Summit County voters overwhelmingly supported the county’s proposal to borrow $50 million to preserve open space, according to preliminary vote results released Tuesday evening. It is the largest ever approval of its kind in the Park City area.
Though the results are preliminary, the margin is sizable. It shows 7,535 votes for the bond and 3,453 against, a two-to-one gap.
Officials have said the money will be spent to protect against development pressure on the East Side of the county, especially in the Kamas Valley and the Weber River corridor.
Summit County Council Chair Glenn Wright said the bond gives the county the opportunity to preserve land, supports residents’ desire to control growth and aids in county efforts to reduce wildfire risk.
“In terms of the importance, the growth, especially on the East Side of the county, what we’re going to see especially over the next 10 or 20 years is going to be incredible,” he said. “And there’s just some really critical, sensitive lands over on the East Side of the county: the meadows in Kamas, the banks of the Weber River, all the tributaries. We are the protectors of the watershed for the entire Wasatch Front.”
Cheryl Fox, who leads the Summit Land Conservancy, said she was “thrilled” with the result.
“We already have landowners lined up hoping to do something if this bond passed,” Fox said. “I think it’ll keep the Summit Land Conservancy busy.”
The conservancy is a nonprofit that works to preserve land from development, mostly through a legal arrangement called a conservation easement, in which a landowner is compensated for their land’s future development rights, which are then extinguished.
County officials have said the money from the bond will be used to preserve open space by working with willing landowners to create conservation easements or by purchasing land outright. They have spoken of the importance of leveraging bond funds with money from other state and federal sources.
The preliminary results do not include valid ballots that did not arrive through the mail to the Summit County Clerk’s Office by Tuesday, ballots left in drop boxes after approximately 2 p.m., ballots cast Tuesday at in-person voting centers or provisional ballots.
Wright called the turnout impressive, pointing out that residents in unincorporated Summit County did not have municipal elections to bring them to the polls.
The measure is the largest such approval in the county’s history, rivaled in size locally only by the $48 million open space bond Park City voters approved in 2018 that was mostly used to purchase the property involved in the Treasure land deal.
Unlike in that election, when voters had a clear choice between land conservation and a development above Old Town, Summit County officials have not identified specific projects they would pursue.
They have centered on the Kamas Meadow as a key target for preservation —a patchwork of privately held grassland that runs northward from Francis through South Summit.
The proposition allows the county to bond for up to $50 million, but there is no guarantee the county will issue that much debt. Officials have said low interest rates might make the timing advantageous to borrow money.
Officials have estimated the tax impact on a $715,000 primary residence at $40 annually and $73 per year on a business or secondary residence of the same value.
While open space bonds have historically been supported by Summit County voters, this was the first time East Side voters have weighed in. In 2014, Snyderville Basin residents voted to spend $25 million on recreation and open space, the previous highest level from a county entity.
Wright said preserving the Kamas Meadow was a shared priority between Summit County and the three South Summit cities.
“If l could look into my crystal ball and look out 10 years into the future and we have essentially bought up all of the development rights in the meadows along the banks of Weber River, and along with some critical areas in the West Side of the county, then it will have been a success,” he said. “$50 million sounds like a lot of money, but it can go fast.”
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November 03, 2021 at 07:10AM
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