The Utah Supreme Court will soon decide whether the proposed West Hills municipality — and the state’s incorporation process as a whole — is unconstitutional based on oral arguments heard on Friday morning. The hearing stemmed from a lawsuit filed by 10 Summit County property owners last y ear. The initial complaint claimed West Hills violated property rights by offering only some landowners a chance to opt out of the town’s boundaries. Summit County Third District Judge Matthew Bates ruled in October that the incorporation process was unconstitutional for treating one group of landowners differently from another. The order removed West Hills from the Election Day ballot just weeks before the polls opened, and town sponsor Derek Anderson appealed the ruling to the Utah Supreme Court. Caroline Olsen, an attorney representing Anderson, argued on Friday that the state Legislature needed to place a deadline on the opt-out period to ensure the process moves along at a reasonable pace. She said lawmakers recognized that “sponsoring an incorporation in a growing state is a public good,” but it’s also an intensive and expensive undertaking. As a result, the Legislature placed a time limit on when landowners may opt out of an incorporation to “preserve the incentive for sponsors” to engage in the incorporation process, Olsen said. She additionally claimed the courts are encouraged to defer to the Legislature when protected groups, such as those based on race, religion or gender, are not involved. “We’re dealing here with exclusion rights extended to, essentially, wealthy landowners, and I don’t think that is a place where there is a systemic exclusion from the Democratic process,” Olsen said. “To the extent the Legislature thinks that there needs to be some tweak, that’s a legislative determination and not a determination that the district court should make.” Olsen argued landowners could lobby for state lawmakers to change legislation governing incorporations, but the law as it’s written was specifically created to operate in its current form. The Utah Supreme Court, then, should not have the authority to replace or amend the statute drafted by elected politicians, she said. “If this regime turns out to be wholly unpopular among property owners, then the recourse is with the Legislature,” Olsen said. Janet Conway, who represents the ten Summit County landowners, disagreed. She said the incorporation process violates the Utah Constitution’s uniform operations clause by inadvertently separating landowners into categories and treating them differently based on when Anderson included their properties in the proposal. She pointed to previous court cases from the late 1800s and early 1900s, insisting those rulings demonstrated the intent of the uniform operations clause was to prevent discrimination or special treatment for “similarly situated” groups of people. Conway also said the Legislature could have taken another approach to finding a deadline for the incorporation process, but lawmakers settled on differentiating between landowners solely based on when their property was added to the proposed township’s boundaries. “I feel that the finality issue in the cycle of boundaries is a little fanciful,” Conway said. “It could have easily said that once the exclusion occurs and if you don’t have enough land to meet the statutory (requirements), you’re done. It could have said if you do go ahead and grant the sponsor a right to include specific landowners in a modified map, that they should be able to have an automatic notice and maybe a seven-day period to opt out.” The Utah Supreme Court did not indicate when it expects to issue a decision, but it took the West Hills case under advisement for further study and a future ruling. “We appreciate the process and the opportunity to appear before the Utah Supreme Court, and we still believe the district court correctly decided the constitutionality issues that need to protect all Utah citizens equally,” Conway said in a statement to The Park Record. Anderson had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication. The proposed West Hills township covered 3,600 acres along S.R. 248 near Kamas. It has largely been opposed since its creation two years ago, with community members citing concerns over property rights, economic viability and the sponsor’s motives. Meanwhile, West Hills supporters said they believed the incorporation would have given residents more flexibility with their property, helped control expected growth in the area and encouraged open land preservation. Only the 97 registered voters living within the proposed West Hills boundaries would have been eligible to participate in the election. The post Utah Supreme Court hears oral arguments in West Hills battle ahead of potential decision appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less