Senate Bill 84, which amends provisions related to HTRZ, or Housing and Transit reinvestment zones, was passed overwhelming by both houses of Utah’s legislature last week.
The bill will allow developer Dakota Pacific to build a mixed-used development that would include hundreds of housing units in Kimball Junction near the Skullcandy building, without county approval.
Given the strong support for the bill, Governor Spencer Cox could veto it but there are enough votes in the legislature to overturn his veto. And if the governor doesn’t sign the bill, it still becomes effective, just without his signature.
Eric Moxham is a founding volunteer member of the Friends of Responsible Development. The group said the legislature’s action is a move that is corrupt and beyond egregious that seizes Summit County’s land use authority to enrich a single private developer, Dakota Pacific.
Moxham said the group is now looking to the community to step up and let the governor and state leaders know what they think.
“If nothing else, he can use his pulpit as the governor to put major pressure on the leadership of both bodies to re-evaluate this and do the right thing and realize that if you take away local land use authority, it's a slippery slope to hell, which is apparently the direction our state is going, at least at the legislator level,” Moxam said.
While one of the Republican party’s core tenants is decentralized government and local self-determination, Moxham said he doesn't feel that is the case in Republican-dominated Utah.
As to whether Summit County has any legal standing against the state’s action, which county officials said is unprecedented, Councilmember Chris Robinson said it’s too soon to know what the county’s options are.
“The challenge to that, of course, is that this piece of property is, it’s not an untitled property," Robinson said. "It has a valid existing and bona fide development agreement and so this legislation would basically be breaking that development agreement and that, you know, that's somewhat unprecedented. But the legal ramifications of that, if that were to happen, we'll leave for another day.”
Friends of Responsible Development has created a petition at change.org and they’re hoping for more than 1,000 signatures. Moxham wants county leaders to know many in the community stand behind any legal effort to let Summit County determine its own future.
“We want to make sure that the county council knows that the residents of the county, the taxpayers, want the county to defend our community and to fight this and avoid things like this happening going forward," Moxham said.
Friends of Responsible Development will be sending out an update to its 2,500 members this week with a link to the petitionabout how to contact Summit County Council members and Gov. Cox.
