If you live in SL County, and especially if your kids attend Jordan School District, you need to be aware of the following:
Draper Citizens Need to Know
Rezoning proposed on 3 school district properties
The Draper City Council has proposed to rezone 3 pieces of property currently owned by the Jordan School District (to be the new east side school district). This proposal is meant to protect this land from ever being developed, BUT it has a lot of other ramifications and is not necessary at this time.
• By rezoning this land it lowers the value of the land significantly – these are taxpayer dollars as well as educational dollars they are dealing with.
• The new school district is just being formed and trust and good faith are most important to this procedure – this breaks that on a lot of fronts.
• The Asset Transition Team that is working on the plan to split the school district assets may be adversely affected by this in a number of ways.
• If it results in the remaining Jordan School District having to pay the east more money, the west side cities could follow suit and rezone their school property. If this happened, the east side could end up owing a lot more money to the west side.
• The current Jordan School District has requested, in writing, that this change not happen.
• It potentially affects the bond rating of the new east side district
• It looks as if Draper is not waiting for the process of the creation of the new district to take place and potentially breaks trust with our east side neighbors.
• Our current school board member, Sherrill Taylor, is working on a way to get a middle school built in Draper. This results in the loss of support for his efforts amongst the other school board members.
• This could result in a lawsuit against the city of Draper if it is considered a taking.
• The normal zoning notification process is insufficient in this case, since the proposal would affect students and their parents throughout Draper. As with other major issues, this proposal needs to be advertised widely and then discussed at open houses and other public meetings. There is no urgency with this proposal so there is time for broad public discussion before the zoning change is officially considered by the City Council.
There are a lot of potential ramifications, but is it needed anyway? Not at this time!
• The Jordan School District currently has no plans to sell this land.
• If selling this land were a proposal, then Draper has the first right of refusal on the land. They have 90 days to answer whether they want to buy it and another 90 days to come up with the funding for that. In the meantime, they could revisit rezoning.
• Due to the rules that the district split is functioning under, no land can be sold on the east side without the Interlocal Group of Mayors approving it (that includes our own Mayor Smith).
• Draper City Planning and Zoning Commission voted unanimously to Not Recommend this at their April 3rd meeting (but the city council can still go against their recommendation)
We suggest waiting on this rezoning and letting the new district school board get elected and the creation of the district come to fruition before this rezoning goes forward! If you would like to know more, please contact: Susan Edwards at fourafamily@yahoo.com; Kathryn Myers at kathrynmyers@comcast.net; Laura Fidler at laurafidler@msn.com; or Stacy Packard at stacypackard@comcast.net
Please attend the City Council meeting on April 15th @ 7 p.m. at Draper City Hall. Thank You!!
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