After resolving transportation and legal issues Monday, county planning commissioner Paul Duncker was comfortable enough to support Teton Meadows Ranch rather than do what he’d been planning all night: deny it.

Though the controversial proposal to build 500 homes in South Park looked like it might be tabled or denied during the Teton County Planning Commission meeting, Duncker, who was planning to recommend denial, was the swing vote that led to the board’s 3-2 endorsement of the project’s sketch plan. His vote surprised other commissioners, the developer and some audience members.

“To me, it all came down to balancing the benefits and the impacts,” Duncker said Tuesday. “As conditioned, I feel the benefits outweigh the impacts. We need affordable housing badly, and I don’t want to let this opportunity slip through our fingers.”

Conditions approved Monday night require that Teton Meadows roads connect to surrounding neighborhoods or that a second way be found to get traffic to Highway 89. Other conditions set income, asset and appreciation limits on “gap” housing designed for those who make too much to get into traditional affordable housing and too little to afford a market home.

Through most of the meeting, Duncker blasted the Teton Meadows proposal, at one point asking the developer to withdraw his application and resubmit after the Jackson/Teton County Comprehensive Plan is revised. When the vote was finally taken, Duncker joined commissioners Larry Hamilton and Joe Palmer and voted in favor. Commissioners Tony Wall and Forrest McCarthy voted against.

The move was so surprising that one planning commissioner asked for the vote to be taken again just to be sure.

“I was absolutely shocked,” Wall said Tuesday of Duncker voting with Hamilton and Palmer. “Honestly, everything he said all night indicated he couldn’t support it.”

Monday’s meeting was the third between Teton Meadows representatives and planning commissioners since February and concluded almost 15 hours of public comment and deliberations.

With the planning commission recommending sketch plan approval, the project now goes before county commissioners, who have final say.

Teton Meadows must receive approval for a more detailed final development plan to build the new neighborhood. That plan also must go before the planning commission for a recommendation.

The county commissioner meeting on Teton Meadows has not yet been scheduled.

Teton Meadows Ranch, a partnership between James Reinert’s Sequoia Development and the Jackson Hole Community Housing Trust, seeks to build 500 homes on 288 acres situated between Rafter J and Melody Ranch.

Of those, 250 dwellings would be traditional affordable homes and would be targeted to, for instance, couples making between $47,700 and $104,344 per year. The 150 gap homes would have more liberal deed restrictions and would target the midrange of the market.

One hundred homes would be sold on the free market.

This week marked the planning commissioners’ first opportunity to question developers about the proposal. On Monday, commissioners listened as Teton Meadows representatives defended their project for nearly an hour against the public criticism it received in recent weeks. Commissioners also heard from staff, who revealed bits of new information, including that some cottonwoods lining South Park Loop Road are slated to come down for a road expansion that will happen with or without the neighborhood.

Commissioners mulled tabling the application until the comprehensive plan is revised but were told doing so may not be legally defensible. Instead, they decided to condition the application, which Duncker said led to his change of heart.

Some of the major clauses attached included income and asset restrictions on the gap housing. Those restrictions would forbid purchasers from making more than a certain income or from having too many assets. Gap housing also would only appreciate at only 2.5 percent per year and have certain prices.

Another condition that addressed Duncker’s issues requires Teton Meadows to find ways to connect subdivision roads to surrounding neighborhoods and Highway 89.

Commissioners and Teton Meadow representatives acknowledge that may never be possible, given the Rafter J and Melody Ranch’s opposition to the project. Unless the county were to force neighboring subdivisions to link roads, the neighborhoods would have to agree to connect, which could take a vote of 100 percent of the homeowners.

Land purchase or easement

To connect directly to the highway, Teton Meadows would have to purchase land or an easement through Big Trails subdivision.

Planning commissioners also decided to forbid the housing trust or its private corporation from selling preferential purchase rights to any of the homes. The trust recently signed such a deal with the Town of Jackson, which paid $1.8 million for the six top slots on the current waiting list.

Other conditions include a groundwater study of capacity and quality, a plan for START transit and strict rules for pet owners.

Without these conditions, Duncker said, he never would have endorsed the Teton Meadows application.

“I would strongly caution the applicant against claiming the planning commission approved this without these conditions,” Duncker said. “They only have planning commission approval with all these conditions.”

Teton Meadows representatives said they are prepared to work with staff to understand and meet the commission’s recommendations.

“We were delighted that, along with planning staff, the planning commission voted in favor of recommending approval for the Teton Meadows Ranch proposal,” project spokeswoman Kari Cooper said.

Regarding the road, for example, Cooper said the development team is willing to provide easements, but it has been clear that Rafter J and Melody Ranch homeowners are not interested in letting traffic through their subdivisions.

Neighbor Rich Bloom, a vocal opponent of the project, still thinks Teton Meadows should be denied.

“The developer has divided the community by falsely making this a referendum on affordable housing,” he said. “It should be judged, and rejected, by the county commission on the basis of the land development regulations and comprehensive plan.”

Before they began conditioning the application, planning commissioners addressed what they saw as the most pressing issue in the debate: the comprehensive plan update.

Most said the comprehensive plan revision should be finished before voting on the Teton Meadows application. That process likely will determine what areas of the county are appropriate for such density and could be largely completed by the end of the year, they said.

Wall wanted to wait until the plan was revised so the community would have, in effect, a say in the worthiness of the Teton Meadows proposal and its location.

“I just think that it would be really, really disrespectful to all the citizens of this county we asked to participate in the process,” Wall said. “It would be so disrespectful to shove this down everybody’s throats, even if I were in love with it.”

Duncker said he didn’t want to set a precedent.

“That precedent appears to be large residential subdivisions immediately in advance of major comprehensive plan rewrites,” he said, referring to Rafter J and Melody Ranch, which were done before previous plan rewrites. “That’s a precedent I don’t want to repeat with this project. I think it’s too big to not take the time to hear from all the members of the public.”

Yet Palmer and Hamilton said there was no county-wide moratorium on development. Without that, they could not halt the Teton Meadows project.

Palmer: Act now

“I think we ought to act on it now and make our recommendation to the county commissioners, whatever it may be, as to this specific application rather than turning it down awaiting the revision of the comp plan,” Palmer said.

Jeff Daugherty, county planning director, asked commissioners to use a reason other than the plan revision for tabling or denying the application. Legal counsel advised him that tabling the plan because of the timing of the comprehensive plan rewrite was not legally defensible, Daugherty said.

When asked if they would willingly pull the application, the developer’s attorney, Robbin Levy, said Teton Meadows doesn’t have that option.

Reinert doesn’t own the 288-acre property and is under contract to purchase it. He hasn’t been able to extend that contract and will not purchase the property if the development application is not approved, she said.

“It’s not as though we can say, ‘OK, we’ll hold off for a year while you address the comprehensive plan issue,’” she said.

Even with a new comprehensive plan, the land development regulation on the books will govern planning decisions until there are new land development regulations, she said. That could be three years off.

“This applicant will be gone,” she said.

Both Wall and Duncker said Tuesday that legal interpretation changed the tenor of the planning commission’s discussion.

Wall was unhappy. He said earlier this year the board tabled a proposal for a mixed-use village in Wilson awaiting the comprehensive plan rewrite. The board decided not to vote until the larger questions are answered in the plan, he said.

“I didn’t hear any objections to that then,” Wall said. “This is a way bigger, more controversial issue than the Wilson mixed-use village.”

Daugherty said Tuesday the major difference is the Wilson plan was a proposal from county staff. Teton Meadows is a proposal from a private citizen.

“The due process questions are different,” he said.

When it came time to vote, every commissioner but Hamilton explained their rationale.

“To me, it comes down to the staff recommended it and the housing authority recommended it,” Palmer said. “They’re not out to ruin this neighborhood.”

Wall said the only way he could justify a 1,000 percent upzone is with 1,000 traditional affordable homes.

“The biggest problem I have is it doesn’t have enough affordable housing to offset [the impacts,]” he said.

McCarthy said he was worried about the unknown, cumulative impacts on the environment and traffic.

“I just see that 500 units, at this point, being too much,” he said.

Duncker said the plan still had many flaws. He criticized Teton Meadows and said it was an insult that the developer initially offered only 15 percent traditional affordable housing and now only 50 percent, both the minimums allowed by respective zoning tools used to create the project. Developers should offer more than the minimum, he said.

With the changes made Monday, Duncker said he no longer could deny the proposal.

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