How a City's Plan can effect your quality of life, a personal story

The dictionary defines the word “Plan “with many examples. Here are several; “a detailed proposal for doing or achieving something”, “an intention or decision about what one is going to do”, “a detailed diagram, drawing, or program, in particular”, “decide on and arrange in advance”. I’m sure those of you reading this understand what a plan is. But have you ever stopped to think about how you “plan” your life on “other’s plans”?

What I mean is when you locate a city to live in and a home to purchase what parameters do you use? Do you not research the city for crime rates, schools, churches, shopping, and other necessities? When you look at homes to purchase or even rent do you not look at the neighborhoods for some of these same necessities? So what do you look at to determine these factors? I recently encountered these decisions on my new home purchase. You see I work in Reno but was not interested in the high crime rate and dense population and their recent claim of becoming a “college city”.

Carson City appealed to me much more with its lower crime rate and family friendly environment. Within Carson, I wanted to find a home that offered a quiet and peaceful neighborhood so that my wife and I could call this home “our last”! As luck would have it, we found an affordable home in an area that we thought we would not be able to afford. So I did my research! I started driving around to see how far shopping, church and other necessities would be from this home. Having some experience owning homes in the past, I also researched surrounding areas and had a look at the City Plan. There was a ranch behind my home and a rumor that it was for sale.

My wife and I were concerned but the realtor was able to see that Carson City had zoned the land as SF1A , defined as “Single Family One Acre Lot”. My wife and I were relieved knowing that the City had made plans already by limiting the impact on the community with a one acre lot per home. So having the knowledge in hand we purchased our “last home”! Fast forward only several months and we are now finding out that Carson City is changing the plan! What I mean to say is, we have found out that Carson City’s plans are “subject to change”. A new developer is promoting his “new plans” to include high density homes, a senior center with commercial businesses.

I don’t begrudge anyone from building but what I do have a problem with is the lack of solidity with Carson City’s Growth Plan for its citizens. How can someone plan their own futures around a city that is fluid in nature to its own vison? It’s a total lack of respect for its citizenry and even its own forefathers that originally had the plan created! Let us say for a moment that this City allows the full development as “planned”. Who will guarantee that this new plan will even be viable? What happens when there are not enough renters or purchasers of the proposed senior center? This development is dependent on HOA fees in order to operate. Security, landscape and maintenance people will be paid for by these HOA fees.

But if no one is buying no one is paying for these employees. If the amount of people residing falls what happens to the proposed businesses? I guess they could begin advertising to the general public in order to keep their doors open. Of course that would just generate even more traffic in an already congested area! Have you looked around Carson City’s failed businesses recently? One can see numerous closed commercial locations when driving in from Reno.

There are too many to list for this article, however I urge you to take a look for yourself! If the senior center doesn’t work will it be sold as apartments? As you can see changing a plan has many effects within a city. You must understand and respect those decisions made in the past for everyone! After all the owner of the land for sale knew he was zoned SF1A and so did the citizen living around his ranch for countless years! Why would a city that has many economic failures within its borders want to create a situation just ripe for another failure? Sometimes sticking to a plan takes courage and commitment, two traits that are rarely seen in government anymore!