| OCR Text |
Show APRIL 1995 This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land A Guide to Public and By Steve Lewis willful or involved THE LOCALS Hearty FAVORITE Breakfasts Mountain Home Lunches Baked Awesome Private Pastries Desserts Parties - Catering Everyday 268 Main St., G at 7 Park E A.M. City T INTO TT the Advertising in Babette Makes CALL Sense 801-649-8046 SOON May Issue SPACE RESERVATION DEADLINE April 3rd Park City’s NEWEST COMMUNITY TUNE GREAT & MEMBER IN TO MUSIC INTERESTING first heard what we thought wild holler and then made thunderous shouts that belfrom the backyard just the knoll. We’d embarked before sunrise shimmering 801-649-5686 Open We was a out the lowed down PUBLIC AFFAIRS 96.5 FM 91 FM 89.7 FM Salt Lake City Moab now spring it was a afternoon. Nearly finished with an arduous hike and ski tour in the National Forest and now pummeled by a tormenting yell. off my land, you “Get the no good son’s a You're trespassing and if you don’t get off my property and outa here right now, I’m going to call the sheriff.” Spent from exhaustion, we both gazed back at our (public?) path, glanced at our vehicle, a hundred yards ahead and then pondered aloud. “Have we got the patience to heed this range war jargon of this belly-aching geezer or should we holler back with our own whoop and salute?” Totally bushed, we marched on while the babble grew nastier and then a woman appeared and yelled, “Quit the hollering, now!” The instant the breach calmed, we put on smiles, praised her splendid spring lilies, skipped down the hill, threw our gear into the truck and sped off. Hiker, biker, skier, snowmobiler, boater, hunter horse rider or even boisterous ATV rider — are all beset by the same shriveling scenery schism and public access quandary and crooning the same discordant Woodie Guthrie melody: “This land was made for you and me.” Right?” Where’s the land use crystal ball — recreational users, naturalists, private landowners, developers, public land managers - what's the future for you and me? Limitation of Landowner Liability (Act) — Public Recreation: Found in the Utah Code at Title 57, Chapter 14, this little-known, but not so recent, fifteen-year-old law was enacted to encourage public and private owners of land to make land and water areas available to the public for recreational purposes by limiting liability — as long as there is no fee or charge for entering Park City and or using the property. Under this “no fee” setting, the landowner owes no duty of care or to give any warning, except where PAGE Private Land Access conduct malicious or an is admission fee charged. Recorded Rights of Way and Public Use Prescriptive Easements: Rights of way generally refer to interests in real property acquired for, or devoted to, a highway, structure, alley, lane or place laid out or erected for public use. An easement is a right, as a right-ofway, afforded a person to make limited use of another’s real property. Prescriptive easements are a means of acquiring title to property by long-continued enjoyment, such as a passageway that has been dedicated to the use of the public and continuously used as a public thoroughfare. Under Utah law, a period of at least ten years is required to meet the prescriptive easement definition. Land Trusts: Utah presently has a pair of land trusts. In Park City — Utah Open Lands; and in St. George — Virgin River Land Preservation. The Land Trust Alliance, 1319 “F” Street NW, Suite 501. Washington 202-638-4725 has forms D.C., and resources Utah — as do the groups — for those starting a trust. two interested in Conservation Easements: Utah law at Title 57, Chapter 18 outlines Conservation Easements, established on behalf of the land record owner of real property for the purpose of preserving and maintaining land or water areas predominantly in a natural, scenic, or open ational, condition, or for agricultural, recre- cultural, wildlife habitat or other use or condition consistent with the protection of land. Exact state laws and/or federal tax requirements must be met in order for viable trusts or conservation easements to be created. In both cases, meaningful tax benefits are bestowed on donors, who in the public eye make significant contributions to the quality of life in their communities. Municipal and County Land Use Development and Management Acts: The “City Act” is found at Title 10, Chapter 9 and the “County Act” at Title 17, Chapter 27. The acts 12 require cities and counties to prepare and adopt comprehensive general plans for present and future needs. Both acts contain a “Land Use” element for housing, business, agriculture, recreation and open space and may contain standards for population density and building intensity. An “Environmental” element exists that addresses the protection and conservation of forests, soils, rivers, fisheries, wildlife and other natural resources. A “Public Services” element exists for sewage, waste disposal, utilities, rights-of-way and easements. Conclusion: Recreational public access problems and broad land use challenges once guided by principle now often slide to expediency. Increasingly, the war widens between new and old inhabitants of the land as urban and recreation values are foisted on rural strongholds. Frustrated public land mangers, private land owners, developers and naturalists are the pawns in this frenzied debate and witnesses to endless estrangement between values of economics and environment. If your personal odyssey takes you through countless confused private/public access corridors or into rowdy Planning Commission hearings, then you, too, may have hummed Woodie’s tune. Or, you may have recently spent a night heeding Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia’s gospel and now talk the tone of a jadéd public land use patron. .For when I sauntered out of the “Dead’s” final SLC concert a while back, a compatriot let out, “Hey, whats up with’ the Bonneville Shoreline Trail, man? And what about access in Bells and Snake Creek? And can we still hike, bike and ski in Park City’s White Pine Canyon if that Iron Mountain resort goes in? Well, no time for principle — remember? Just expediency. So, my response was nothin’ but vintage “Dead.” “Hey man, Woodie’s wasted. I’m truckin’ and I’ve got ‘so many roads’ to travel. The final piece to that screwed-up access/land use puzzle is, ‘Wang Dang Doodle,’ Right?” @ |
