According to some members of Heber City Council, the Utah Department of Transportation has confirmed that a development under consideration near a prominent valley intersection will not interfere with the organization’s efforts to put a bypass corridor through Heber Valley. Other council members were frustrated to hear this news second hand during a discussion this week on a potential annexation for Ångstrom Development Group’s planned Harvest Village Community at the intersection of U.S. 40 and River Road.Heber City Councilors Sid Ostergaard and Scott Phillips told their peers that they’d met with UDOT Project Manager Craig Hancock, the project’s developers and city staff to discuss concerns the development could throw a wrench in UDOT’s process of finding a bypass route.Why, Councilor Yvonne Barney questioned, would UDOT be so straightforward in a private meeting but not show up to council meetings with the same message? And why would they be fine with this development but raise a stink a few months ago when county officials voted to levy funds with federal finances to preserve portions of the North Fields that might have been considered for a bypass?“I was in the meeting yesterday with UDOT and the petitioners, and all of my fears were put at ease finally through UDOT,” Phillips said. “They’re in the middle of their studies right now, and they don’t really say much, but they did say that approving this project would not hinder or impede their current studies at all.”Ostergaard agreed with him.Phillips said UDOT informed them the intersection of U.S. 40 and River Road “has been master planned as a major intersection, which would mean some sort of a bridge at some point in time.”He also said UDOT acknowledged that three of their five previously released plans for the bypass are no longer feasible to handle the valley’s traffic demands in coming decades.“When they are done with the study, they may have brand new routes that they propose,” Phillips said. “The five routes we currently have, it may not be any of those.”“I was wondering when they were going to admit that,” Mayor Heidi Franco said. Phillips said UDOT said they’d work with the developer directly about space they’d like them to keep open, and he said the project was different from the county’s preservation easements, “which stopped, completely, the study.”He said he checked with UDOT to make sure the development would not present issues.Franco, who chairs the Wasatch County Open Lands Board, clarified that the easements didn’t necessarily stop the study, but just required UDOT to consider the land’s new designation.“I’m really hesitant and cautious about this language of stopping a study,” she said.Ostergaard said his interaction with UDOT had left him thinking the organization is willing to work with the community on the much-needed bypass. After the meeting, he said he wasn’t worried Harvest Village’s annexation request would get in their way.“Why aren’t they at the meeting right now saying this publicly in a way we can reference with the public?” Councilor Aaron Cheatwood asked.Barney agreed.“Whenever there’s a meeting with Utah or UDOT recently, it seems to be that it’s either a letter being sent to individuals who are trying to protect their fields and being able to farm their fields, and they’re sending letters to them and speaking through other individuals. But when it comes time to come forward and say and address this directly, I just wonder why we don’t have that dialogue with them,” she said. “It frustrates me, I’ll be honest.” She told the Harvest Village developers her issue wasn’t with them, but with UDOT saying it was OK for one development to happen when other petitions for developments within the North Fields were huge issues with the department.“People who are just saying this is my land, I would like to continue farming it, my family wants to farm it, yet that suddenly is the biggest, ‘Oh my gosh! UDOT can’t do anything.’ And that really bothers me,” Barney said.After trying so hard to work with UDOT toward other projects and goals in the North Fields area, she said it’s not easy to see that in this case they decided there was no issue.She wanted to know why UDOT treated conservation easements protecting property as a roadblock while Harvest Village was so easy to agree on.Phillips said the answer lies in federal funding and the strings attached.“They went with concerns to the federal funding organization, and federal funding is being pulled because of the concerns,” he said.The conversation broke down into a somewhat contentious exchange between Phillips and Barney as she expressed her frustrations that UDOT knew of the federal funding.Justin Keys, an attorney and member of the Open Lands Board — jumped into the conversation.“I agree with you on that Yvonne, but I think there are two different issues,” he said. He said he agreed with Ostergaard and Phillips in that Heber City needs to pull its seat up to UDOT’s table and become a part of its conversation.“The letter campaigns are not working,” he said. “I don’t know where UDOT files them, but it’s not somewhere highly persuasive is what I have found. What does work is face-to-face conversations.”The city, he said, should continue to advocate for itself with UDOT.“Yvonne, I’m sensitive to what you’re saying,” he said. “Ironically, I think you’re making the same argument. What you’re saying is those landowners should have a right to pull their seat up to the table and say this is what I’m looking to do, just like Heber City should have a right to pull their seat up the table and say this is what we’re looking to do. And what I heard from UDOT yesterday, including from the Region 3 head, was, ‘Yeah, we want to hear from you.’” The land easements, he reminded Barney and Franco, were a different conversation for a different group.The post Heber gets greenlight from UDOT for development; some leaders want UDOT to be more direct appeared first on Park Record.