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Spillover growth between counties is a growing phenomenon that is having far-reaching fiscal, social and environmental impacts in the West. I know. I experience its effects daily.
Every morning I head over the pass from Livingston to Bozeman, Mont., and then drive back in the evening (except when whiteout conditions force me take refuge on a friend’s couch). I love Livingston, but it was the high cost of Bozeman housing that first made me consider the Windy City as a home base. Like it or not, Livingston and the rest of Park County are becoming a bedroom community for Gallatin County. And, every day there are more Madison and Broadwater county plates in Bozeman’s employee parking lots, too.
But nowhere in this region is the spillover phenomenon more acute than in Teton County, Wyo., home of Jackson Hole, and its neighboring counties – Lincoln in Wyoming and Teton in Idaho. A recent report by the Sonoran Institute quantifies the multiple affects of spillover growth between these counties and the fact that most local governments are unprepared to deal with its impacts. Getting support for land-use planning for individual towns and counties is a big enough challenge, yet it’s becoming obvious, especially in spillover areas, that effective planning for growth and development has to happen on a more regional scale.
The Institute’s report, “Growth Impacts in the Teton Region of Wyoming and Idaho,” notes that Teton County, Wyo., residents held about 7,000 of the 8,000 jobs in the county in 1980. By 2000 almost half the jobs were filled by workers who did not live there. With home prices now averaging around a million dollars, the number of out-of-county workers continues to rise – and their commute makes mine seem like a piece of cake. Teton Pass is prone to avalanches, and other roads leading to Jackson Hole have their own weather and wildlife-related hazards.
Commuter economics is about more than the price of gas, snow tires and insurance. Commuters need roofs over their heads. They need schools, police and fire protection, and other services traditionally supplied by local government. As Jackson Hole and Teton County, Wyo., grew, they had to face the costs of providing those services. Now their neighbors are finding that there are similar costs to being a bedroom community. Expensive infrastructure projects such as water, sewer, and roads are now needed in Alpine, Victor, Driggs and other towns in the region.
How will these communities pay for growing infrastructure needs? Like most state and local governments, they must rely primarily on property taxes to cover the costs of public services. Idaho, however, has placed a cap on property taxes, limiting annual revenue growth to 3 percent. Yet Teton County, Idaho’s budget expenditures are growing at nearly 12 percent. Such increases would be impossible to handle if not for a critical exception to the tax law: newly constructed buildings are exempt from the cap in their first year. The county’s growth boom has created significant tax revenue exempt from the cap; this windfall has allowed the county to meet the service needs of many new residents. But not forever. In essence the county is paying for recurring expenditures with non-recurring revenues. Eventually growth will slow. In fact, it may be slowing already. The flood of revenue generated by all that new construction will turn to a trickle.
So, where will Teton County, Idaho, turn to meet a budget that became dependent on a temporary revenue surge? And, what does it mean for Jackson Hole when its neighbors can no longer supply essential services to their commuting workers? Discussion of such regional interdependence logically leads to the question of whether revenue sharing might be one solution. But, limited by what is expressly granted to them by state legislatures, the region’s counties have no authority to enter into sharing of expenses or revenues. Shared funding can apply to some services such as maintenance of the road across Teton Pass, which straddles the state border. In-kind technical and engineering assistance is also allowed and could be used to mitigate some spillover impacts on counties that lack financial resources to address these problems.
In addition to the serious fiscal impacts of growth are significant environmental impacts and the loss of what some describe as a “sense of place.” It is not easy to define the impact that rapid growth and a commuter-dependent economy have on the character of a place. Residents of the Teton region know what is special about this spectacular region – working farms and ranches, majestic mountains, grand valleys, abundant fish and wildlife. They like knowing their neighbors, and they also like knowing that there is plenty of open space. But do they know how to keep it?
Efforts to manage this growth in a manner that preserves the region’s considerable natural and cultural assets have been less than successful. Farm and ranchland is being lost at an alarming rate. Stunning Teton views are crowded with home sites. Prime fish and wildlife habitat has been degraded. Unbelievably, if Teton County, Idaho, was built out to current allowable levels, it would accommodate 85,000 people!
And then there is the impact Jackson Hole commuters are inadvertently having on the cost of housing in their “bedroom” communities. Jackson commuters’, whose salaries are generally higher than those of workers in adjoining counties, are able to out-compete non-commuters for housing. The heightened demand drives up the cost of homeownership beyond the reach of many without an external source of income.
Undergoing rapid growth, Jackson Hole and Teton County, Wyoming, eventually enacted fairly elaborate development regulations. These coupled with the high cost of land have sent some developers looking for easier places to build. Development rules and procedures are comparatively simple in Lincoln County, Wyoming, and Teton County, Idaho. Areas important to wildlife, prone to wildfire, or far from existing services are often approved for development. The fiscal and environmental effects of this lack of effective growth management are becoming obvious.
And the direct impacts on the wallets of the far-flung commuters are becoming downright painful. When I fill up my gas tank at the start of every work week, I often wonder if, economically speaking, I would have been better off buying a home in Bozeman, despite the higher costs of housing. But Livingston is my home, and someday I am going to figure out a way to limit my driving. I suspect that if gas prices keep rising, most commuters will be exploring similar options.
The challenges facing individuals, communities and counties as a result of wide disparity in land use regulations, housing costs and salaries have no easy solutions. One thing is for sure though – with continued amenity-based migration, booming real estate values, and, in some cases, increased energy development, many other places are bound to experience this spillover phenomenon and its many impacts. The goal of the Sonoran Institute report is not to prescribe solutions but rather to tell the story. Decisions about the future of any region will be most successful if they come from the local residents. We hope that this document will spark serious discussion and collaboration that will generate action.
Efforts for regional dialogue and solutions are not new to the Teton region. Community leaders and entities such as the Teton Area Advisory Forum – a nonprofit that hosts discussions of regional significance – have had some success working on regional issues. For example, public transportation now exists between Jackson Hole and Teton County, Idaho. Engineers from Teton County, Wyoming, assisted its Idaho counterpart in the design of a trash transfer station. The crucial thing is that serious and substantial discussions begin now, while enough time and options exist to enable effective, community-guided action.
Despite their economic and political differences, residents of the Teton region share a love of place that is a hallmark of the Northern Rockies. We at the Sonoran Institute present the information in the study to help local residents and officials as they grapple with spillover growth in this magnificent landscape. They may well provide important lessons for others in places that are also encountering the opportunities and challenges of rapid and profound change in the West. Like where I live.
Dennis Glick is the Director of the
Northern Rockies Office of the Sonoran Institute.
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