Cambridge planning for new impact area rules

By: 
Nancy Grindstaff
Cambridge city leaders are getting a head start on aligning the locale’s city impact area ordinances with updated state regulations signed into law during the 2024 Idaho legislative session.
 Likely the biggest change in the legislation for Washington County’s three municipalities is a requirement that the area of impact ordinances be reviewed every five years. Second to that, counties and cities across the state have until Dec. 31, 2025, to review and renegotiate their impact area ordinances, some of which haven’t been updated in several years.
 Meeting with Washington County’s commissioners on Monday, Nov. 25, Cambridge Mayor Mark Loveland and City Clerk Sandra McKee brought the city’s newly proposed impact area map, which shows a bit of a reduction from its previous one-mile perimeter.
 “The city and county are required to adopt coordinated ordinances establishing the Area of City Impact (ACI’s) boundary and specifying what planning and zoning ordinances will apply,” McKee read from the state code. “They are free to select either the city’s, the county’s, or a combination or variation. Whatever plans and ordinances are made applicable within the ACI, they will be enforced by the county. This is true, even if the city’s ordinances are declared applicable.”
 The new map proposal isn’t official until adopted by the county, but McKee said an effort was made to preserve the area’s prime ag ground in its design.
 “And, then it (the law) does say it’s an area where you’re expected to annex within five years,” McKee said. “Well, for Cambridge, I’m not even sure this is realistic, but if a mine comes in maybe it will be. 
 “We don’t know where they would want to go, or how, so we would have to leave it open,” she went on. “Realistically, Cambridge is pretty locked in because we have some big landowners right at the edge of the city limits, that it’s very doubtful they will ever sell.”
 Washington County’s mining claims have stretched into the thousands over the past couple of years, but even though its actual development might be another six years off, the Hercules Metals exploration on Cuddy Mountain shows a lot of promise. 
 Commission chairman Lyndon Haines said he liked the intentionality of Cambridge’s proposed impact area.
 “I think the mile in the past, just because it’s within that mile doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a place a city would want to take city services,” he commented.
 Cambridge is also proposing their impact area falling under the city’s ordinances, rather than the county’s, but the law will require some structural changes if that comes about.
 “The City of Cambridge doesn’t have a P&Z commission, the council sits as the P&Z,” McKee said. “They used to and then they dissolved it because there wasn’t enough going on. But, by code, if we did have ordinances that controlled the impact area, we would be required to have a P&Z commission, and we would be required to have people in the impact area on it proportionately compared to the area and the city.”
 McKee said they had taken public input on the new proposals over the past couple of city council meetings.
 “People did have some concerns whether they could still have wells or septics,” she said. “Yes, they can, unless they come close enough within our code to be required to hook up to the main. We do in sewer, but we don’t in water. So, the people in the impact area can keep their septics and wells until such time a mainline is brought for development.”
 Even though hammering out a final agreement is still in its infancy, the county commissioners sounded agreeable to the proposal’s premises.
 “My thoughts are I like control as local as it possibly can be,” Haines said. “I would prefer you guys shape the city of Cambridge rather than I shape the city of Cambridge. You know Cambridge better than I will ever know Cambridge. You know your capacity for water and sewer and your plans for the future. I think we should craft it the way it works for you.
 “Thanks for coming in and being proactive, and hopefully we can make this work,“ Haines said.
 

 

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