It’s now the case that the Town of Hideout has approved an adverse annexation into Summit County—and has done it within the legal window.
Summit County Manager Tom Fisher says that in the next few days, the county’s leadership will be discussing what to do next.
Speaking to KPCW on Tuesday, Fisher said they still have a pending lawsuit in Fourth District Court—though the county wasn’t able to obtain an Injunction through that suit, to stop last week’s annexation.
He took issue with some of the claims made from Hideout town officials, and Nate Brockbank, who plans to develop on the 350 acres near Richardson Flat annexed into the town.
He said Summit County has been working hard to preserve land-use control in its own jurisdiction.
Fisher said the County understands that Hideout has its needs and interests.
“I do understand they have interests. We all have interests in this. However, it is our belief that working within, with the partners, or with the regional partners in the area to first identify your issues with the local governments instead of taking a hostile action, although in accordance with the current law—still questionable about how that was brought about—it’s still our belief that we probably could have come up with better solutions then, in this case, a developer-led solution.”
Fisher disagreed with claims that they ignored Hideout’s requests to sit down and talk about their issues.
“First of all, we were never approached with the needs of Hideout, from Hideout, prior to the annexation being forwarded. We came to the table as part of negotiating around trying to do something different and offer something different. The town of Hideout chose to go a different way.”
During last week’s annexation meeting, Hideout Council Member Chris Baier said she suspected that Summit County and Park City opposed the annexation and subsequent development because they want to keep Richardson Flat open as a toxic-waste repository.
Fisher, however, said the EPA has designated the site for that purpose, the federal agency will keep it open, and the annexation won’t change that.
In addition, Brockbank has said the county was opposed because it has its own plans for a rival major development on the Gilmor property it owns along the Highway 40 frontage road.
Fisher called that a ridiculous claim.
“I certainly understand that Mr. Brockbank wants to do that, to try and paint a different picture. But, Leslie, you know as well as I do, in this county, there is not a development that gets snuck through, or anything of any size that does not receive the scrutiny of the public. We do own developable property in the area that Mr. Brockbank is talking about, not in competition with anything close to Hideout. If in fact the county decided to do any type of development, it would go through extensive public scrutiny.”
He added that the Gilmor property is zoned Rural Residential, and a rezone, alone, would receive a lot of scrutiny.
The county has also said that Brockbank’s advocates surreptitiously amended HB 359, in the waning days of last spring’s legislative session. The resulting bill allowed Hideout to annex into Summit County without the county’s permission.
We asked how the county’s paid lobbyist let that by on his watch. Fisher said that normally, there are a number of lobbyists, and organizations, watching land-use issues.
“What really happened is that the developer in this case hired his own lobbyist that was also involved with an attorney, and also an attorney that are strong members of the Property Rights Coalition, that works in what’s called the Land Use Task Force, which is a organization that the League of Cities and Towns organizes, to help negotiate with the legislature on land-use law changes in each session.”
He said there is a protocol for bills to be vetted before they’re presented to the legislature by the groups involved with land use.
“The Utah League of Cities and Towns, the Utah Association of Counties and of course the Property Rights Coalition and other interests within the Legislature. And the lobbyist and the attorney hired by the developer in this case went around that process. That’s one of the reasons why the Legislature was willing to repeal the law in the first place, cause it was brought forth as a consensus bill of that group, the Land Use Task Force, and it wasn’t. When it was brought in front of them, it was misrepresented.”
County Manager Tom Fisher. He said he doesn’t know why the legislators didn’t repeal the bill immediately, rather than allowing a 60-day legal window, which ended on Tuesday October 20th.
