The Summit County Districting Commission will start the process of dividing the county into five distinct geographical voting districts next week, an endeavor that may take until mid-September to complete.
The state Legislature this session changed how Summit County’s governing body will be elected in what county leaders called an 11th-hour passage of House Bill 356. The new law requires Summit County to implement districts for county council seats instead of having five at-large councilors.
H.B. 356 additionally mandated the creation of a districting commission by June 1. The commission consists of the municipal mayors within the county — Park City, Henefer, Coalville, Oakley, Kamas, Francis and Hideout, which is included because part of the town’s land crosses into Summit County — and one representative from unincorporated Summit County appointed by the County Council.
The County Council last month decided to name former Summit County Councilor Malena Stevens as its lone representative on the commission. She will also act as the commission’s chair throughout the districting process before the Oct. 1 deadline.
Stevens, a Pinebrook resident, served as chair of the County Council in 2024 and represented Seat C for four years. She has a long history of public service and civic involvement in the Summit County area, including two terms on the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission and a career with the Park City Police Department as a victim advocate years before she decided to run for office.
County Clerk Eve Furse also sits on the districting commission as a non-voting member.
Each district in Summit County needs to have roughly the same population with only a 10% deviation based on numbers from the most recent census, and the districting commission is tasked with ensuring the population requirements are compliant with state law.
Members are also responsible for determining where boundaries should be drawn.
The districting commission meetings will be public, but Stevens on Wednesday told the County Council there will be no opportunities to comment at this point in the process. Instead, a public hearing will be scheduled, likely in October, after the districting commission presents its finalized proposal to the County Council on or before the deadline.
The County Courthouse will then need to schedule a public hearing within 30 days of the presentation.
However, Summit County Chief Civil Deputy Dave Thomas in April called the hearing “legally [a] sham” because the County Council will be responsible for approving the boundary map after the public hearing despite not having the power to change H.B. 356 or the districting process.
Furthermore, the language of H.B. 356 does not outline whether the County Council has the ability to make suggestions to the districting commission for potential revisions before a final vote. It only states the County Council “shall approve the district map if the map complies with the requirements described.”
The tentative meeting schedule for the districting commission is from 6 to 8 p.m. on: June 16 and 30; July 7, 17 and 30; Aug. 4, 18 and 28; and Sept. 15.
However, Stevens said some of the meetings scheduled later this summer and in early fall may be canceled if the commission comes to a consensus before Oct. 1.
She additionally confirmed the meetings will be posted on the Summit County website, and there will be an option to join the discussion via Zoom for both commissioners and members of the public. Stevens said she is still working with the County Courthouse to determine an in-person anchor location for each meeting, but those details will be announced as soon as they are available.
The legislation has generally been a hot topic for Summit County residents this year. The Summit County Republican Party has characterized the bill as ensuring better representation for the East Side, which tends to lean more conservative than Park City and the Snyderville Basin. All elected positions in Summit County are held by Democrats, and a Republican hasn’t been elected to a County Council seat since 2016.
The Summit County Democratic Party, meanwhile, called the new law the GOP’s way to deal with “being upset” about recent elections and expressed concerns about fewer points of contact for constituents if councilors are tied to specific geographic areas.
Democratic Party Chair Rory Swensen, who is also running for mayor of Coalville, voiced anxieties about potential gerrymandering given the political makeup of the districting commission and a letter four East Side mayors sent to Gov. Spencer Cox urging him to endorse a special-called election this November.
Mayors Mark Marsh of Coalville, Kay Richins of Henefer, Jeremie Forman of Francis and Matt McCormick of Kamas in April sent a letter to Cox and state Legislature leadership expressing their “strong support” for the bill and campaigning for lawmakers to reintroduce the language mandating a special election. They claimed it would be a necessary step to ensure “fair and equal representation” for Summit County residents.
Mayoral positions are non-partisan in Summit County, but all four of the mayors who signed the letter are registered Republicans. Democratic Mayors Zane Woolstenhulme of Oakley and Park City’s Nann Worel were not included in the letter’s circulation.
The original version of the bill would have required all councilors to end their terms early and forced a special election — with all the seats tied to the new geographical districts — this year. That language was later removed from the final version of the bill, and state legislators determined current county councilors will be assigned to the new districts by lot until the next scheduled election in 2026.
Any seats not on the ballot next year, though, would remain attached to whichever county councilor was assigned the district by lot, which could potentially prevent sitting councilors from running for re-election.
For example, County Councilor Canice Harte’s seat is scheduled to appear on the 2026 ballot, but if a different councilor is assigned to the district he lives in by lot this year, Harte would be unable to run for re-election because the seat tied to his district is already occupied.
The three councilors elected in 2024 — Tanja Hanson, Roger Armstrong and Megan McKenna — would retain their seats, and their assigned districts, until the end of their terms.
Deputy County Manager Janna Young said there is still a chance to convince lawmakers to revise the bill, but she doesn’t expect the legislation to pop up in any interim discussions until August. Young has criticized the Legislature’s approach to the bill, both in terms of its last-minute passage and its mandated changes to local governance, which she said she disagrees with philosophically.