In eastern Summit County, zoning laws allow similar buildings and activities on farms and in subdivisions.
But the Eastern Summit County Planning Commission is interested in changing that.
“Our zoning, again, is very simple. It's agriculture, and it's very large lot residential,” Commissioner Rich Sonntag recently told the Summit County Council. “The only way to create a situation where we don't have obnoxious uses trying to come into that is to take a hard, hard look at our table of uses.”
That table of uses is like a builder’s bible: it says what’s allowed, what needs a permit and what’s prohibited.
“Everything that comes across our desk—dog kennels, contractors’ yards, quarries—all these things are allowed in every zone on the east side because the table of uses is unduly broad and unrestrictive,” Sonntag said at the Aug. 28 joint meeting.
That’s in contrast to the Snyderville Basin, where Summit County Councilmember and former planning commissioner Canice Harte said they updated the use table every two years.
“Often you would get these applications that you were forced to accept—that you didn't want to—but it was on the allowed uses,” he said. “We took the approach of really just being brutal about stripping out anything that was even questionable.”
Harte acknowledged that Basin planning commissioners occasionally overcorrected.
But on the east side, changes are neither imminent nor inevitable. That’s partly because, as Commissioner Clinton Benson noted, the use table alone doesn’t have teeth.
“Without code enforcement,” Benson said, “we run into a big problem.”
Snyderville Basin planning commissioners have echoed Benson’s sentiments calling for better enforcement.
Planning commissioners aren’t in charge of that. Summit County employs two officers to ensure its 43,000 residents are following code.
Community Development Director Peter Barnes has said they’re effective but busy. The officers don’t patrol, so the county only knows about violations if neighbors file a complaint.
Councilmember Roger Armstrong said on “Local News Hour” last month the county could use more help in the code enforcement department.
