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HERRIMAN — After alleging that a new amendment to the Herriman city plan was rushed during a City Council meeting in September, a group of residents is nearing an amount of signatures needed for a referendum that would place the 2025 general plan to a public vote.
During a City Council meeting Wednesday night in which zoning for one of the new areas amended into the city was discussed, a little more than a dozen residents frustrated with the general plan vented their concerns about it.
Much of the concern was centered around an original plan for high-density housing to be added to the city.
Those opposed to the plan focused their concern on what they called a worsened quality of life, a decrease in larger land lots, increased traffic, overpopulation of schools and a strain on drinking water, as well as emergency services.
“What are taxes going to look like this after the growth?” asked Jennifer Bangerter, a Herriman resident, during a public input portion of the meeting. Other residents accused the City Council and Mayor Carmen Freeman of not listening to the residents and pushing forward with zoning plans while residents were going around receiving signatures to possibly halt the city's general plan.
The group, Herriman for Responsible Growth, sought 5,000 signatures to put the city’s general plan, which was amended during a city council meeting on Sept. 13, on hold.
The required amount the county required, said Haley Hill, a Herriman resident and member of the group seeking signatures, is nearly 4,330. Herriman for Responsible Growth had nearly 2,500 validated signatures and about 2,500 more to hand to the Salt Lake County office Thursday before its deadline to collect signatures, Hill said.
The group says the amended plan was brought up during the meeting and passed before residents — and even City Council members — had a chance to review the changes.
“This new plan was thrown out there on the night of the meeting and passed and approved. There was no vetting, there was no discussion, there was no comment. That was the biggest problem — but we don’t like the plan either,” Hill said.
“A lot of people getting involved in this are not new Herriman people," she continued. "We love it here and we tell people to come here, we just think the city is doing things irresponsibly and not listening to the residents.”
One resident pointed out more residents signed the referendum than voted in Tuesday’s election, where a new mayor was elected. About 3,050 ballots were counted for the mayoral race as of Wednesday night, according to the Salt Lake County Clerk’s Office elections website.
At one point after the public input, a short recess was called after emotions seemed to reach a boiling point. After about 10 minutes, the council voted to table any zoning in the new amended area to another meeting Dec. 13.
The city’s general plan, which was amended with a 3-2 vote in September, is a document Herriman City Councilman Craig Tischner described as a “bubble plan” where ideas for the city can shift and aren't set in stone.
During the Sept. 13 meeting, Tischner proposed a plan brought together by developers that was later passed in the meeting after a public and council discussion. The adjustments, he said, added commercial areas, and would reduce the amount of units and population of the fast-growing city.
His proposal was met with split opinion from residents at that meeting. While some disapproved, others said it was time for the city to move forward with a plan that has been discussed for a while.
Before the council voted, however, Councilwoman Coralee Wessman-Moser said she and other council members were not made aware of the changes until the night of the meeting.
“To have one or more council members working with staff behind the scenes without the knowledge of other council members to essentially surprise us with a new plan that has been negotiated without the full knowledge of the council members is not a very good process,” she said in the September meeting.
Tischner argued that wasn’t the case. He said Wednesday it was a misunderstanding among council members and that he had made a tweak to one of the new city area plans before the City Council meeting.
It was a compromise he said he thought would be accepted by residents and development properties because it lowered planned density in a northwest quadrant in the city and didn't affect much of the entire plan. He said even if the change was made in the meeting, it still was up for public comment before the council voted.
“Here I am. Thought I was coming out a hero, but I worked with (residents), tried to get them what they wanted out of this and they want the commercial (zoning) out of it, but to get to the commercial, they have to go through this process,” he said.
Tischner added he reached out to the resident group to try to talk about a plan both sides could agree on but the group refused to work with him.
“I tried to reach out to them and I asked them to work together on a development agreement and also the zoning process, and they just started the referendum on their own,” he said.
Hill countered Tischner only made one effort to discuss the topic but it came during a town Halloween event where the group leaders said it was not an appropriate time to discuss the issue.
Residents in the group were also angered by the city's decision to discuss moving forward with the city plan with a referendum in the works, Hill added. It was an issue brought up during a City Council work meeting on Oct. 25, where members of the council brought up concerns with the city pushing forward with its general plan with many residents upset about it.
However, with the discussion to zone areas affected by the new general plan tabled until at least December, Hill said she hoped it would force City Council members to listen to their constituents before their next proposal regarding the future of the city's general plan.
“We feel like the reason they’re listening now is because we have an upper hand,” she said, mentioning the near 5,000 signatures. “I think that’s why they’re listening — not because of what we said, because of who showed up, not because there was a news camera here, but because we have an upper hand with those signatures.”
