Council discusses proposed Farmington Branch subdivision, tree preservation easement vacation and mitigation conditions

Council members and staff discussed a proposed subdivision on a roughly 44-acre parcel north of Mount Kessler along the Farmington branch, tree-preservation requirements, and a proposed vacation of portions of existing tree-preservation easements.

A staff member identified the parcel as about 44 acres with roughly 95% canopy cover and said it had been approved previously for an RV park that never materialized. The current submittal is a new conceptual subdivision plan with about 12 lots; the applicant previously requested a variance related to a tree survey but the variance was not forwarded, and the urban forester said a tree survey still had not been provided. Per the city’s zoning rules cited in the discussion, the applicant will be required to meet a weighted average canopy-preservation minimum of about 25% on-site because the parcel spans multiple zones and includes parts of a Hillside/HHOD area.

Staff described streamside protection zones and voluntary forestry BMPs discussed in the meeting: the forestry BMPs referenced a 35-foot protection measure on either side of creeks, while the city’s stream-protection approach discussed a 25-foot first zone with an additional 25-foot less-restrictive zone beyond that. The developer’s current plan, shown in a conceptual plat, appears to preserve trees primarily in a strip along the creek and to place townhomes adjacent to preserved easements. Council members asked for an individual-tree inventory because the conceptual plat did not show significant trees (18-inch DBH and up) and the urban forester said she needed a tree survey to evaluate which specimens to recommend for preservation.

The applicant also requested vacating approximately 0.14 acres of easement in one instance; staff calculated a mitigation requirement of 28 replacement trees based on the square footage of easement proposed to be vacated. Staff said the parcels offered as replacement easements are in mixed condition: an Owl Creek parcel west of Highway 49 adjacent to Harmony Point Park (about 0.2 acres) is heavily canopied but contains invasive plants and trash; another new proposed easement off Happy Hollow showed severe erosion, containers and gravel encroaching toward the creek. Staff recommended requiring invasive removal, trash removal, and a watershed organization consultation to mitigate erosion and improve the ecological value of the easement areas before the council forwards any recommendation to City Council.

Council members discussed the trade-offs. Some members characterized the swap as “sticky,” noting that undevelopable or highly constrained parcels have different market value than developable land, and that the city should not accept an easement vacation that simply trades developable land for land of little ecological value. One member suggested the council could ask City Council to require more mitigation than the baseline 28 trees (for example, 56), to require maintenance commitments, or to require that a qualified watershed restoration organization (the staff mentioned the Watershed Conservation Resource Center as an example) complete an assessment and remediation plan paid for by the applicant and approved by the city.

Staff said the item had been tabled at Technical Plat (TechPlat) four times and that the applicant will need to provide revised plans showing significant trees and buffers; the urban forester asked the advisory council whether it wanted to draft a memo to City Council recommending conditions for approval. Council members discussed but did not reach a formal, final recommendation in the meeting; staff noted a deadline of the eighth (for the city-council agenda packet) and offered the option to finalize a recommendation by email before that deadline.

No formal vote to recommend the easement vacation to City Council was recorded in the transcript; the city staff asked for council input and suggested draft conditions including: removal of trash and invasive species from the proposed easements, erosion mitigation in riparian areas by a qualified organization, retention or planting of mitigation trees (28 minimum based on the submitted calculation), and that any consultant or restoration work be City-approved.