This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
In the ongoing rush to carry out the Community Preservation Act, the Salt Lake County Council will adopt council district boundaries Tuesday for Millcreek City and the five metro townships that will come into being in 2017.
Although that's a year down the road, the boundaries have to be set soon. County Clerk Sherrie Swensen must revise voter precincts by Jan. 1 to get ready for next November's general election.
That vote also will include the selection of the first councils in Millcreek and each of the metro townships. Since the law requires candidates to file for office by March 31, defining the lines will help would-be candidates know which district they will be in and maybe suggest who some of the competition might be.
Sometimes that's simpler said than done, said Deputy District Attorney Gavin Anderson, especially since two landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases in the 1960s firmly established the necessity of governments abiding by the "one person, one vote" principle in setting district boundaries.
"In those cases and dozens of later state and federal cases, courts have been consistent in saying representative districts need to be, as far as possible, exactly equal in population," Anderson said. "It is a part of the foundation of the republic system with the rule by the majority."
For Millcreek and the two largest metro townships, Magna and Kearns, the subdivision exercise was not too problematic.
But at a public hearing last week on proposed council-district boundaries, it became clear that creating balanced districts in the sparsely populated metro townships of Copperton, Emigration Canyon and White City was difficult.
In Copperton, three of the existing town council members were all clustered in one district, potentially depriving the tiny community of the formal input of two of its most currently involved members. The Emigration Canyon districts looked like lines of spaghetti. There were a couple of twists and turns in White City's proposed districts that didn't make sense to its community leader, Paulina Flint.
County Surveyor Reid Demann and Swensen, whose offices led the districting effort, said the admittedly convoluted boundaries simply couldn't be avoided to comply with the "one person, one vote" legal requirement.
"We tried to keep communities and neighborhoods together, focused on major thoroughfares and subdivision boundaries," Demann said. "We tried numerous scenarios moving lines around. But when you move a census block, you have to move the entire block. The smaller the population, the more difficult it is."
The ever-busy Flint is already working on a solution.
She has been contacting legislators from her south-county area, pushing for a bill next session that would allow metro townships with fewer than 10,000 people to elect council members at large rather than by district, an option not allowed in the Community Preservation Act.
"We have every confidence we can resolve the concerns of the small townships," she said, asking for County Council support for "a little housekeeping bill … so these communities are not divided into these bitty districts. It's just not fair, not just."
County Councilman Michael Jensen, a Republican who spends more time than any other council member on Capitol Hill during the session, offered encouragement. "We understand the issue and we're going to try to resolve it."
As Millcreek moves toward cityhood, the need to comply with "one person, one vote" required county officials to deviate from the existing boundaries of the area's four community councils.
To avoid an east-west split division of the community, the council and leaders of those community councils agreed to go with more of a north-south split. That kept the Canyon Rim and East Millcreek Community Council areas essentially intact but expanded with added territory to the east from the Mt. Olympus Community Council, which was cut in two.
This approach still concerned Silvia Navejar from the Millcreek Community Council, which represents the west side of what will be the county's 17th city.
"I'm disappointed with this map because there's a socioeconomic divide, west side [and] east side," she said, making it likely the east side will end up with more representation than her part of Millcreek. "That's a big deal for [us]."
County Council Chairman Richard Snelgrove said public comment on the proposed district boundaries will be accepted until Tuesday afternoon, when the council is set to approve the final lines at its 4 p.m. meeting.
See the districts
Online versions of the council district boundaries proposed for Millcreek City and Salt Lake County's five metro townships may be viewed at http://www.slco.org/community-preservation/Maps.