Senate Bill 258 passed this March by the Utah Legislature after it was snuck in at the last moment. It is a dangerous Bill for rural Utah counties — urban Utah counties are exempt. The Bill allows wealthy investors to buy rural County’s undeveloped land, appoint their own Mayor and Council, and write all their own laws regarding land use, zoning, health, safety, building code inspection, police, fire service, roads and utilities. They can do all this without anyone living in their “town”.

They legally have just about every power a normal city has. If their new city causes safety hazards, this law does not require them to pay for infrastructure upgrades — that’s for your County and its taxpayers to figure out. If their investment fails (by not getting 100 residents after 6 years) the “city” or whatever mess they’ve built on the land reverts to your County, which then must figure out what to do with it using more taxpayer money.

The day this bill went into effect, a group of resort developers submitted a prepared application to make their own “city” a half mile from Moab after local law denied their application for their privately owned and operated sewage treatment plant their massive resort needed. SB 258 was passed last minute to dissolve to push it through. If the project had been more moderate, they would have been able to build without their new law.

Now, the rest of rural Utah counties are stuck with this Bill. It was sold as an affordable housing bill for rural communities; however, the developers just have to “intend” to build some affordable housing — they don’t actually have to follow through. Instead, the housing could be 100% luxury condos for vacationers. But the power the Bill grants is not limited to California-style resort developers — refineries, block-style housing… it all goes. As it stands now, if you complained to your County Commission, they would say, “There’s nothing we can do — the state legislature took that power away.” The only way forward is to write your state representative to repeal SB258.

Carole Conriquez

North Ogden