The Summit County Council recently workshopped bylaws for the county’s new housing authority, including the number of commissioners to lead it, how the body will report to the council, and whether commissioners should have term limits.
The County Council in December created the housing authority after a year of discussion, including a brief exploration of a joint housing authority with Park City Municipal that stalled.
Economic Development and Housing Director Jeff Jones spearheaded the housing authority’s development. He described it as a method of planning, financing, constructing, repairing and managing housing projects or programs “to provide dwelling accommodations at rental prices or purchase prices within the means of families of medium and low income.” The housing authority also aims to provide affordable housing projects or programs for employees working within Summit County.
Jones presented a draft of bylaws to the County Council, including two different proposals regarding the number of sitting commissioners who would oversee the housing authority.
The first proposal suggested a five-person commission of one elected county councilor and one community member residing in deed-restricted affordable housing. The other three members would be residents within the jurisdictional boundaries of the county’s three school districts — one for Park City School District, one for North Summit and one for South Summit.
The second proposal was for a seven-person commission. The seven-person commission would include the same five positions as the first proposal with the recommendation that the two remaining members come from either the “small business community” or “development community.”
In addition to the commission, the County Courthouse is working to hire an executive director for the housing authority who would “act as chief operating officer” and “manage the ongoing operations of the authority, subject to the supervision of the commission,” according to the draft of the bylaws. The position would report directly to Jones.
“This is an independent body with its independent group of commissioners that are appointed by this body (the council),” Jones explained. “Remember, when we first created the authority, it was to grow it organically, so to start off really, really small, and grow this in an organic fashion with a limited budget.”
When the County Council voted to establish the housing authority late last year, councilors agreed on a $250,000 budget with $81,500 earmarked for start-up costs. The rest of the funds are unallocated, and Jones said he hopes whoever the appointed commissioners are will reallocate those funds as they go through a strategic planning process.
“The other part of this that I see as the next step would be to create an interlocal agreement between the authority and the county for support services,” Jones said. “That would also call out the budget, how that’s going to be managed by the acting executive director and commission and how that will interface with the County Council.”
Part of the interlocal agreement could include a requirement for the housing authority to report to the County Council every few months. Jones suggested it would be an efficient method of keeping officials updated on the housing authority’s work and allow the county councilors to provide more oversight and feedback after County Councilor Chris Robinson expressed concerns about the council’s lack of involvement.
“The challenge we were facing is when you put politicians in charge of housing, it fundamentally hampers the process,” rebutted County Council Vice Chair Canice Harte, who previously sat on the committee exploring the creation of a housing authority. “I can think of a recent RFP (request for proposals), not from the county but from a municipality … they had respondents to the RFP that exceeded their expectations, but they had new councilors that said ‘no’ to it where a prior council would have said ‘yes’ to it. It’s not to say that one council’s right or wrong. The pure difference was an election. I think that’s one of the things we have to contemplate as we think about how much role and where we plug ourselves in.”
Jones clarified the County Council would have financial oversight of the housing authority through the budgeting process, just like other offices or organizations receiving funding from the county.
“If the council wants to augment [the bylaws] or put one more person from the council on the housing authority, that’s certainly acceptable, too,” he added. “From my perspective, I was just trying to set it up to where we had a good geographic distribution of participants.”
County Council Chair Tonja Hanson pointed out the bylaws don’t include term limits for housing authority commissioners. She compared the authority to the county’s two planning commissions, which only allow someone to serve three terms.
“I don’t know why we would do something different on this than [what] we’re already doing,” Hanson said. “Is there a reason? Do you need more consistency on a board like this? I don’t know.”
Jones said there was no specific reason that the bylaws didn’t include term limits.
“We can certainly add that limitation,” he said.
Robinson agreed with Hanson regarding term limits. He also said he was concerned about the housing authority commission being able to amend its own bylaws.
“Until this gets more established and mature, I would think we would want to retain the ability to amend the bylaws,” Robinson explained. “If we want to just get started, let’s still keep a little tension on the reins by the council.”
The county councilors agreed on having a seven-member commission with the hope of including as many perspectives on affordable housing as possible. As the housing authority works to establish itself, however, Robinson and Hanson suggested having two county councilors instead of one.
Jones plans to take the council’s additional feedback, including term limits and two councilors on the commission, and to draft a resolution for the County Council to adopt in the next few months. Officials did not take any action on the bylaws during the Wednesday meeting.