The Saratoga Springs City Council voted to adopt a public infrastructure district (PID) policy, adding several council‑directed edits and delegating non‑substantive edits to staff. The policy sets parameters for when and how the city will consider PID petitions in the future and does not itself approve any PID application.

City staff and Jonathan Ward (Zions Bank) briefed the council on the policy’s purpose: PIDs are a financing tool that can help pay for public infrastructure in large developments, but the tool must be used selectively. Ward said the policy puts guardrails in place to ensure the tool is used for projects that provide demonstrable benefit to the community.

Key changes the council adopted during the meeting included: striking a subsection described in the packet as “5.c” (removing a specific trustee‑exception paragraph), changing the wording on certain public‑benefit criteria so that items 1, 2 and 6 read as mandatory (“shall”) while other criteria read as discretionary (“may”), removing the specific phrases referencing multimodal transportation and transit‑oriented development from one criterion (those items will be discretionary), and inserting the word “significant” in the phrase describing contribution to city infrastructure (so the policy refers to “provision of and significant contribution to needed city infrastructure”). The council also directed staff to come back at a subsequent meeting with owner‑occupancy language intended to limit corporate buy‑ups in PID‑funded housing and to propose monitoring/enforcement approaches.

Council members discussed the intended uses, limits and risks of PIDs at length. Several council members emphasized that adopting a PID policy does not commit the city to approve any future PID application; each PID application would still proceed through its normal review and could be denied. Councilmembers asked that the policy be tight to avoid the abuses seen in other places and to protect residents’ interests.

Council members noted the policy’s minimum scale requirements (minimum acreage and development threshold) as a limit on the tool’s use; during the meeting staff confirmed the policy requires a minimum of 500 acres and a minimum project scale tied to $10,000,000 as thresholds for eligible PIDs. The council’s motion authorized staff to make non‑substantive edits (formatting, punctuation, redundancy cleanup) and to incorporate the agreed changes; staff will return with proposed owner‑occupancy language for council direction.

A motion to adopt the PID policy as amended (recorded as Resolution R25‑55) passed by the council.