Linn County, Palo team to plan future development

CEDAR RAPIDS - A plan for Palo's future growth should become official this week.

After a year of work by the city and Linn County planners, the city-county strategic growth plan breezed through a brief public hearing at the county supervisors' work session Monday. Already adopted by the Palo City Council, the 20-year plan takes effect with the supervisors' final approval, which is on the agenda for Wednesday's formal session.

Two rural Palo residents attended the hearing, mostly just to learn what's in the plan.

“We don't want to restrict (the city),” said J.E. Kibbie. “It's kind of, ‘What's going on?'”

“It shouldn't impact you at all,” said Chad Sands, community development director for the East Central Iowa Council of Governments, which helped develop the plan. “If you want to develop your property, that would trigger your annexation into the city.”

Kibbie said much of his 700 acres of farmland is within the plan's “county service area,” a two-mile radius around current city limits. That area isn't part of Palo's long-term planning and is “best suited to resource protection or limited development,” according to the plan.

“It'll be the county's regulations that have priority in those areas, and any development would comply to county standards,” said Les Block, the county's director of planning and development.

The plan also designates a “non-metro urban service area” adjoining the current city limit, where planners expect development is most likely to happen over the next 20 years. Property there should be annexed into the city before it's developed, the plan says, although it spells out exceptions for residential lot splits and other minor changes.

The plan also calls for the county to notify the city of any rezoning requests in its service area.

“It fine-tunes or tweaks that non-metro urban service area boundary based on areas the city will grow into,” Block said. “It's really kind of maintaining the county's status quo outside that non-metro service area.”

The county has similar agreements with Bertram, Ely and Springville. Block said there are no plans to extend the process to the county's larger cities.

“We've kind of taken the approach of working with the smaller towns initially as opposed to getting into the larger urban areas,” he said. “It's kind of confusing enough already within the larger areas, with all the jurisdictions.”