The Star Valley Ranch Town Council January meeting included a third reading of a budget amendment related to snow removal equipment. Other ordinances dealt with rentals and official town holidays.

“We had an opportunity to purchase something called snow gates, which will be these devices that will go on the either side of our plows and as the plows go by the driveways, it’s hydraulic, and a little gate will come down and hopefully reduce the amount of snow that gets pushed into residents’ driveways,” explained Mayor Ru Rok. “That’s something  that’s been a big deal up here with the amount of snow that we usually get, but not this year.”

She said residents have been concerned about removing the snow at their driveway entrances after roads are plowed.

A second ordinance dealt with rentals in the community. “The other ordinance we had was a short-term rental ordinance, updating language for that,” Mayor Rok noted. “We ended up tabling it because we were waiting on some input from our town attorney on that one.”

The final ordinance of the January meeting established holidays the town will observe. “We’re going to just codify what our actual town holidays are going forward,” she said. “I know a lot of towns do an annual announcement of that, but we’re going ahead and we’ll put in an ordinance for councils going forward.”

In additional town business, a petition to annex for the Mountain Estate Subdivision is under consideration. The subdivision is on the east side of Muddy String Road and north of Prater Canyon Road.

“It’s a planned unit development that’s been ongoing with the county,” she explained. “I think the master plan was first submitted in 2008. It’s undergone quite a few revisions since then.”

Rok said, “It’s going to be a pretty dense development, and I believe it’s 52 town homes and 68 single-family lots. There is currently one building of four town homes that are completed, and per the developer, and another building of four town homes is supposed to get underway this year. It is contiguous to the town.”

The mayor recalled, The subdivision was first considered in 2018 with an annexation petition with the council, at that time, but was ultimately turned down, so now the town is working through that process again.

The mayor concluded, “We have a lot of residents that are very interested in how this annexation proceeds. There’s lots of concerns voiced about impacts to traffic and impacts to our water system, so as we work through the process, the town staff is currently in the process of putting together the annexation report so that we can really understand the pros and cons, the costs, and all the impacts, and we want to share all the information that we find with our community so that everyone can make the best informed decision they can going forward.”

Public hearings on the subdivision will be included as part of the review process.

The town has recently installed new microphones to assist with the audio/video broadcasts of council meetings.