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Show 4 - PARCHED TIMES - JUNE 15, 1996 COMMUNITY ISSUES MORE SURVEYS IN THE WORKS The Town Council is moving ahead on the preparation of the next survey. This time there will probably be a series of several “mini” surveys instead of one much larger survey like a year ago. The primary focus of this survey will be to determine what the community feels about whether to keep the Town a residential area with limited amounts of business activity, or to allow various degrees of commercialization, in the form of larger and more impacting businesses. The difficult task of the survey will be to find out what size businesses (it any), the members of the community consider acceptable or desireable. It is over ten years since the Town's first surveys indicated that the residents wanted this to be a residential area. In a residential area it is standard practice to allow several forms of low impact business activities. Castle Valley has followed this practice and allowed a number of home or premise businesses to operate within the Town. Two of these businesses have grown far beyond any scope that was originally permitted or envisioned. The controversy surrounding these expanded businesses is the immediate impetus for the surveys. A second focus of the surveys will be to determine whether or not the community wants to permit any additional destination tourist facilities (like bed and breakfasts). (This would not effect the status of the already functioning CV Inn.) The survey may also try to ascertain whether or not the community wishes to have other businesses that draw people into the community who do not live here. A third possible focus may be on how to achieve the community goals indicated by the survey (if any clear preference is shown). To date the main means of achieving long term community goals (one dwelling per lot, etc.) has been through the Town zoning ordinance. There are other combinations or approaches that might be explored. Whatever approach is taken, there will still be the difficult problem of enforcement, particularly difficult in a Town as small as this. Another fundamental issue is who is to be allowed to participate in the survey. There appears to be pressure this time to exclude property owners who do not yet live here. l, personally, think this would be a fundamental mistake. I hope the POA board is willing to send the survey to the property owners who do not live here, if the Town Council is not. Having had considerable contact with non-residing property owners, it seems that most of these people have dreams of living here in the future. This is not a group of absentee landowners waiting to make a monetary killing in a speculative land market. That someone who has bought property here, paid taxes on it for years, and hopes to live here as soon as they can are about to be excluded from these surveys seems unconscionable. Yes, it's true they can't vote in the Town elections until they are residents, but there is no excuse in excluding them from the surveying. If the new Town Council is unwilling to do the work to count additional surveys, then the Town Council should at least bring the POA board into the process. There has been no attempt to do this so far. This type of ill-considered action breeds community dissention and an “us versus them” attitude. For years, some of us have been trying to create a spirit of cooperation between the POA and the Town. After all, both groups are members of the same community! —Jack Campbell SKETCHES OF THE COMMUNITY LOT PAVILLION DESIGNED BY RAY TAYLOR // /I\ . gills—8: quLm Iowa!) %//1.'W(/m!) |