Summit County staff wants cheaper, faster rezone decisions for developers. The council questions what control it gives up

The Summit County courthouse and government offices in Coalville. Photo: Summit County

The pitch for Ordinance 1016 is built on developer savings and reaching decisions faster. Council members are asking what the public gets, and what elected officials give up, in return.

COALVILLE, Utah — A proposed overhaul of Summit County’s rezone process is intended to make development applications less expensive and allow the county to reach decisions faster. That is what county staff told the Summit County Council in a late July work session.

But the discussion on the proposal raised a more fundamental question: If the county approves a development based on a conceptual plan, how much authority will elected officials retain over the details of what ultimately gets built?

That question emerged as the council continued its discussion of Ordinance 1016, which would change the Snyderville Basin Development Code to require a Concept Development Plan, rather than detailed engineering and site plans, when a developer seeks to rezone property for a specific project.

Planning Director Peter Barnes said the proposed changes are not intended to reduce the county’s development standards or make projects more likely to receive approval. Instead, he said, they would change when information is required.

Elected officials pressed county staff to define the ordinance as proposed and said it could leave open legal loopholes developers could take advantage of. Council member Roger Armstrong raised concerns that the ordinance could further distance the decision making of elected officials if more and more of the county’s processes become administrative.

“Even with the most developed development code that we have, we see it happen where somebody comes before us and we find them making an argument based on language in the code that we all stare at and go, ‘We probably didn’t mean that.’ And it opens the door for mischief. Changing a zone should feel difficult because it’s been a thoughtful process to get here. We said this, the public said this,” Armstrong said.

Under the current process, developers can be required to provide detailed materials addressing dozens of development standards before the County Council has decided whether the property should be rezoned at all. Barnes said that can force applicants to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars — and in some cases potentially more — on plans for projects that could ultimately be rejected.

The proposed system would require a developer to demonstrate at the rezone stage that a project can meet the county’s requirements without requiring construction-level engineering. The Concept Development Plan would establish key elements such as density, land-use configuration, circulation and open space, while more detailed engineering and site design would be addressed during later development approvals.

“We want them to have a lot less invested in it,” Barnes said. “We want to be able to make those decisions before they have that investment.”

Barnes said the change could actually make public input more meaningful because residents and elected officials would be weighing in before developers have invested heavily in a project.

The county has also said the change is not being proposed because of a single development. County Manager Shayne Scott told TownLift that the county has received consistent feedback for years that the existing process is unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming.

“There is nothing in this ordinance that makes a development more likely to be approved. This change simply makes it less expensive with less exposure to the applicant for a zone change,” Scott said.

Scott also acknowledged a more immediate reason the issue has come to the forefront: the county is working with Columbus Pacific Real Estate on development of the Cline Dahle property, which is owned by Summit County. Under the current process, Scott said, the county could be exposed to significant costs and risk as a development partner.

Scott said the county could either change the process to make it less expensive for applicants or assume that risk itself.

Council member Roger Armstrong questioned how much authority council would retain after approving a rezone and pressed staff to clarify which decisions would remain with elected officials.

Armstrong said he was open to removing requirements that are genuinely unnecessary at the rezone stage. But he questioned whether the ordinance goes further by moving decisions that elected officials should be making into later administrative processes. “Changing a zone should feel difficult because it’s been a thoughtful process to get here,” Armstrong said.

Armstrong argued that not every requirement in the current code should necessarily be treated the same way. If some of the 22 development standards staff identified are purely administrative, he said, the county should consider removing those requirements from the rezone process.

But he wanted staff to identify precisely what would remain under the County Council’s control and asked for a flowchart showing the existing and proposed development processes the help clarify where the Council’s authority begins and ends under the proposed ordinance.

Armstrong also questioned whether the county could gradually move development decisions away from the elected council and into administrative review.

“The further we’re disengaged from that, and it becomes administrative…” Armstrong said during the discussion.

The concern is not necessarily that the development standards disappear. Rather, it is who interprets and applies those standards to a specific project after the legislative rezone has already been approved.

The issue has surfaced in other Summit County development disputes, including the controversial Dakota Pacific project at Kimball Junction, where disagreements over development approvals and government authority became a central part of the controversy.

Scott cited Dakota Pacific in explaining why he believes a less expensive rezone process could benefit the county and developers. He said the developers told the county they had spent more than $1 million on plans, followed the Kimball Junction Neighborhood Plan and spent years going through meetings and the development process before ultimately turning to the Utah Legislature.

Scott said he believes a less expensive process could allow the county to reach a yes-or-no decision sooner, potentially avoiding years of controversy and consequences outside the county’s control.

Barnes likewise said county staff has considered the change for years. The Snyderville Basin Planning Commission unanimously recommended the proposal, according to Barnes.

Other council members raised questions about where the line should be drawn.

Council member Chris Robinson said he agreed that requiring developers to prepare extensive engineering plans before receiving a rezone could be unreasonable. But he questioned whether the ordinance clearly identifies which elements of the county’s development standards should remain binding at the rezone stage.

He suggested staff provide a comparison showing which requirements would be binding under the Concept Development Plan and which would be approved later.

Council member Megan McKenna also raised the issue from another perspective, questioning whether the existing process favors large developers with enough capital to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on plans before they know whether they can secure a rezone. She suggested that the current system could make it harder for smaller developers or nonprofit organizations to pursue projects such as affordable housing.

The council did not vote on Ordinance 1016. Staff will return with additional information and revisions based on the council’s direction before the ordinance proceeds to a public hearing and potential vote at its August 19 meeting.