Prior to Tuesday night’s town hall meeting, the governing body of Saratoga held a public hearing on Saratoga’s Master Plan.
The master plan is being proposed to deal with the possible influx of area population. Executive director of Voices of the Valley (VOV) KayCee Alameda said that even if there is not a population boom.
“All of our different regulatory is 30 years old,” Alemeda said, “Even if we don’t have growth, we clearly have some issues with ordinances and housing that need to be addressed.”
Projects such as Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project alone are supposed to create an upwards of 1,000 construction jobs in Carbon County—a majority of which will be temporary jobs. Lack of housing and infrastructure worries many residents around Saratoga. The DKRW coal-to-liquid project could add around 2,300 temporary jobs to the Platte Valley area as well.
“The master plan that we currently have: we can’t follow it. It’s just so irrelevant.” said Saratoga Planning Commission member Greg Cooksey about the future addition of jobs. “If we don’t have a coming of these projects , we are so unprepared for that that we could be in trouble. We need to go over everything and update it. This is something that is very necessary.”
Sid Fox, Planning Director of Carbon County, said the county has already started to outline potential growth projects that would coincide with the potential Saratoga master plan.
“Carbon County did adopt a comprehensive plan in 2010 which provides goals and policies for future land use,” Fox said, “and one of the main directives in that plan was to direct new growth to existing towns, and to keep some of the outlying areas more open and rural, rather than having subdivisions scattered around and keeping open spaces as much as we can. So the county plan in place is to encourage and direct future growth towards the town.”
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