HUNTSVILLE, Weber County ā As the Ogden Valley coalesces into a new city, managing development and making sure the Weber County locale has basic services like police protection are among the big issues the municipality’s new leaders will face.
Those topics and more, like how the city generates revenue to operate, figured big at a candidate forum featuring the two mayoral hopefuls, Shanna Francis and Janet Wampler, as well as the hopefuls vying for five City Council spots. Voters pick the mayor and council members in voting culminating Nov. 4, and the winners take office in early January, when the new city, still to be formally named, comes into being.
“We are launching a new city, and that is a very different thing that most of us have never done before or lived through before,” said Wampler, who worked in the corporate sector before stepping back from that to become a stay-at-home mom.
Residents voted overwhelmingly last year to incorporate the Ogden Valley, a picturesque area on the Wasatch Back that’s home to Pineview Reservoir and three nearby ski resorts, Nordic Valley, Powder Mountain and Snowbasin. Asserting local control over development amid increasing growth pressures figured big in voting last year and, similarly, questions related to development were among the key topics at Thursday’s forum, held at Huntsville Town Hall. There were many parallels in the two candidates’ responses.
To manage growth, Francis, who runs a local newspaper, the Ogden Valley News, and helped spearhead the incorporation drive, said the general plan for the area, which outlines where residential and commercial development can occur, needs to be rewritten. Notably, she would seek a provision in the document requiring developers to abide by the plan.
“We have clear, concise laws that everyone has to follow. We create an even playing field, and we don’t subsidize growth,” she said. “If someone wants to do development, they have to pay for it themselves and pay their own way.”
Likewise, Wampler called for rewriting land-use regulations.
“The one thing that we can do is impose the law. We cannot deny anyone anything that the law allows,” she said. “So if we want to manage growth, and what I consider smart growth, you have to first rewrite the land-use laws so that they actually say what it is we want to achieve in this valley. If we don’t want buildings above a certain height, you need to put it in the law.”
The candidates faced more specific questions related to conditional-use permits, which are variances that grant landowners authority to develop property in ways not specified in zoning guidelines, and transferable development rights. Being able to transfer development rights means landowners can sell the rights to build on their property to owners of other parcels, theoretically allowing for bigger swaths of open space in some areas and clusters of housing and other development in other areas.
Francis thinks rules governing transfer of property rights are “exploited” in the Ogden Valley ā shifted from areas where development wouldn’t be feasible anyway ā and that “very strict” ordinances are needed to prevent misuse.
Wampler said allowances for transfer of property rights are “one of many tools” that can help protect rural areas, but, like Francis, called for stronger guidelines and said they should be developed in the new city’s first year.
Both mayoral hopefuls expressed opposition to granting of conditional-use permits. “I think things should either be permitted or not. I am 100% for clear, concise land-use laws. I think when you get vague on things, that’s when all the trouble starts and the legality becomes a problem,” Wampler said.
Both Francis and Wampler also said the new city boosters’ plans all along have been to work with Weber County in provision of at least some services, with the Weber County Sheriff’s Office ideally overseeing public safety.
“As of late, we’ve had some difficulty in doing that,” Wampler said. “There are some discussions about how the county wants to wait until we know who’s elected so they know who they’re actually negotiating with. So in the meantime, we are looking at Plan B and Plan C all the way down to D.”
How the city generates enough funding to operate has been a big point of contention, with many in the Ogden Valley worried that property taxes will go up.
Wampler said she wants to avoid hiking local taxes, and floated federal and state grant funding as a possible means of generating extra revenue. Moreover, new ordinances could be implemented to prevent owners of the many vacation and secondary homes in the Ogden Valley from improperly getting tax breaks meant for homeowner-occupied homes, thereby bolstering property tax revenue without rate hikes.
Francis said developers should pay for new infrastructure in tandem with the growth they pursue, thereby reducing potential city spending. “If it’s going to increase traffic or they need a new bridge or to widen roads, they pay for it. Then we have money left over to pay for our maintenance, and we’re not scrambling and raising taxes,” she said.
The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.
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