The Summit County Council heard a presentation last week regarding a myriad of bills making their way through the state Legislature that would affect the county, including changes to voting precincts and housing zones.
House Bill 27, sponsored by Rep. James Dunnigan, R-Salt Lake, would allow the county to revise its voting precincts and increase the allowable number of active voters in a precinct from 1,250 to 3,000, according to Deputy County Manager Janna Young.
Summit County Clerk Eve Furse indicated the change would reduce the number of precincts in the county, especially in more rural areas. It would also help staff with efficiency. Young said the county’s legislative task force supports the bill.
Dunnigan is also the sponsor of H.B. 37, which would introduce the concept of a “density overlay” in housing zones to increase affordable housing. Essentially, a density overlay encourages high-density development to address housing demands in areas already designated for residential use.
“The overlay is eight units an acre for deed-restricted affordable housing in all residential zones in the state,” explained Chief Civil Deputy Attorney Dave Thomas.
The legislative committee appears to recommend limiting units to 60% of the area median income, which is $91,800 annually for a family of four, rather than the standard 80%, or $122,400 a year, Thomas added.
“But the AMI that they want to use is not specific to a county or a city, but rather to a metropolitan area,” he said.
Right now, the metropolitan area Summit County would be attached to includes Wasatch and Utah counties.
“It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out if it goes along, whether that AMI target will stay or whether it will move back to be counties, and municipalities-centric,” Thomas said. “But I think this is something that the Legislature has indicated they are moving toward.”
Dunnigan is also the sponsor of H.B. 55, which Young said the task force supports. It would allow county officials to maintain office space and conduct meetings in locations other than the county seat.
The county’s legislative task force is also tracking H.B. 48. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Casey Snider and would mandate counties to evaluate high-risk wildland-urban interface properties annually and impose fees for mitigation.
“The representative did attend one of our steering committees and clarified some things in this bill. I think they’ve already designated which properties those are. There’s something like 700 of them in really high-risk areas,” Young said. “We’re still trying to learn the definition of that because certainly you could argue our entire county falls within the wildland-urban interface. We don’t really understand completely the impact of this on us, but it might be helpful in terms of requiring a fee that could then go to fire mitigation, as well as requiring some building codes around this.”
Young said the task force will continue to monitor the bill, but it would likely increase administrative duties for the county if it were passed because of the need to evaluate properties, manage fees and enforce building codes.
“I do believe a portion of the fee that we would generate from our residents would go to the state, so that’s another interesting side of this,” Young added.
Snider, a Republican serving Cache County, is no stranger to bill proposals affecting the Wasatch Back. He folded language into S.B. 84 during 2023’s General Session that amended provisions related to Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zones in a move targeting the County Courthouse. It ultimately led to the County Council’s support of a deal with Dakota Pacific Real Estate in a 4-1 vote late last year, with many councilors citing state pressure as the reason for their approval.
H.B. 58, sponsored by Republican Rep. Thomas Peterson, who represents Box Elder and Cache counties, would expand data collection on building inspectors and publish the data annually. However, Young mentioned concerns with the bill because it repeals licensing requirements.
“Obviously, they’re trying to do that to recruit more individuals into the field, but sometimes the licensing is helpful because you know you’ve gone through the tests, you’re familiar with the codes. There is some element of accountability that comes along with that,” she explained. “I don’t know exactly how people feel about it. I need to ask, but obviously, the enhanced reporting and regulatory oversight of that would be a burden on the county.”
Summit County Council Vice Chair Canice Harte expressed interest in H.B. 176 and asked Young if she knew the history behind it, saying he didn’t understand the motivation behind it.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Walt Brooks, changes population requirements for county classifications. Summit County, which is currently considered a third-class county, would be bumped to fourth class.
Young said the rationale behind the proposal is the result of another bill passed last year.
“One of our counties was currently a third-class or second-class county that then would be moving up to first class or second class and would be subject to those homeless shelter provisions that were enacted last session,” she explained. “They didn’t feel like they had the resources to be able to do that and maybe felt like they didn’t have a homeless problem. From what I understand, that county requested this change so that they could avoid having to comply with that requirement. Of course, there are impacts now to other counties.”
There would be some benefits for Summit County such as additional road funding. However, Young said there were concerns about certain ordinances and provisions grandfathered into the county’s codes that are specifically tied to the third-class county status, including inclusionary housing.
“We would likely lose that. … We’re not necessarily aware of all of the impacts,” she said, adding the county is already working with the Utah Association of Counties to try to retain its classification.
Harte asked for a detailed analysis of the pros and cons for both classification scenarios, saying he wanted to know more about the negative effects of becoming a fourth-class county before the County Council takes a position on the bill.
“I would just hate to communicate something before we actually have that defined,” he said.
Thomas and Young said it would be possible to do an analysis, but it would take a “huge level of effort” because of how many ordinances include the third-class county language.
“When they brought it up, all the impacted counties didn’t know about it, and that was the first conversation was, ‘Do you know about this bill? How do you feel about it?’ And then they asked us to work with our attorneys to do a deep-dive to understand impacts,” Young said. “Everyone except us and Uinta County aren’t really impacted. In fact, some of them will benefit because they’ll probably get some more funding. Moving from third class to fourth class is a little more substantial for us.”
Thomas said he would look into the issue and put together an analysis, including financial impacts to the county, of the major changes that would occur if Summit County were to change classifications.
“Our initial reaction was like yours, Canice, where it was like, ‘Oh, actually this might be a really good thing for us’ because rural counties get a lot of carve outs and a lot of benefits and they don’t have to do a lot of requirements that the other counties do and they get more money,” Young said. “But when we started diving into it, it just looked a lot more complicated in terms of what we might be losing than what we’d be gaining.”
Young said she doesn’t think Summit County should be against the bill as of now, but she said the county would need to work with the sponsor to make sure the changes wouldn’t detrimentally affect the County Courthouse.
“If this is helping other counties, we don’t necessarily want to oppose it, but we would like to change it so that we don’t lose all the things that we fought for years to have,” Young said.
The County Council did not take an official position on any of the proposed bills last week. Young will continue to present weekly updates on the Legislature throughout the General Session.