The Summit County Council has appointed Teague Cowley to the Sndyerville Basin Planning Commission.
He replaces Tim Jeffrey who stepped down after one year on the seven-member, volunteer planning board. Cowley will serve the rest of Jeffrey’s three-year term expiring at the end of February 2028.
Cowley is a licensed clinical psychologist who lives in Silver Creek Estates. He told councilmembers in his May 13 interview he’s well aware of the tension between housing and environmental priorities.
“And I often provide this recommendation to a lot of folks, is to sort of determine and … figure out: how do we live in the gray?” Cowley said at the council meeting. “We can't be all growth — and we can't be no growth — but how do we live in the gray?”
He joins the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission at a time of change.
Commissioners are working with county staff to update and revise the Snyderville Basin’s general plan.
And the commission recently voted on development-related applications from the Utah Olympic Park and Junction Commons. The county council approved a new agreement with the UOP and has yet to decide on the outlets’ redevelopment.
It is also anticipating permit applications from the other major project in Kimball Junction, the Dakota Pacific neighborhood approved last year.
The May 13 meeting also included a joint, long-range discussion between the planning commission and county council.
Commissioner Eric Sagerman renewed calls for a way to look at various development proposals in the context of one another, especially when it comes to traffic impacts.
“If you think about them and you look at transportation studies, they're each done individually, and that may work — individually — but when you bring them all together, there's some other dynamic going on,” he said. “And that doesn't even include [Canyons Village].”
Councilmember Roger Armstrong answered that the process of rewriting the general plan can help address big-picture concerns.
Councilmember Canice Harte added that the council is working to schedule a “strategic visioning meeting” after the June 23 primary election to address that topic too.
Councilmembers voted to set the goal of approving 1,500 affordable housing units within a decade at their last strategic meeting in 2025.
Summit County is a financial supporter of KPCW.
