The Summit County Districting Commission is making quick work of finding appropriately-sized voter districts.
The panel consists of all the mayors — including Hideout’s — former Councilmember Malena Stevens representing the unincorporated county and Summit County Clerk Eve Furse.
Following the directives in a controversial new law written specifically with Summit County in mind, House Bill 356, they met June 16 to begin drawing voter districts from which residents will elect future Summit County councilmembers. Currently, the five-person council is all at-large.
Click here to watch the Summit County Districting Commission's inaugural June 16 meeting.
County attorneys say Utah law generally says to keep “communities of interest” together as one voting bloc.
“I thought it would be useful … to start with school district boundaries, just as some natural communities of interest,” Stevens, whom the county council appointed chair, said to start.
The law also says there can’t be more than a 10% difference between the populations of the largest and smallest of the five voting districts. It turns out the South Summit School District is a good size for that requirement, with a population of 8,981. That’s little more than a fifth of Summit County’s 42,000 total population.
The commission members took South Summit as a good upper limit and looked next at the North Summit School District, with a population of just over 6,063. North and South Summit meet at the southern point of Rockport Reservoir.
Utah law prohibits dividing existing voter precincts in half, so they worked south and west until North Summit’s voter district approached South Summit’s population.
Furse read out the 2020 U.S. Census population estimates as the commission went precinct by precinct.
The North Summit boundary already included Tollgate Canyon; now it also includes Silver Creek Estates and Glenwild, bring the population up to 8,520.
Furse estimates Park City proper’s population is 8,365. That puts it within 10% of South Summit School District from the start.
Hideout’s 300-or-so acres it annexed in Summit County is its own voter precinct, even though it currently has no residents. It was included in the Park City district because Park City surrounds it and voting districts have to be contiguous.
That left dividing the rest of the Snyderville Basin into two voter districts.
The commission started in the northwest, with the voter precinct covering the 910 Cattle Ranch and western Jeremy Ranch. Adding in precincts for the rest of Jeremy Ranch, all of Summit Park and all of Pinebrook, the population is about 8,790.
The rest of the Basin, including Kimball Junction, Highland Estates, Silver Springs and Canyons Village, adds up to 8,625.
Furse mentioned her Park City population estimate may be more recent than the 2020 Census, so she’ll bring final numbers and a preliminary map of the proposed council districts and precincts to the next districting commission meeting July 17.
Stevens and the mayors agreed a vote to recommend the boundaries to the Summit County Council could come as early as their second meeting. They also agreed there shouldn’t be a vote if one member cannot attend.
The county council must adopt districts by Oct. 1 of this year. They won’t need to be revised until the next census in 2030, when all voter boundaries get adjusted anyway.
