There's a blockbuster Marshall Thompson story in this morning's Standard-Examiner, revealing the latest development in the ongoing Powder Mountain rezone saga. Frustrated with the regulatory delays and hurdles that have been imposed by the Weber County rezoning process, Powder Mountain owner/developer Mark Arnold has suddenly decided to bypass the county regulatory process altogether, and to incorporate Powder Mountain as its own self-regulating municipality. We provide below the lead paragraphs of today's Std-Ex article:
In taking this action, Mr. Arnold is attempting to avail himself of the provisions of HB466, a bill which was intended by the legislature to streamline the process of incorporation for small municipalities. HB466, (signed into law by the Governor in March of 2007) allows a town to incorporate if there are at least 100 residents and certain ownership and land value requirements are met. Unfortunately, the bill also takes the final authority for incorporation away from county government and gives it to Lt. Governor Gary Herbert. If 50 percent of the residents and landowners support the petition, the county can't stand in the way of incorporation. Subsequent events have revealed, we believe, that cutting county governments out of the approval loop was a big legislative mistake.OGDEN — Powder Mountain ski resort may soon become Powder Mountain Town — developers filed paperwork Friday with the Weber County clerk to incorporate as a municipality.
The action could allow resort developers to move ahead with plans to expand into a massive four-season resort in the Ogden Valley without going through the county planning commission.
Last month, after months of workshops and public hearings, the Ogden Valley Planning Commission voted in favor of the resort’s rezoning proposal, but attached almost 20 conditions that limited the density of the development and required secondary access roads.Powder Mountain owner Mark Arnold told the Standard-Examiner that some of the requirements were unreasonable and would have destroyed his vision of the project.
“I just want to see our vision through, and the way things are going, this is what came to the surface to enable us to do that,” he said.
We've tangentially discussed the unintended ill effects of this bill on Weber County Forum before, in the context of a proposed ski resort development now pending in Wasatch County, wherein Arizona real estate developer Dean Sellers is attempting to develop his own 8,366-acre 4-season resort, and to bypass Wasatch County regulatory authority through application of the HB466 municipal incorporation process. For a robust summary of the Sellers case, we link a pertinent Voice of Deseret blog article here, together with a short series of subsequent VOD articles, nicely detailing some of the more recent developments in this loosely analogous Wasatch County case.
As it stands, HB466, originally intended to cut the red tape for the process of incorporating small Utah townships, has instead become an unintended mechanism allowing slick developers to thumb their noses at county zoning regulations. Such seems certainly the situation with respect to the now pending Powder Mountain municipal incorporation application, judging from the comments of Mr. Arnold in today's Std-Ex article. The defects of HB466 have also caught the attention of at least a few legislators, and the Utah Association of Counties has made it a high priority to steer this legislation back to the legislative floor for remedial modification, in order to cut Utah counties back into the municipal approval process.
Whether any "curative" 2008 legislation will affect Powder Mountain's now-pending town incorporation application is any one's guess. It's possible however that any new legislative requirements could be deemed by the courts to be ex post facto, and that Mr. Arnold's application might be necessarily "grandfathered", and processed under the rules then-existing at the time of his original petition.
And what say our gentle readers about all this?
Update 1/20/08 11:56 a.m. MT: We were delighted to discover that the Voice of Deseret blog, which we cited and linked above, has this morning published yet another excellent article, again dealing with the topic of developer abuse of the provisions of Utah HB466. This morning's article discusses the Powder Mountain story, provides a top-notch fact summary and analysis, and then segues into a discussion of the important underlying topic of rural gentrification. We believe this article is a must-read for those who are closely following the Powder Mountain development story. Read the latest VOD article here.
