Summit County officials advocated for lawmakers to protect local government control at the start of the Utah legislative session in January, and with its conclusion, some of the biggest bills to emerge appear to do the opposite.
When the session began on Jan. 18, the county’s legislative team closely monitored bills tied to the state’s budget, sustainability practices, public health, land use and local control. Various legislation passed during that time will have some local effect, but local officials say three bills passed toward the end of the session, which wrapped up on March 4, have the greatest impact on Summit County.
The legislation — H.B. 303, H.B. 462 and S.B. 140 — is related to land use and affordable housing and will create quite a bit of work for county staffers, Deputy County Manager Janna Young told the Summit County Council on Wednesday.
H.B. 303 is a major land-use bill that creates provisions on municipal and county land-use development that impacts annexation, subdivision improvements and boundary line adjustments. Young said lawmakers folded another bill into it, which added new amendments.
One provision attempted to change the definition of land-use decisions and removed statutory language that county staffers hoped to retain. The language was a key point in litigation with the town of Hideout and ensured there was a heightened standard of review for the process. The amendment was eventually adopted into the bill for counties, although the land use decision definition has been changed for cities.
The bill also prohibits inclusionary zoning — which requires new developments to build a certain number of affordable housing units available to people earning less than 80% of the area’s median income — unless a municipality has implemented a resort community tax and had an ordinance for inclusionary zoning in place by Jan. 1. Young said Summit County pushed for an amendment that asked for certain counties to be grandfathered in, which allows the existing ordinance in the Snyderville Basin to stand.
However, in areas that don’t already have inclusionary zoning, such as the East Side where the population is anticipated to grow in the future, it is prohibited.
There is a belief among some experts in the state that inclusionary zoning and rent control hinder affordable housing because they make market-rate housing more expensive, and the proposed solution is to create more housing stock to bring the demand down, according to Young.
Another one of the bills, H.B. 462, builds upon moderate-income housing legislation that was passed last session. It requires the county to develop and adopt a new plan by Oct. 1 but contains a late provision that requires Summit County to include a Housing and Transit Reinvestment Zone, or HTRZ, at Kimball Junction in its new moderate-income housing plan.
“The way the definitions are, it really applies very specifically to Summit County,” Young said. “Then also, targeted toward a specific area of Summit County where we have to put these zones.”
Young said the county was intrigued by the idea of HTRZs when they were introduced last session but staffers were still trying to learn about the concept to see where it would be a good fit. The concern with H.B. 462 is that it now requires the county to establish the HTRZ or miss out on state money to fund crucial transportation projects.
The bill also limits the ability of voters to hold a referendum on the HTRZ and its zoning by requiring double the signatures to get a referendum on the ballot and preventing a referendum if the County Council passes it with a 2/3 vote.
“That’s the one part of that bill that may be unconstitutional,” said David Thomas, the county’s chief civil deputy.
The bill is also tied to S.B. 140, which amends and clarifies HTRZ legislation.
New provisions require counties with a transit hub to require 51% of the developable land inside the HTRZ to have residential uses, with 10% of those units being affordable. The HTRZ must also be within 1/3 mile of the transit hub and have a density of 50 units per acre for an 80% tax increment over 25 years. An amendment to the legislation allows the density to be reduced to 39 and up to 49 units with only 60% of the tax increment collected. The proposal must also evaluate parking impacts.
Since the county already has an existing development agreement at the Tech Center site in Kimball Junction, developers like the current landowner, Dakota Pacific Real Estate, would also have to agree to the terms of the HTRZ, according to Young.
Councilor Glenn Wright condemned H.B. 462 and accused the developer of using its influence with lawmakers to push the legislation.
“It was specifically targeted at us by one of our applicants, Dakota Pacific, and they have lost my vote on their particular project,” he said. “If they have the ability to change this in the Legislature they have the ability to change it back. And I will not participate in any vote that comes up on that project until they do so.”
Moving forward, county staff anticipate challenges in complying with the legislation as it requires an immense amount of future planning. Young anticipates the County Council will continue discussing the bills in the coming weeks as they will delay progress on the county work plan released earlier this year.
She also discussed other legislation that passed this session with more positive impacts on the county, such as a bill that will give $15 million for the expansion of the Mobile Crisis Outreach Teams and two rural receiving centers as well as a grant program that provides behavioral health resources to first responders and their spouses, a bill that secures funding for the Watershed Restoration Initiative and a bill that helps rural areas attract film and TV productions.