised four times: in ’74 (and adopted three years later), ’84, ’96 and 2002. The plan guides and directs “land use and the local government’s development decisions,” and outlines the community’s desires for “atmosphere or community character, quality of life and growth rate.”

According to Bruce Rickenbach, a former Village manager who now serves as chairman of the Planning Commission, “constant threads” have run through all five plans: they recognized that “some kind of growth” is likely and they addressed how to manage and control growth to preserve community values of diversity, quality of life, cost of living, economic vitality, open space, public services and independent schools.

The 1967 plan, Rickenbach reported, was created in response to a number of factors, including projections that Yellow Springs’ population would increase from 4,500 to over 15,000 in 20 years; a proposal to build a sewer line through Glen Helen; state plans to reroute U.S. 68; plans to build I-675; and growth in Yellow Springs in the 1950s and ’60s.

The ’67 plan, Rickenbach said, had two key points:

• “Growth is inevitable,” he said, but the community could maintain and control that growth by determining where houses, commerce and streets may be developed.

• The introduction of the greenbelt concept, which, Rickenbach said, was “conceived as a boundary to which the village could grow, if it wanted to grow,” and which would serve as a natural barrier for development from the west.

Arnett noted that maintaining a green-belt around Yellow Springs is a goal. But it is not a permanent buffer to the west of the village, he said. Though the Glen to the east and Whitehall Farm, which is under a conservation easement, to the north are protected areas, “very little” of land considered part of the greenbelt is actually protected, he said.

According to information presented at the forum, 268 acres on three properties to the southeast and south of Yellow Springs are protected under easements, while land to the west of the village considered part of the greenbelt is not.

The 1974 update of the Comprehensive Plan was based on a thorough community survey conducted the previous year on life in Yellow Springs. The plan revised the population projection to 9,000, discussed how to manage that growth and asserted that some controlled growth was acceptable, Rickenbach reported. In addition, the plan encouraged the pursuit of commercial growth, he said.

The next revision, in ’84, was smaller in scope and largely involved updating factual information throughout the document, according to Rickenbach. The Village also added to the plan an environmental policy that encouraged energy-efficient design and energy conservation.

Twelve years later the updated plan was streamlined and included information from the 1990 neighborhood forums, Rickenbach said. The Village also added the ’92 annexation policy, which states that the Village “will not actively solicit annexation of land into the village” merely to expand the village limits, and established four “special planning areas”: downtown, land around Dayton-Yellow Springs and East Enon Roads, land around King Street and Fairfield Pike, and land around U.S. 68 and Hyde Road.

The 2002 update carried forward the objectives and goals in the ’96 plan, though language was revised to reflect a position that encouraged planned growth, and included revised information gleaned from the 2002 “Cost of Living Report,” sponsored by the Yellow Springs Men’s Group, and the 2000 census.

The most recent plan lists eight objectives on which the community should focus:

• balancing open space preservation with its effect on land values and the economy

• promoting “economic vitality that does not conflict with managed growth efforts”

• maintaining local public services and an independent school system

• supporting a diversity of lifestyles

• “staying small”

• supporting a “healthy downtown” as the village’s commercial and social center

• responding to tourism

• working with Miami Township to meet the needs of the community “without the type of growth commonly recognized as sprawl”

During the forum’s question-and-answer segment, Jeff Reich said that he thought few villagers would want the population of Yellow Springs to reach 9,000. He asked if there has been discussion on revising what the village’s borders should be, if the community grows.

Rickenbach responded by indicating that such a discussion is now taking place. He said that the Planning Commission is creating a map of the urban service area, or the area around Yellow Springs that is acceptable for growth.

The first step of creating the urban service area map was the delineation of a similar concept, the urban service boundary, which outlines the area capable of being served by gravity sewer. Rickenbach described the urban service boundary as a “feature of geography.” Last month, Council endorsed this map by agreeing to attach it to the Comprehensive Plan.

The more critical of the two maps is the one showing the urban service area.

Dimi Reber, who is a member of Villagers Addressing Land Issues and Development, or VALID, said that the community wants many things, such as to help the economy, protect green space, and maintain the community’s diversity and its independent schools. “You have to think creatively” about how to meet those needs and “have them all on the table,” she said.

Council member Jocelyn Hardman said that all of the values Reber mentioned are at the forefront of the Village’s land-use planning.

After the forum, Hardman clarified her statements on this point, saying in an e-mail message, “my ideal would be to achieve a healthy balance among these core values and needs in the ways that we use our land.” Such an approach offers “plenty of opportunity for creative thinking” and helps Council and the community search for “ways to make that sustainable balance a reality.”