South Jordan's open space is a promise in someone else's agreement

South Jordan's case is not that it has fallen behind, but that the open space is coming. The 2025 Parks, Open Space, Recreation and Trails Master Plan counts about 257 acres of public open space today, then projects forward: approximately 1,040 acres inside Daybreak when that community is complete, 40 more planned at Shoreline, and 571.25 in the Rio Tinto annexation area - roughly 1,651 acres in all 1. The city manages about 185 of the nearly 320 preserved acres in the Jordan River corridor, and is working with the Larry H. Miller Group to secure more than 183 acres in the Bingham Creek corridor 1. Read that way it is not a shortage but a schedule.

The difficulty is that the schedule is not the city's. Not one of those acres is a purchase. In the same plan, Table 2.4 books the additional park acres to be acquired through 2050 at zero in both periods 1. For open space it sets no standard and says so: "There is no standardized LOS or similar assessment tool for determining optimal open space provision. Most cities typically acquire such spaces opportunistically" 1. Its one acquisition recommendation is conditional: protect key natural open spaces, "acquiring additional land where feasible" 1.

The general plan explains why, in its own vocabulary. This page has twice cited the council's rezonings out of agricultural zones as evidence South Jordan was not preserving land. The plan's definition of Agricultural Preservation is more careful than we were: "future development is probable," it "shall be primarily residential," and clustering is encouraged "to preserve the agricultural use/open space where possible" 2. Its definition of Open Space is no more reassuring - areas "not required to be maintained," which "may include multi-use playing fields, play structures, pavilions, parking" 2. Neither designation promises land that stays open. What the plan does promise is GROW GOAL 6: investigate where farmland and significant open space can be protected, create a Rural Open Space Conservation Development floating zone, keep identifying priority properties 2. In its implementation chapter, Grow Goal 6 gets one action: revise the landscaping requirements. Regulatory reform, low cost 2.

The money has the same shape. The adopted FY 2026-27 capital budget prints Parks Projects at $1,060,000 alongside transportation, facilities, storm water, water and fleet; there is no land acquisition category among them 3. The two parks projects with a five-year project sheet are a two-acre addition to Jordan Ridge Park at $250,000 and $400,000 to design the Oquirrh Shadows East property, both from Park Impact Fees, both booked at $0 from 2028 through 2031 3. The impact fee analysis adopted with the plan puts a price on what is not being bought: an acre of open space at $85,000 with no improvements, against $350,000 for a developed park acre, on a city-owned inventory of 127.20 open-space acres 4.

The counts do not hold still either. The budget's profile gives 326.4 public park acres and 257 acres of public open space 3. A few pages earlier the Parks division claims maintenance of "over 400 acres of park space which includes 40 parks" 3.

If the city will not buy the land, its development agreements carry the promise, and that is where the record thins out. On Sept. 22 the planning commission took up a conditional use permit for an auto-repair business beside townhomes whose open-space amenity is a dog park. The chair noted that HOA-funded maintenance "did not establish whether the dog park was included as an amenity in the development agreement"; one planner said he did not believe it was, but had not reviewed the agreement; another said the amenity "is shown in an exhibit included in the second amendment to the development agreement." The commission approved the permit 5-0, conditioned on the amenities in that amendment being maintained 5. Two planners, one evening, two answers about what the city had been promised. Public notice does not settle it: on July 21 the council approved a second amendment to the development agreement for the Kunkler Trust property, 5-0, and the city's adoption notice gives the resolution's title and nothing about what changed 6.

Our judgement concerns a decision. On June 2, 2026 the South Jordan City Council adopted the budget that funds its parks and open space 6, and the plan books zero acres of park land to be bought through 2050 and no open-space standard at all 1. That choice has results behind it, but its consequence is that the pace and place of the city's open space now sit in agreements negotiated one project at a time, amended without public account, and unpublished in a form a resident can check. A city that will not buy land can at least keep the receipts.

Three things would change our mind: a public register of every development agreement's open-space obligation - acreage, location, who maintains it, when it vests, and what each amendment changed 56; the Rural Open Space Conservation Development floating zone the general plan asked for in 2020 2; and one acreage figure for the land the city says it holds 3.