By Myrna Trauntvein
Times-News Correspondent
"When did my responsibility (over the water department)
shift to your domain?" Doran Kay, Mona Town Council member,
asked Rick Schnurr, council member.
Kay asked the question in reference to the newly prepared
water impact fee ordinance which was on the table for action
at Tuesday's council meeting. He has been working to develop
a fee ordinance and said he was surprised to see the
completed ordinance on the table that night.
In addition, said Kay, he had set up a meeting with Phil
Lowery, town attorney and a member of the firm Howard, Lewis
& Petersen in Provo, in which he and another council
member would discuss the fee schedule. That meeting was
still in the future.
"I see two ordinances sitting on the table, two brand new
ordinances with two new concepts," said Kay. He said the
ordinances were prepared and ready for the process of
adoption, a duty that he had no knowledge of the documents
before council meeting.
One ordinance Kay was referring to was one adopting a
Mona Town capital improvements expenses and capital
facilities plan regarding water impact fees and adopting the
schedule of water impact fees.
The second is an ordinance governing Mona's capital
improvements expenses and capital facilities plan regarding
water impact fees and the schedule of water impact fees to
extraterritorial (outside town) connections and setting
minimum standards for those connections.
"I have not even had time to review them," Kay said.
Kay said he thinks Schnurr and Mayor Bryce Lynn have
stepped into his appointed duty to head the water department
for the town as his council member assignment.
"When did you receive the understanding to go forward?"
asked Kay. "Was I relieved of this duty?"
Lynn said it was a council consensus, following a council
meeting/public hearing held on March 29, to have Schnurr
meet with Lowery on the fee schedule ordinance because he
already had an appointment to meet with him concerning
preparation of a vicious dog ordinance for the
community.
"We X-ed out (removed) one part of the fee schedule at
the meeting on March 29," said Schnurr. This was done on the
recommendation of Lowery and in response to three FAXes sent
on March 14.
In the first, Lowery expressed concern over one clause
which stated that certain owners of lots within the town
will automatically be eligible to subdivide their lots and
pay a cash only impact fee.
Lowery said he saw no reason to allow subdivider-owners
the privilege to avoid paying an in-kind water impact fee
while other subdividers would be required to pay water
in-kind and did not think the distinction would be legally
defensible.
In the second FAX, sent 45 minutes after the first,
Lowery said he had spoken to Bruce Parker, a Utah
Association of Governments Community Planner who has been
working with the town council.
He said Parker went even farther in being critical of any
distinction being made based on the time lots were created
and thought the impact fee should be uniform based on the
date a building permit was sought not on the date the lot
was created.
In the last FAX, Lowery said: "This arrangement (the
bifurcation of impact fees) may expose the town to a
'Tigard' challenge and statutory liability. I am further
concerned that the town's insurance policy would not defend
a 'Tigard' challenge."
Both the new ordinances had been advertised in the Provo
Daily Herald prior to the council meeting held on Tuesday so
they could be acted upon at council meeting. The ordinances
were too late to be noticed in the Times-News, said
Schnurr.
"They were published this morning and we received notice
that they needed to be published on Friday, last week," said
Schnurr. "You were out of-town on business."
Nila Keyte, town clerk, said she could sympathize with
Kay. "I am the clerk and should be the one to notice
ordinances. Instead, Glenda Buchanan (council member)
noticed the vicious dog ordinance. That should be my
job."
Such action creates confusion, said Keyte. "I don't know
what I'm doing or what is being done by someone else."
Nevertheless, Lynn, Buchanan, Schnurr, and Darlene
Fowkes, council member, agreed that the consensus was that
Schnurr should have requested the changes made in the impact
fee schedule as included in the ordinance.
"It was my understanding, when we left the March 29
meeting, that Rick (Schnurr) would have Lowery remove the
part of the ordinance language which was not legal."
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