LAYTON — Residents on Weaver Lane do not want two more houses on their street. They let the city council know their concerns Thursday night and also mixed in a few threats of what would happen if the council didn’t see things their way.
“We’re going to lobby hard to prevent your plans, frankly,” said Bob Reed, who has lived at 435 Weaver Lane for eight years.
“If you proceed, we’re going to work vigorously hard in the next election to replace you.”
Reed presented a petition — signed by 30 homeowners who live on or near Weaver Lane and disapprove of the rezoning — to the council.
“If I had enough time, I would have tripled that list,” Reed said.
The homeowners are concerned about the impact on their homes if two new houses are built.
The ordinance would rezone 0.73 acre of vacant land from agricultural use to a single-family residence zone. The city owns the land, at approximately 400 W. Weaver Lane, which is left over from the Layton Parkway project.
The plan is to use the land as part of the city’s program with Davis School District in which students from Layton High School build a home. The city sells the home at a discounted price to someone who has served the public.
Layton students have built three homes, two of which went to police officers. The third went to a Layton High teacher.
Students are currently finishing a fourth home.
Those four houses are on Golden Avenue, but there is no more room on that street and the city is looking for new sites.
After the rezone, students would build two homes on the land in the next two years.
While the council voted 2-1 in favor of the ordinance, there were not enough votes to proceed with the rezoning. An ordinance needs three votes to pass, so the issue will be voted on again at the April 5 city council meeting.
With Mayor Steve Curtis not at the meeting, Councilman Barry Flitton served as mayor pro tem and did not vote. Joyce Brown was also absent, which left Michael Bouwhuis, Scott Freitag and Jory Francis as voting council members.
Francis said he opposed the ordinance because one resident claimed the city was going against its own code by having one of the potential homes sitting on a flag lot.
A flag lot is a parcel of land shaped like a flag; the staff is a narrow strip of land providing vehicular and pedestrian access to a street, with the bulk of the property lying to the rear of other lots, according to the Teach Me Finance website.
While City Attorney Gary Crane assured the council that the city would not be violating its own code, Francis wants to do more research.
“It could be real easy for the city to say, ‘We want to do it our way,’ ” Francis said. “I just want to make sure we’re all playing by the same rules.”
Blaine Nichols, a resident of Weaver Lane, read part of the city’s code and insisted that the city would be doing something that could not be done by any other citizen.
According to the city’s municipal code, the maximum number of flag lots in a development site shall not be more than 10 percent of the total number of lots within the development site.
The big question is, what is the development site.
Nichols argued that the development site would be the two homes, meaning one home on a flag lot would be 50 percent of the lots. The city maintains that a development site would encompass the entire neighborhood.
“I think the spirit for this code is a large development,” Francis said. “I feel like that needs to be defined.”
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