The little rural Idaho community of Garden Valley (which loosely bumps up against the little incorporated city of Crouch) is about to become a lot more substantial.

We’ve spent a good deal of time around the Garden Valley area (north of Horseshoe Bend, off Highway 55) over the years. It has always been lightly populated, home to a couple of hundred people or so at Crouch (one of the more charmingly funky communities in the state) and scattered residents along the South Fork of the Payette river. Mostly, the area looks like rural countryside, which is what it is.

That will be changing before long. The Boise County Commission has okayed the development plan called Southfork Landing for development; that is slated to add 605 houses to the immediate area. The people living there will more than double the population of the Garden Valley area, completely changing its character.

There are protests by local Boise Countians, which is why the action occurred today. A session earlier this week turned rancorous as vounty residents declared the commission wasn’t listening to them. The decision meeting was planned for next Tuesday, but was quietly reset for this morning. Commission Chair Roger Jackson said that “If everyone had kept quiet, it would have been done at the Tuesday meeting.”

On the other hand, what difference would it have made?