So much time and effort is spent by our own Summit County Council coaxing the state Legislature to fix the very road the council spent years digging. They’re in Salt Lake begging for guardrails while the car is already off the cliff. Look at the list of developers trying to add rooftops in Sum mit: Ivory Homes in Browns Canyon. Dakota Pacific in Kimball Junction. the Larry H. Miller Company‘s Cedar Crest in Hoytsville. These aren’t just projects. They’re a map of where local control is going to die. Our developer-friendly leaders at the state level have delivered a laundry list of bypasses. SB258 (2024) gave developers the power to birth their own preliminary municipalities. SB26 (2025) was essentially a love letter to Dakota Pacific, nullifying a local referendum as if it were a pesky suggestion rather than the will of the people. This session, the council pinned its hopes on HB510 and killing HB457. Rep. Tiara Auxier tried to slow the bleeding with an 18-month “good faith” requirement to stop “instant cities” like the one Ivory Homes threatened to build. It failed. Don’t give up, Tiara. HB457 started as a 20-year mandate to lock in urban sprawl for Summit and Tooele counties. It was gutted at the finish line, now only bothering “unincorporated islands” in Weber. A small victory? Maybe. Or maybe just a short detour. The irony is that Summit County’s “forward-thinking” past is exactly what’s being used to speed development to the finish line. If the residents north and east of Park City had moved to incorporate 20 years ago, we’d have a quiver full of local control arrows to shoot down these provisions. A City of Kimball Junction would likely never have built that transit center. They might have seen it for what it is: a legal hook for the HTRZ laws that now mandate urban density. By trying to be helpful and green, the County Council inadvertently handed the state the keys to our zoning. A real city controlled by the residents of Kimball probably would have avoided the Boyer Company Tech Center blunder. For years, the council tried to land a social win out of a commercial project, saddling developers with mandates no tech CEO would touch. High-growth tech zones like Silicon Slopes were built on incentives. Our leaders tried to build ours on restrictions. That failure gave Dakota Pacific the perfect narrative to sell to the state. If I were more cynical, I’d say our County Council intended this all along. Layering Kimball Junction with impossible mandates created an opening for developers. It gave the council a public facade of protection while they built the very infrastructure that triggered a state override. Our council gets the density and tax revenue they really want while pointing at Salt Lake when the 800 condos go up. “Our hands are tied,” they say, with their foot on the gas pedal. They perform for the media, file lawsuits they know will be dismissed, and negotiate over a senior center and a pedestrian bridge while the density is already a done deal. It’s convenient theater that serves the developer and insulates the council. And let’s not forget how they handled public input. One council member — let’s call her Thelma — has been the project’s shepherd since 2020. Back then, she cast a lonely “yes” vote on the Planning Commission, calling the original tech agreement a “big risk.” By 2024, as County Council chair, she moved negotiations to a private subcommittee, claiming it was “more effective … instead of doing that during our normal meetings.” When the 4-1 approval finally ignored heavy public opposition, she settled for: “I believe where we have landed is the best we can do.” She then handed the wheel to a new chair from Coalville — let’s call her Louise — who quickly picked up the torch of development and dismissively told the room that the community’s “Build what you bought” slogan was just a “dated tagline.” After the vote, the council’s narrative shifted to a classic gaslight: calling massive resistance a “vocal minority.” I bet those in the “vocal minority” wish they had their own city and had done things differently. If they had, they wouldn’t be fighting a tone-deaf County Council. They would be running City Hall. But as it stands, our leaders got exactly what they designed: a massive tax-generating development they can pretend they fought to the death. The cynic in me feels like that car wasn’t sliding off the cliff by accident. Thelma and Louise just grabbed each other’s hands, hit the gas, and drove us over the edge — leaving the rest of us in the backseat to wonder why they’re the only ones with parachutes. Ari Ioannides, chair of the Summit County Republicans, is a recovering tech entrepreneur, founder of BootUP PD, and serves on local government and nonprofit boards. He offers a conservative perspective on local politics. He can be reached at [email protected] The post The Porcupine Quill: A City of Kimball might have prevented Dakota Pacific appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less