Rigby residents unhappy with City Council approving re-zoning of lot

On Friday, people living in Rigby are concerned about a re-zoning request that was approved in Thursday night’s City Council meeting. The area is known as the Lee Frank Home and is located on about 3 acres of land on 3rd West.

In October, the Rigby City Council had a request to re-zone the area from an R1 to an R2, meaning the zone may change from allowing a single home to allowing duplexes. At first, the council approved the request, but Rigby residents petitioned to have the council reconsider.

“I was able to get a petition. We have over 60 signatures of people all through the streets that don’t want this zone change,” said Rigby resident Aliza King.

King also has a friend who is a contractor, and he has about another 70 people who are all opposed to rezoning this property to R2. The zoning request was then denied — and all seemed good — but at the meeting on Thursday night, City Council approved a re-application of the request.

“The city allowed for a reconsideration hearing, and that was the one we had last night. At that point, one of the council members changed her vote and then we had a missing council member,” said Rigby Mayor Jason Richardson.

The council believes the zone change will support the growth of Rigby. Residents disagree.

“We all feel — the community — when we bought into our homes, it was going to be single-family homes. I actually just bought this house seven months ago. I would have never bought this house if I would have known that they were going to change that into R2, and have all of those people in that little area,” King said.

“Development, in and of itself, has an effect on the city. It can be beneficial. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. I happen to disagree with the change on this one. I think that the area that this R2 is going in is more an R1-appropriate area,” said Richardson.

To the residents’ surprise, the re-zoning request went to City Council again. This time, council members made a decision to re-approve what they had first denied.

“They flipped it within three weeks,” said King.

The quick flip was able to happen because of specific rules.

“We have rules in place that for a petition for a particular change, there needs to be a year wait. Under our state law, on a zone-change denial, there is an allowance for a reconsideration hearing. And so that’s what this was,” said Richardson.

King said they were not notified about the council’s decision on Thursday night. But, there was a reason for that too.

“The reconsideration hearing has different rules associated with it. There’s no requirement on the city to publish it in the paper, although it was posted on our City Council agenda,” Richardson said.

As far as changing the zone from R1 to R2, King said there are a lot of reasons why building duplexes and putting more than 100 people in this area doesn’t seem like a good idea.

“Traffic, sewage, even stray animals and crime rate — all of these things were huge topics,” said King.

Residents feel the City Council is putting what the buyers want ahead of the concerns of the people who actually live here.

“They even asked the developer, ‘Can you put this somewhere else?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, but my buyer wants it here.’ Also, they did point out, there is R2 down the street over, that’s already sectioned for R2,” said King.

Mayor Richardson told KIFI/KIDK the reconsideration hearing goes both ways. The people who are for the re-zoning had their hearing Thursday night, but this also opens it up for those opposed to the re-zoning to have a hearing as well. Only one hearing for each side is allowed, so if the opposing side — those who want to keep the zone R1 — decides to go to City Council again, that will be the last hearing, and a final decision will be made.