North Summit residents attempting to place the local school board’s multimillion dollar lease revenue bond on the 2026 ballot are confident they met their signature gathering goal in time.
State law allows constituents to contest the issuance of a bond if they are able to submit a petition with signatures from at least 20% of the active voter base to the Summit County Clerk’s Office within 30 days of the bond’s passing. If the signature threshold is met, the bond is then placed on the ballot for voters to decide, meaning North Summit residents could potentially vote on — and reject — the bond measure for a third year in a row.
With the North Summit petition specifically, community members said they were attempting to gather 771 signatures by Friday.
“It went exceptionally well,” said Walter Brock, one of the residents spearheading the petition. “We had 1,090 unique signatures, which I believe is more than the number of ‘no’ votes from the last general election, which is pretty amazing.”
Brock said he was especially pleased with the petition efforts, too, because of the wider conversation the process has sparked in the North Summit community.
“I think that’s going to be the biggest win,” he said. “We’re seeing lots of neighbors having good communication, engaging in dialogue and seeing if we can find common ground and opportunities to improve the plan.”
Brock and other petition supporters handed their packets to the local building authority on Saturday, as outlined by state law. The building authority, which was created by the North Summit Board of Education last year to issue lease revenue bonds, then turned the packets into the Summit County Clerk’s Office on Monday.
The Clerk’s Office will have 21 days to verify the included signatures, which will be publicly posted on the Utah Lieutenant Governor’s Office’s website. The petition will then be sent back to the building authority and North Summit Business Administrator Marci Sargent.
Summit County Clerk Eve Furse said the law allowing petitions to contest bond issuances was only created within the last two years, which means there’s a bit of a learning curve for both the school district and the clerk. Sargent on Tuesday said she expects the process to be similar to how the board certifies election results, but more information will be available closer to the 21-day deadline for the Clerk’s Office’s verification results.
Brock said the learning curve was difficult for residents, too.
“If there’s anybody else interested in doing a petition or who wants a better understanding before they jump in, definitely reach out,” he said. “Sadly, you don’t know anything about a petition until you want to do it, and then it’s like drinking from a fire hose, so I think some collaboration among citizens who are anxious to support each other in defending their constitutional rights would be great.”
Brock previously said the goal of the petition wasn’t necessarily to have voters shoot down the bond measure for a third time. Instead, he said he wanted to delay the issuance of the funds to give the school board and North Summit residents time to explore alternatives, including obtaining bids and further analysis from other third-party companies.
He said he wasn’t staunchly against the idea of a new school, but he viewed the North Summit community as wary of the board’s insistence that the only solution is an entirely new building with state-of-the-art facilities. He said residents have asked questions about construction costs and requested documents regarding reports that the current North Summit High School building is unsafe, but they’ve been left feeling ignored.
North Summit School Board President Vern Williams said in late December that the board isn’t legally allowed to comment on the petition, but he pointed to previous discussions on school safety and the rising cost of construction materials.
“Over the past four or five years, we have collected figures on the needed upgrades to make the building safe for our students and make necessary repairs that will be required by the state,” Williams said in an email. “We have put hundreds of thousands of dollars into prolonging the life of the mechanical systems. Professionals have been through the school to give their opinions on the best way to solve the problems. To bring it up to code will cost nearly the same as a new building.”
Williams said information on the board’s reasoning has been shared frequently in school board meetings and public hearings, which were “not well attended.”
“We will be willing to continue to discuss these needs with anyone that would like to meet with district personnel,” he said.
Furse said the bond measure would most likely appear on the November ballot if the petition meets the signature threshold. However, she said there’s also a chance it could spur a special election in June instead, “depending on timing.”
North Summit High School was built in 1977 and hasn’t had any major modifications since its original construction. District officials told the public in 2024 that reinvesting in the current structure would be more costly than building a new school.
However, voters in 2024 and 2025 shot down the district’s attempts to pass a multimillion dollar general obligation bond to fund the project. In response, the school board proposed a $125 million lease revenue bond, which has a higher interest rate but does not require voter approval.
The school board unanimously passed the lease revenue bond in early December at a public hearing where more than 20 people spoke against the move. The speakers expressed frustration over the district’s continued pursuit of the funds, as well as general economic concerns, including whether the bond would affect housing costs and potentially price more families out of the area.