This was a joint work session of the Riverton City Council and Planning Commission on June 3, 2026, to discuss the city's general plan update, development vision, and specific issues along Redwood Road and Sentinel Ridge. The meeting was facilitated by the Mayor and Councilmember Jason.
I'll have a chance to kind of go on and say hello. I noticed that a couple of you did Sunny College every day. So welcome. This is very exciting. We've been talking about doing this since the first of January. So it's great to have you all here. And we hope to do this a couple more times. I know it's a it's an inconvenient to the planning, which it's really out of your normal schedule, but I really appreciate being here. We want this to be very, very free-flowing, but an opportunity for everyone to speak, um, which is why we're all gathered here around this table. And I'm going to start and I'll start with number one. When we get to number two, Jason's going to take over. But it says, what is our overall vision for Ruinchild City going forward? What are our strengths of the city and how can the general plan support constraints? So I've shared this conversation before, but uh for me, I always look to South Jordan as our model. Because I feel like they have a really strong general plan, and when you go down River Road in South Jordan, it feels like it has purpose. And yet it still feels very nice, even though there's some identity along there, it it it has a sense of uh community, it has a sense of green, right? There's parks and things, and I worry that Rimerton is headed in the direction of more of what West Jordan used to look like, just spotting this and that and the other thing. And we really want to get our general plan to a place where it really communicates to our developers, to anyone, but this is what we want to have happen, and we're gonna stick to that. And Councilmember McDougal's always been very good, very clear to emphasize we should create a general plan, and then we should stick to the general plan. I've talked to South Jordan about how they've managed to accomplish that, and I think there's a couple of things they've done in summer one, they had a great vision back in 2000 about what they wanted it to look like, and they followed through on that vision. And one way they've been able to do that is they've actually had interestingly enough, they've had two mayors, but their city council does not have a lot of turnover. So they had a whole bunch of people buy in very early on about what they wanted to look like, and they they stuck to that general plan. So I'm hoping we can get to a place that our general plan also looks very reasonable, very logical, is something that everybody wants to buy into going forward. I mean, I already have that experience as mayor where uh developers come to see me, and of course, what they're hoping is I'm gonna go, yeah, that's just the odd that's just great. That's what we want, and that they don't have to really consider our general plan because they've got something that's really just gonna fit so nicely with their plan. And what we need to do is figure out what our plan is. So with that, um I'm gonna say one more thing that I won't have to interrupt, but it was interesting for me. So what Jason and Tim did is they scheduled a field trip for myself and drove me around to all the places that you've had the opportunity to go see and asked me how I felt about all of them. And I thought that I was extremely clear about which ones I liked and which ones I didn't. And when I came back and talked to Tim a couple of days later, he said, I am very confused about what you like mayor and what you don't want to do. So I said, I I don't understand. I I thought I was pretty clear, and I realized I really wasn't, because what I was thinking I was communicating was density. Oh, I like six units per acre, oh I like eight units per acre. But what I failed to really recognize within myself is that what I really liked was those developments regardless of density that had a sense of community about them, that had sidewalks throughout them. I mean, you look at that windsler down there on Bangar next to the Bangalore Highway, but it has a sense of community about it because the homes face each other, they're all connected, um, and there's just a little bit of green space. The ones I don't like are the ones that don't have that sense of community and don't have that sense of green space. You know, and our favorite example is always of course the right homes up there off of 126, which are which are independent, well they're not independent units. I can't remember what that zoning is, but there's no sense of connectedness to the different homes. There's no sense of six. Yeah, six. But it does not have that sense of community, and then the sad, sorry little park they put in the middle doesn't help does it. Yeah. So with that introduction, I'm gonna turn over to Jason and thank him for all his hard work and getting us going. Thanks, Mary. And and really the purpose tonight is is to listen, but just kind of along with what the mayor said, and I if you'll forgive me for this, I don't mean it to get too deep, but um there's a a great scene in the the book and the movie Alice in Wonderland where she comes to a fork in the road, and the Cheshire Cat's sitting there and she says, Well, which fork should I take? And I if you'll forgive me for this, I don't need it to get too deep, but uh there's a a great scene in the the book and the movie Alice in Wonderland where she comes to a fork in the road, and the Cheshire cat's sitting there and she says, Well, which fork should I take? And the cat says, Well, where are you trying to go? And she says, I I don't know. And so he says, Well then it doesn't really matter, does it? So part of this exercise and and part of what we're trying to accomplish with the general plan is as as the commission council, as we all know, it there's we've had a lot of questions about density, commercial residential, is it six, is it eight, is it fourteen, and and those are difficult questions.