Citizen petitioners demanded a new Boise parks ordinance. What City Council just did

From now on, Boise voters will have to be consulted before the city can make decisions about what to do with the green spaces it owns.

On Tuesday evening, the Boise City Council unanimously approved an ordinance to require that significant changes to city parks and opens spaces be brought to voters. Though all council members supported it, several expressed reservations about portions of the ordinance, which they said may need to be changed in the future.

The new ordinance is derived from an initiative by a local group, called the Boise Parks Association, which is made up of many of the same people who fought the proposed development of the Murgoitio park site, southwest of Boise, in 2021, or who stopped efforts to build a new library downtown in 2019.

Activists collected thousands of signatures to bring the initiative before the City Council, which went into effect immediately on Tuesday.

“It’s this sort of citizen interaction that makes our democracy work,” Council Member Luci Willits, of West Boise, said at Tuesday’s meeting. “This has the capacity to shape what the city of Boise looks like for years to come, just like the Foothills levy did 20 years ago.”

In 2001, Boise voters passed a levy to raise funds to preserve land in the Boise Foothills. Voters passed another levy in 2015 to protect areas in the Foothills and along the Boise River.

How did the initiative come about?

Starting in the spring of last year, the Boise Parks Association began collecting signatures from residents who backed an initiative that would require efforts by city officials to sell, trade, or change parks or open spaces to go to a public vote.

Voter initiatives in Boise need to gather signatures from at least a fifth the number of people who voted in the previous general election to advance. The Parks Association passed that hurdle in December, which triggered a requirement that the Boise City Council hold a public hearing to consider the initiative as a proposed ordinance.

The council’s choices were either to adopt the measure outright or to punt the issue to voters, putting it on the ballot in November.

Since late last year, the council has been adding its own protections to parks, putting in place deed restrictions that will provide legal protections to about 50 parks in city limits.

In the months since the Parks Association submitted its final batch of signatures at City Hall last November, council members have expressed reservations about the ordinance, which some fear could handicap the city in future years.

While the deed restrictions apply only to parks in city limits, the ordinance would apply to all city-owned properties, even outside of city limits. A notable example is the Murgoitio parcel, which is owned by the city but is outside of city limits. The land had long been slated to become a park, and in 2021 the city considered annexing and developing most of the 160 acres while creating a smaller park within the parcel. The plan was put on hold after public backlash.

Residents in favor of the ordinance and members of the council have debated whether deed restrictions, which can only be undone through court, or ordinances, which can be amended by the City Council, provide stronger protection.

Council Member Elaine Clegg told the Statesman earlier this month that she was concerned about the implications of the new ordinance.

“There’s a lot of things about that initiative that tie the hands of local elected officials to do regular kinds of work,” Clegg said. She noted that, while the ordinance is about open space, it would still likely apply to other kinds of property that the city owns, like maintenance facilities.

In the future, the city might have reason to relocate a maintenance facility. The city also sometimes has small remnants of parcels that it will trade with the Ada County Highway District, Clegg said. She also mentioned land owned by the airport, which could be sold in the future or used to expand the airport.

“There’s just lots and lots of little pieces like that,” Clegg said. “I very, very much support protecting our parks in perpetuity but also believe that local elected officials are elected to do the public’s work, and sometimes that means making those kinds of decisions on properties that aren’t parks.”

A memorandum written by Jennifer Pitino, an attorney for the city, said that “park” and “open space” are “broadly defined in the proposed measure.”

Though all council members supported adopting the ordinance, members made clear that there will likely be “tweaks” made to it.

Will the ordinance be changed?

Concerns about the broadness of some terms in the ordinance, which was drafted by petitioners, and about some of its requirements make some on the council uneasy, and could result in changes.

At the council meeting, Council Member Patrick Bageant voted for the ordinance and said he supported the protection of open spaces, but that some of the provisions concern him.

In a phone interview on Tuesday night, he told the Statesman he is concerned about a provision requiring the city to oppose eminent domain proceedings, which is a process by which governments take private land for public use.

He said that requirement could be contrary to the “legal merit” of Idaho’s laws and state constitution.

Bageant said he was further concerned that a “change of use” provision in the ordinance is too vague, as green space can be used in different ways, and that the percentage of land the activists landed on that would trigger a vote — 5% of the total area — may need to be altered. If, for instance, a future City Council wanted to build a bike park on an open space area, some citizens might consider that allowable without voter approval because the area would be maintained as a park. But others, who may want the space preserved as wildlife habitat, might disagree.

Bageant added that he’s concerned the ordinance does not have an emergency provision. He cited an example where, if the Boise River floods in the future, the city might want to install emergency temporary shelter for displaced residents on park land.

He added, “I’m not saying these are fatal flaws ... I’m just saying that there are some details that we probably need to really work through and think through and amend and adjust the ordinance to make sure that it’s carefully thought through in those ways.”

The North End council member, who is an attorney, also said he is not entirely sure the ordinance is constitutional.

“How a city zones property, disposes of its own property, and what it builds on its own property are administrative decisions, they’re not policy decisions,” he said. “If that’s the case, then this may be an unconstitutional intrusion on the power of a city council.”

Clegg says government is a ‘two-way street’

Before voting for the measure, Council Member Elaine Clegg said that inhabitants of land southwest of Boise need to partner with the city.

She said that, in past years, those residents have not kept a promise made to the city.

Clegg said that the city made a promise to residents to Boise’s southwest that it would bring infrastructure and parks to the area. The city has since made investments in the area and spent “a lot of money,” but residents have fought annexation, she said.

“In return for that there was a promise that annexation would be on the table, and it turned out not to be,” she said. “Government is a two-way street. You can’t just ask, you have to give.”

She added, “As this part of the city continues to grow, I think we all owe it to ourselves to ask, ‘Is it really part of the city? And if it is, how can we make that real?’”

Down the road, Clegg said she thinks there’s an opportunity to preserve large swaths of desert to Boise’s southwest, similar to the spaces in the Foothills.

Public testimony supports ordinance

At Tuesday’s council meeting, over 15 Boise residents testified in favor of the ordinance, arguing that park space is important to well-being, wildlife, and the city’s goals of reducing the effects of climate change, and noting that there is less open space in Southwest Boise and in neighborhoods outside of city limits that could one day be annexed.

The city owns a number of large open space reserves in the Foothills, north of town.

State Rep. John Gannon, of Boise, told the council he sees the ordinance as “supplementing” the city’s work on deed restrictions.

“We need to keep our local public lands in public hands,” said Katie Fite, a director of the Parks Association, at Tuesday’s meeting.