Are Utah Cities or Developers Calling the Shots?
– By Howard Sierer –
Who do you think should decide whether a residential development fits into your city’s “look and feel:” your city council or the developer? I was stunned to discover that our state legislature made that decision in favor of developers.
This major change was included in HB 1003, which was passed into law by the legislature in 2021 and signed by the governor. Longtime Ivins Mayor Chris Hart has experience on both sides of the question and is a vocal critic, saying, “I’m a developer. That’s been my 55-year career. And I have got to tell you, I am so offended by what this developer-dominated, real-estate-dominated state Legislature has done to the rights of cities.”
Take one guess at the occupation of the bill’s sponsor. Representative Paul Ray was, at the time, CEO of the Northern Wasatch Home Builders Association. Why am I not surprised?
Ray explained that Utah has a major shortage of affordable housing and that the city approval process adds unnecessary delay and cost to the price of new homes. As politicians often do when justifying new legislation, he cherrypicked an example where a city required expensive brick or stone exterior finishing on houses in a certain neighborhood. While his statement is almost certainly true, it’s unlikely that this neighborhood consisted of affordable homes, the kind he claimed are facilitated by his bill.
Ray’s self-serving claim to the House of Representatives – shown here in an archive video – was that his bill would increase the supply and lower the cost of affordably-priced housing. But the state already mandates that all cities provide affordable housing as a percentage of all new residential construction. Enforcing this requirement, the state requires annual reports from each city and conditions certain state funding on progress toward these goals.
Cities have always used their approval authority to balance the need for new housing with the legitimate concerns of their citizens, especially those living near a proposed development. Developers and builders have long understood this review process and expect “give and take” with planning commissions and city councils to be part of the approval process. As a result, compromise plans are approved that balance competing interests.
That “give and take” was swept away by HB 1003, which states, “A municipality may not impose a requirement for a building design element on a one- or two-family dwelling.” The bill defines “design elements” to include exterior color; type or style of exterior cladding material; style, dimensions, or materials of a roof structure, roof pitch, or porch; and exterior nonstructural architectural ornamentation.
In other words, any new house’s exterior “look and feel” is entirely now in the hands of whoever is developing or building in your neighborhood. You get to live with it for decades while the developer or builder moves on. You can’t even vent your displeasure by “throwing the bums out” in the next election.
As an example of the bill’s overreach, Ivins has objective rules limiting the brightness of house exterior colors so that they fit in with the city’s red mountain surroundings. Color has absolutely no effect on affordability: a gallon of paint costs the same regardless of its color; ditto for a bucket of stucco. So why was color in Ray’s bill other than to allow developers and builders to skip by those pesky city councils?
HB 1003 is 68 pages long. It’s likely that most of our legislators and their staff didn’t have time to read and digest its impact and didn’t have a chance to discuss it with city governments in their districts.
All but one of Southern Utah’s elected representatives voted for the bill in 2021. Technical changes to the law were considered this year, with the House voting in favor 53-16 and the Senate 23-0. Representative Rex Schipp was the only Southern Utah legislator who voted against the measure.
It’s clear that new construction has been flourishing for years everywhere in Southern Utah. The pace of construction is constrained by labor and materials availability, not city approvals. Lower approval costs flow almost entirely to developer bottom lines in today’s overheated housing market.
City councils are not perfect. Decisions are made which can leave some citizens upset. But the “give and take” at planning commissions and city councils at least provides a forum in which differing viewpoints can be discussed.
To me, that’s far better than discovering that a half-completed house on your street will be a colonial style with a steeply-pitched roof and white shiplap siding when all nearby houses are southwestern-themed, brownish stucco homes. Or discovering a flat-roofed southwestern going up in your colonial-style neighborhood.
It’s high time our state legislators take a look at what they’ve done and put cities back in their rightful role as representatives of the people.
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Thank you! This “one size fits all” approach that our government overreach is taking is more of a “one size fits none”. Local governments should be allowed to govern, and plan according to their needs and abilities.
Santa Clara City Council brought this up awhile back in a side discussions earlier this year. I think there is a big disconnect between local and state government in Utah and there was a clear indication that this legislation will be horrific and damaging based on the discussion I heard. Thanks for the article Howard… Meanwhile SCC just voted 3 -2 passing a controversial rezoning to allow a massive condo project that will destroy a local neighborhood. Council members Denny and Jarett represented their constituency… i.e. the people of SC, while two others on the council rubberstamped it from day 1, and a third member – Ben…who at least had the original project downsized – conceeded after the changes were made. REMEMBER TO VOTE folks… We need Citizen and local government united at a minimum or default to Soviet America and Central planning from the State on behalf of profit and greed… peace out. … VOTE. … local elections matter…. and do your homework.
To quote above…((You can’t even vent your displeasure by “throwing the bums out” in the next election))
Oh yeah… we’ll vote the bums out ANYWAY – we are Americans… as the only option is to be united as much as possible at the local level. This is not about anti development. It is about greed. It is about destroying a community by making it into a cash cow and then leaving the citizens holding the bag down the line… SLOOOW down… We are in the desert folks… there is only so much water to go around and rumor has it we are in 1000 year drought despite a good year of rainfall recently. But hey -may be too late…
Why too late? See Blackrock syndrome…. (look it up – i.e. the corporatization of the housing market)… but rest assured according to ole Davos group youtube cited Icon Klaus Schwab (a blowhard WEF bad cop propaganda heirophant) – in the future you won’t need to own anything- everybody will be happy… So Folks – no worries… THINK GLOBAL…. A C T Local (Buckminister Fuller) or default to the future you deserve.
FTR – do note – no inference should be made from above comments in regards to specific individuals etc… The referene of “vote the bums out” is a cliche and should not be extrapolated to current events, rather it is in context to the general framework cited in the article above which mentions same phrase. Thank you – not a retraction here, just clarification. .