Summit County Development Director Pat Putt says the county is going to study the plans announced by the Wasatch County town of Hideout to annex land that reaches into Summit County near Quinn’s Junction and Park City.
That follows the Hideout Town Council meeting last week, which Putt says caught the county almost entirely off guard.
The Hideout Town Council on July 9 voted for a resolution of intent to annex and authorized mayor Phil Rubin to work out a pre-annexation agreement with developer Nate Brockbank, although representatives for Park City and Summit and Wasatch counties asked them to defer action.
Putt said that this is just the first step in the process for the town but that nobody knew it was coming. He only found out about Hideout’s meeting when he was looking through some public notices the night before.
“Well, it certainly means that hundreds of acres of land basically northwest of the Wasatch County line, and west of existing town-of-Hideout boundaries would be brought into the city,” Putt said. “I mean, I haven’t even had a chance to total up the acreage. But it’s a significant amount of acreage. The only parcels that appear not to be included in that quadrant are the lands that are owned by Park City, we refer to as the Clark Ranch, and then the area of the mine soils remediation cell, what we call Operating Unit No. 1.”
Earlier in the year, Brockbank and partner Josh Romney, who is the son of U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, had applied to change the Snyderville Basin land-use map near Quinn’s Junction and Richardson Flat. They wanted to change the zoning from its designation as open space and very low density to mixed-use.
“The original proposal came in, and it included the ground that United Park City Mines has around Richardson Flat,” Putt said.. “That was since taken out of the application because I believe they did not get the appropriate consent from the appropriate authority. So they amended that application to take that out. And it was roughly 340 acres. It was a piece of property owned by the JSSD and then the Mayflower Stichting.”
JSSD is the Jordanelle Special Service District.
Putt said the Brockbank and Romney proposal was set to go before Snyderville Planning meeting this week. Then, in late June, Putt said, Brockbank asked to withdraw the application.
Last Thursday, Rubin also said Hideout’s action was made possible by a bill just passed in the Utah Legislature’s special session allowing cities to annex into adjoining counties. Putt said the county will also investigate how that happened.
“There were statements made last night that this pre-annexation resolution met all the necessary standards,” Putt said. “We’re simply going to go fact-check that.”
Putt said this is a regional issue, and Summit County will work with both Park City and Wasatch County.
‘The best solutions aren’t made in isolation. They’re not made by surprises. And I think we are going to step back, we’re going to take a deep breath. We’re going to be objective and professional, and again, open and transparent with how we communicate. We’re not going to hide anything and we’re going to look into this.”
