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Alex Cabrero reporting "We're ready to fight," Shannon Sanchez said. She couldn't believe it when she heard she might not get to vote on the sale of her county's landfill.
"We want to protect our county and do what's right," she said when we met her at her Brigham City home. "And if it has to be on the backs of the people, so be it."
She's part of a group of Box Elder County residents who are upset at two of the three county commissioners who voted to sell the landfill to the Northern Utah Regional Landfill Authority (NURLA) last December.
The group got enough signatures on a ballot to file for a referendum and vote on it next November, only to find out NURLA filed a lawsuit against it.
"It shows a lot of arrogance and it shows a bunch of high-powered people that want to shove something down a little community's throat," said Eli Anderson, who is part of the group trying to get the vote on a referendum. "The people, the citizens were being taken advantage of, and that needs to be straightened out."
However, Craig Dearden, who is the chairman of NURLA's board, says the lawsuit isn't hostile. "We're just looking for clarification so we know how to proceed," he said.
NURLA, which is made up of a group of northern Utah counties and communities, wants a judge to decide if the commissioners who voted for the sale did so as an administrative decision or as a legislative one.
If their decision was administrative, then the referendum won't happen, meaning residents don't get to vote on the issue.
Box Elder County's attorney Stephen Hadfield says citizens simply can't vote on every decision the commission makes.
"Not everything can be subject to a referendum," Hadfield said. "You shouldn't have to have a vote to determine if you're going to meet the month's payroll."
Hadfield also feels the judge's decision actually gives the county good guidance. "It's not an adversarial lawsuit. It's just asking the court whether or not it should be subject to a referendum," he said.
However, the group wanting a referendum says since the two county commissioners who voted for the sale to NURLA sit on NURLA's board, it's a conflict of interest.
Those two commissioners are Jay Hardy and Clark Davis.
Hardy said he understands why some residents might see it that way, but he says it's not the case. "I'm not apologizing for the decisions I made," he said. "But looking back, I probably, I apologize for not giving people more time so they could've been more informed."
That's one issue some residents were upset with. They felt the selling the county landfill to NURLA was already finalized, and they didn't have a say in the matter.
The group also says they're not 100 percent opposed to the sale; they just wanted to know all the facts of it before commissioners made a decision.
"If it passes, that's great. Some people will be happy and some won't," Sanchez said. "if it doesn't pass, that's the voice of the people. That's what they want."
A judge is expected to make that decision, administrative or legislative, sometime next month.
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com
