Aug. 14, Dakota Pacific Real Estate withdrew its application asking the Summit County Council to approve a 725-unit neighborhood and public-private partnership at Kimball Junction.
The Salt Lake City developer is poised to build it anyway, since a new state law required the county to approve it through a separate process. That approval happened in July, so the firm no longer needs the permission it got from the council last December.
Dakota Pacific never signed that agreement, and the county ordinance approving the Kimball Junction project was challenged by thousands of residents who signed a referendum petition.
When the county clerk invalidated about half the signatures, keeping the ordinance off the November ballot, the residents took her to court.
A hearing had been set for Aug. 19 in 3rd District Court, but a judge has reset it for next week. Aug. 20, the council discussed repealing the December 2024 ordinance the referendum originally sought to repeal.
“If we leave the ordinance in place with the application withdrawn, it's kind of an orphaned ordinance,” Councilmember Roger Armstrong said.
But Armstrong shared his colleagues’ concerns about optics and whether repealing the ordinance would influence the court case over the referendum petition signatures.
One of County Clerk Eve Furse’s arguments defending her decision to reject some of the petition signatures is that the issue is moot, or irrelevant, because the new state law supersedes the county’s.
Summit County Deputy Civil Attorney Dave Thomas said repealing the ordinance might help the clerk’s case since the thing the referendum is about wouldn’t even exist anymore.
That gave Armstrong pause because he said there’s a perception that the county has tried to thwart the citizen referendum. Councilmember Chris Robinson agreed a repeal should wait until after the hearing on Aug. 26.
Courts might decline to rule on issues that are moot or irrelevant for ethical and practical reasons, according to the county's attorneys. Robinson and Armstrong didn’t want to intentionally moot the dispute over whether the clerk’s reasoning was correct.
“Because of the controversy surrounding the signature gathering, I'd like to give as much opportunity for the court to weigh in on that,” Robinson said.
Furse denied 30 of the referendum’s 77 signature packets primarily because some or all of the 30 were unbound and rebound before being submitted to her office. She’s claimed the law is black-and-white on the issue while the referendum supporters maintain she’s misinterpreting the law.
Even if the court rules on who interpreted the law correctly, Robinson said it might not matter if state lawmakers change the law next year. They indicated they would at an interim session hearing last month after hearing complaints from the Summit County residents who organized the referendum.
“What I'm hearing is that there is an intention, at least by a portion of the council, to try to let this have its day in court, just to get some sort of ruling or clarification on the bindings, and so that it's clear going forward,” Council Vice Chair Canice Harte said. “And then there's sort of the pragmatic side of stopping spending money and repealing the ordinance because the application’s already been withdrawn. So we're kind of balancing these two things.”
Speaking to legislators at the state Capitol last month, Summit County Republican Party data analyst Jimmy May called it “Orwellian” how taxpayers are having to pay the clerk’s attorneys, who are arguing against the taxpayers’ referendum.
“We're the defendant, not the plaintiff, defending a court action,” County Attorney Margaret Olson said Aug. 20. “We're not prosecuting a court action. So it's ultimately not our decision whether or not we spend taxpayer money on legal fees, because we are the ones being sued.”
There was some concern about waiting too long to repeal, having to print ballots with the referendum on them and then having to reprint them to remove it, which would also cost more money. But it didn’t carry the day.
The council ultimately voted 4-1 not to repeal the original Dakota Pacific ordinance.
The county says no residents have appealed Dakota Pacific’s second approval, which can’t be challenged by a referendum.
Proponents of the referendum have advocated for a constitutional challenge to the state law that allowed Dakota Pacific's reapproval.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW. For a full list, click here.
