By Board of Directors of FOMP
Developers are focused on the modern-day land grab in one of the Country’s fastest growing cities. We know Boise needs insightful and careful planning to attain its best future, and that commitment and sacrifice are necessary to right ourselves when the path ahead is not clear. Still, it continues to astonish us at Friends of Murgoitio Park just how much of our future the members of our City Council and the Planning and Zoning Department and especially the Parks and Recreation Department are willing to sacrifice to convenience. Every day it seems clearer (and stranger) to us that those officials we expect to be in full support of protecting and preserving our open spaces are inexplicably hell-bent on offering them up to the nearest Monopoly mogul instead.
The City has clearly learned from last year’s “land-swap” debacle that they will need to cover their tracks as they underhandedly tag our parklands for sale. The situation taught them that they will need to at least insinuate to the populace that they’re working to protect Boise’s open spaces. To this end, they recently launched an evaluate-and-protect study to (nominally) deed-restrict designated parklands within city limits, so that when organized citizens balk against the City’s inevitably ham-fisted overreach, they can offer evidence of their benevolent intentions.
The campaign is a sham. The land that the City is most quickly doling out to high bidders is the land which is currently outside Boise city limits, where simple tricks of bait-and-switch are not only possible, they are the norm, and the City’s recent “protection” study includes exactly zero of these designated parklands. Suburban infill (in the form of mass, high-density housing) is swallowing Idaho’s open spaces at an alarming rate. The City’s recent evaluate-and-protect campaign is just another coal in the fire that’s consuming us, because the City can now wave that campaign like a banner in defense of their intentions, even as they authorize the wholesale destruction of the spaces they claim to cherish.
The parcel just north of Victory Road and south of West Junior High School—previously owned by the Boise School District—was rezoned to mixed use, then sold, annexed, and rezoned again to suit the developer’s actual original purpose, which is high-density housing. This is the bait-and-switch in motion: Developers work with City insiders to make the parcel available by announcing one plan, and then when semantic obstacles are cleared they resubmit and rezone again. The Victory parcel and another smaller parcel on Maple Grove are the City’s doors to annexing and auctioning off Murgoitio Park, and the doors are now open wide.
Some of our own board members recently came across an unannounced gathering of officials at the edge of the Murgoitio park site, who, when questioned as to their purpose, deflected and denied, insisting they were discussing the widening of Cole Road. That section of Cole Road was widened up to McGlochlin Street more than two years ago, and ACHD has confirmed that the stretch will never—in foreseeable planning, due to physical constraints—be widened beyond McGlochlin Street. The gathering of officials could only have been discussing the park—Murgoitio Park—and they acted surprised that Friends of Murgoitio Park didn’t get the memo.
We didn’t get the memo. We weren’t invited to the meeting.
The writing is on the walls, Friends, and we need your help to change what is being written. We need funding, we need voices, and we need feet on the pavement.
Please donate through our site right now or volunteer to collect signatures for a ballot initiative to save our open spaces!
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