This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
A west-sider is apparently all that's needed now to wrap up the membership of Salt Lake County's new Mountainous Planning Commission.
The County Council this week approved two more of Mayor Ben McAdams' nominees for the board that will oversee the regulation of land-use issues in the central Wasatch Mountains, primarily its big three canyons of Little Cottonwood, Big Cottonwood and Mill Creek.
One of those nominees, Neil Cohen, was withdrawn the previous week by McAdams in response to the council's decision to reject his nomination of Laura Briefer, the deputy director of Salt Lake City's Department of Public Utilities. She sparked opposition from the ski resorts and private property owners who objected that a planning commission position would give her agency too much sway over the process since it already has watershed-protection powers in the canyons.
Without that environmental perspective, McAdams said, his list of nominees was thrown out of balance. So he pulled the nominations of two people with affiliations to Snowbird Ski and Summer Resort — Cohen, a part-time customer-services employee, and Kate McGuinness, a retail and rental director.
But this week, McAdams resubmitted his nomination of Cohen, who also is chairman of the county's Planning Commission, which has handled land-use applications in Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood canyons as well as scattered parcels of unincorporated land in the southern area of the county.
"I want to maintain institutional knowledge," the mayor said.
In place of McGuinness, McAdams nominated Libby Ellis, an employee of Black Diamond Equipment in Holladay.
A former ranger at Grand Canyon National Park, Ellis told the County Council she then went to work for the outdoor clothing company Patagonia, running its environmental programs before joining Black Diamond.
"I'm interested in this," she added, "because I use the canyons extensively and I love the mountains."
The planning commission now includes eight members and will begin work soon on addressing individual applications and important issues facing the canyons, such as revisions to the county's Foothills and Canyons Overlay Zones ordinance and the potential development of a ski-resort zone.
McAdams is eager to get the planning commission going because the concept of a Mountainous Planning District to handle this critical and popular resource has a May expiration date in the legislation allowing its creation. With a track record, he believes he can persuade the Legislature next session to extend the district's life.
The planning commission still needs one more member. McAdams is working closely with Councilman Steve DeBry, who represents the southwestern area of the county, to come up with a nominee from among several west-side residents recruited during the past week or so.
DeBry had objected earlier this month that no one from west of Interstate 15 was on the planning commission, despite the mayor's assertions that he was looking to tap the whole county's expertise for dealing with canyon issues important to all Salt Lake Valley residents.
McAdams said he understood the concern, but he noted that only one of the 48 original applicants was a west-sider.
Pledging to work with DeBry to find a good pick, he said he expects to submit his final nomination in January.
Jail capacity
The County Council formally established that once the county jail has 1,700 inmates, it is at operational capacity.
That doesn't mean it's full, said Pam Lofgreen, the county sheriff's office's jail commander. But reaching that point means the jail has to implement its capacity management plan, which lays out a procedure for making releases. The 1,700 number was selected, she said, because it represents 80 percent of the jail's 2,114 beds for general-population prisoners.