Summit County Clerk Eve Furse will be posting the signatures her office rejected earlier this year while a court case over the Dakota Pacific Real Estate development referendum plays out.
That way the referendum can happen in November if Judge Richard Mrazik finds there are enough signatures.
Furse reached the agreement July 11 with five petitioners, Angela Moschetta, Reed Galen, Ruby Diaz, Dana Williams and Brendan Weinstein, who appealed the signature rejection July 3.
“Today's stipulated order is a meaningful step forward for voter rights and for our Summit County community,” Moschetta said. “While Judge Mrazik must still rule on the validity of the rejected packets, we are definitely relieved Clerk Furse has agreed to count signatures in the meantime. This ensures we don't lose critical time in the process and preserves our chance to make the November ballot.”
About 4,500 signatures are needed to put the development agreement Summit County councilmembers approved in December 2024 on the November 2025 ballot.
The original referendum sponsors say they collected more than 6,000 signatures from residents to put the controversial Dakota Pacific project to a countywide vote. The clerk’s office verified 3,214.
Furse previously said in a statement that “the clerk's office has followed state statute as interpreted by our attorneys and the Lieutenant Governor's Office.”
“My office is ready to follow whatever determination is made,” she said.
Mrazik has ordered state elections officials to post the previously rejected signatures with a message that reads, in part: “These signatures are being provisionally posted pursuant to a Stipulated Court Order pending resolution of that case.”
That’s because Utah law requires verified signatures to be posted publicly for 45 days before a referendum is placed on the ballot.
Furse agreed to tally the signatures in the 30 signature packets “provisionally” by July 14; the Utah Lt. Governor’s office would post them online by July 15.
They won’t count toward the total needed to put the referendum on the ballot until the judge makes a ruling.
“The right to referendum — it's fundamental in any functioning democracy. It's how voters hold their government accountable,” Moschetta said. “We are grateful this process can now move forward, and we remain committed to defending that right every step of the way.”
Earlier this year, Furse’s office received 77 packets and said 30 were invalid after seeing they were three-hole punched then subsequently spiral bound. The clerk argued photos showed some three-hole punched pages were separated from their packet and said that’s not allowed.
In their appeal, the petitioners deny any pages in the rejected packets “were separated or circulated apart from” those packets. They also argue Furse misinterpreted state law.
Both sides have cited Utah Supreme Court cases they say back up their interpretations of the law, but Furse hasn’t responded to the appeal in court yet. As of July 11, petitioners had raised around $6,000 in donations to support their legal case.
The development at the center of the controversy is a neighborhood and mixed-use public-private partnership between Summit County and Dakota Pacific Real Estate in Kimball Junction. A primary resident concern has been traffic from the project which would include just shy of 900 total residences.
Separate from the referendum effort, Dakota Pacific applied for a new but largely similar agreement through the Summit County planning department under a 2025 state law written to greenlight the project.
County officials believe such an agreement would make a referendum on the December agreement irrelevant.
But the new agreement could still be appealed to the county council and then to 3rd District Court if the county manager approves it. A decision could come during a public hearing tentatively set for July 28.
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