As Boise area grapples with change, more homes get OK for busy transit corridor

There's no simple solution to the problems prompted by an ever-growing Treasure Valley.
Increasing traffic, concerns over water rights or loss of agricultural land often dominate city council or planning-and-zoning commission discussions across Southwest Idaho. It was no different Monday, when the Nampa City Council grappled with and narrowly approved a nearly 1,500-home development on the northeastern edge of the city.
Nampa Mayor Debbie Kling broke a tie when the City Council voted 4-3 to approve the development from San Diego-based Murphy Development Co. The development pays tribute to the region's farming history, though she — and other members of the council — struggled with ever-shrinking farmland.
Kling said she didn't want to see the 78 acres of farmland at 17672 N. Can Ada Road, along the busy Ustick Road corridor, disappear or the area to keep growing. She said watching farmland be razed can put a pit in her stomach. But she said growth was inevitable, and Murphy had a right to develop the land.
'This is a good plan, it's a good development,' Kling said. 'When it's built out, I think that we're going to be really proud of it in our community.'
The area has long been planned for development. The site is wedged between two Nampa special planning areas and Meridian's Fields District Plan Area, and is just over 1½ miles west of the under-construction Highway 16.
In its place on the southeast corner of the Can Ada and Ustick intersection, Murphy Development would build 32 three-story and 17 four-story apartment buildings, several clubhouses, 10,000 square feet of market and retail space, an event area and children's play space.
The amenity areas would fill pockets of open spaces between the building clusters, according to Renée Strand, the owner, principal and managing director of Holst Architecture in Portland.
Most notably, the development would be centered around a 3-acre farm that could include U-pick flowers, seasonal crops and curated events, according to Strand. This could include pumpkins, hot cider or a Christmas tree lot, Strand said during a public hearing on the project in March.
'The heart of this neighborhood is really this 3-acre farm area,' she said at Monday's council meeting.
The team, she said, is also trying to figure out how the farm could function in the off-season with cover crops to make it a year-round attraction.
Plans call for a perimeter walking-and-biking trail that loops into a network of pedestrian paths. It would also include a tree orchard between the Ustick and the main entrance of the subdivision.
The estimated $36 million development would likely take about 10 years to finish, according to Mike Arduino, a partner at Murphy Development.
The plan sailed through the city's Planning and Zoning Commission in March with glowing support and no public testimony in opposition. But the City Council struggled.
According to a March staff report, the development could add nearly 3,000 residents to the area — a behemoth amount for an area that a few decades ago was far from the heart of Nampa.
That prospect discouraged several nearby neighbors, who spoke against the plans Monday.
Neils Tidwell, who lives next to the development, said at least half of the property was a part of his family farm for over 80 years. Tidwell said he's watched the landscape change, and that nothing he could say could stop it.
'This is all going to turn into residential,' he said. 'Everything around us. It's already happening, and it's heartbreaking to me.'
Katie Hassard, a nearby resident who has lived on a farm that's been in her family for around 50 years, said homes are filling the land around her and causing more congestion. She said though the Murphy Development project 'looks beautiful' with the 3-acre farm, she couldn't imagine the impact it would have on the area.
'They are paying homage to the culture of farming while wiping it out,' she said. 'Please remember us — that we are also important members of a good and healthy community that started here and want to continue here.'
Kling, before her tie-breaking vote, said that the area has long been in the sights of development with Highway 16 coming through and a planned expansion of the Ustick Road corridor.
'When you punch the new road in, growth is going to come,' she said.
Most of the concerns from City Council members who voted no were in line with residents' comments that the development was too dense and took away farmland, and that the city wasn't ready for the growth barreling toward it.
'The analogy 'if we're not growing, we're dying' is a hard one for me to stomach,' said Council Member Sebastian Griffin, who was undecided going into the vote but ultimately voted against it. 'If we're not growing, we're dying or we cut what we have and try to maintain for the interim until we can be better prepared for the amount of growth that we're going to have.'
Council Member Victor Rodriguez, who voted no in part because of disappearing farmland and strained emergency services, put it bluntly: 'I cannot approve this based on the density.'
Council Member Dale Reynolds, who voted yes, said that building up with higher density, rather than out, is exactly how the city could best preserve farmland. Plus, he said, the development will add to the city's tax base, helping to provide services.
'Going four stories to me is smart, because we save our farm ground by doing that,' Reynolds said. 'The people are coming here whether we want them to come here or not… This is smart growth.'
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Haiti's presidential council confirms use of mercenaries in anti-gang fight

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'The money that is being spent, the resources that are being poured in, are that of the population.' Last month, after the government's private security firm deal went public, the Port-au-Prince-based human rights group Fondasyon Je Klere/Eyes Wide Open Foundation demanded that authorities inform 'the population about the duration and amount of the contract' and the mercenaries' obligations to limit the collateral damage against innocent civilians. On Friday, while Jean assumed his and the government's role in seeking out international support 'to help the security forces move forward,' he would neither confirm nor deny reports that the government was paying $44 million. 'I cannot answer that question,' he told Radio Kiskeya's Marvel Dandin when he opened the questioning about the contract and reports that the government had employed Blackwater, the controversial private military contractor that was involved in a deadly civilian massacre in Iraq in 2007, in its gang fight. 'Blackwater hasn't existed for a long time, but there is someone who was with Blackwater whom they've seen in Haiti,' Jean said, declining to cite Prince's name or that of his new firm, which is overseeing the dropping of explosive drones by a Haitian government task force. 'What I can assure everyone is with this level of violence compounded by what they call transnational criminality .... it is simply not true that our security forces can confront these challenges alone.' Jean's interview comes at a pivotal time. More than year into its existence, the nine-member Presidential Transitional Council, which is tasked with governing the country and leading it back to democratic order, is consumed by infighting and dysfunction. Their public bickering and lack of cohesion is fueling frustrations and disappointment both inside and out of Haiti at a moment when any solution to the security crisis on the international front appears to be stalled. U.S. officials, outside of saying they cannot keep shouldering the cost of an international armed mission led by Kenya, have yet to say what their policy on Haiti will be and a U.N. Security Council, presented with a proposal by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres back in February, has yet to make a decision. Meanwhile, armed gangs continue to escalate their violence, leading to 1.3 million people now being displaced. Demanding government action after gangs recently took over their town, angry residents in the city of Mirebalais decided to plunge Port-au-Prince into blackout this week by dismantling a transmission tower at the main power plant in central Haiti. The sabotage of the Péligre hydroelectric plant, its second in weeks, is just one action in a list of crises that has Haiti on edge. Jean acknowledged the frustrations and said soon the people will see a scale up in the security response. He did not go into details, but several people close to the government have pointed to the increased use of weaponized drones. Such use has raised concerns both inside and out of the country about the legality of their use and the possible collateral damages. Already, armed gangs have tried to either create their own or purchase them. Three Haitians were recently arrested in the Dominican Republic and turned over to the Haitian police authorities after they were caught trying to purchase drones in the neighboring country, the Haitian police recently confirmed. Weeks earlier, the Miami Herald confirmed that a gang member had died at a hospital after he arrived with over 90% burns after he tried to create his own weaponized drones. 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Yahoo

an hour ago

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7 vote centers open for District 1 Supervisor special election

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Yahoo

3 hours ago

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City of St. John's changes policy on naming new streets to avoid 'problematic legacies'

The City of St. John's is changing its street naming policy to no longer allow new streets in the city to be named after people. It's an effort to protect itself from potential problems in the future, according to Coun. Ron Ellsworth. "Naming streets after people carries a number of risks," Ellsworth said during Tuesday's council meeting. "[There could be] problematic legacies, political polarization, disparity in representation and cultural marginalization." To reduce those risks, Ellsworth continued, the city's policy has been updated to remove the option to submit a person's name to the city's reserve street names inventory. On Friday, Ellsworth told CBC News that applications that were already under review ahead of the policy change — of which there are four — will continue moving through the process. Current streets also won't be renamed, Ellsworth said, and the city will still allow the use of surnames because they aren't directly tied to a person. For example, a road could be named Breen Street, but not Danny Breen Street in honour of the current mayor. Ellsworth said there wasn't a single issue that prompted the change, but noted other municipalities have faced challenges in recent years. "If you don't pay attention to your history, you're doomed to repeat your history and repeat the same mistakes. So this is a clarity issue, an identity piece that will, hopefully as we move forward, will create less issues for future councils and the public," he said. "This is not about renaming anything, this is just about as we move forward. New streets, new subdivisions, this is the process we will be using." Coun. Tom Davis said he sees the change as a harm reduction measure. "People can have, you know, history that comes out after the fact. So in particular, I brought up the point about child abuse.… A lot of times, we don't know these people's history because a lot of times they never get brought to justice," Davis said Friday. "There was also, you know, the reflection upon, you know, colonialism and potentially the use of some names. But the main driver was new names that might be brought forward that could end up having criminal or some sort of negative connotation that would end up being a mistake." Ellsworth said there's nothing stopping the city from reviewing street names in the future, should the need arise. Coun. Ophelia Ravencroft also voiced support for the change during Tuesday's meeting. Ravencroft encouraged finding new street names with an Indigenous-first lens. Download our to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our . Click .