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APRIL 2022
City Hall – 7505 South Holden Street • Midvale, UT 84047
CITY NEWSLETTER
Marcus’s Message
By Mayor Marcus Stevenson
Each year, the Utah State Legislature meets from mid-January to early-March for 45 days. This means my first legislative session as mayor just wrapped up a few weeks ago. There are always bills that pass into laws that will affect our city and residents, but this year the State Legislature passed two bills that are especially important for the ways in which they could have, and will, impact our city. HOUSE BILL 440 - HOMELESS SERVICES AMENDMENTS As a community that hosts a homeless resource center, we actively worked on this bill with the bill sponsor, cities throughout Salt Lake County, and the Office of Homeless Services to make this bill the best we could. As a city, we are proud of our role in helping our unsheltered community and want to make sure that when in shelter, these individuals and families get the resources they need. A critical piece of this legislation was the appropriation for shelter mitigation funding. The geographic area of Midvale where the shelter is located, coupled with the criminals that prey on those experiencing homelessness, creates extra law enforcement requirements. The mitigation fund helps cities pay to address the additional law enforcement needs in the community. Each city in Utah without a homeless shelter pays a portion of their sales tax into the mitigation fund, which is then distributed to the communities with homeless shelters. On average, Midvale City has about an $800,000 funding gap each year that the mitigation fund does not cover, which is four times the $200,000 maximum contributed to the fund by other cities. This bill increased funding for the mitigation fund by $5 million each year in state funding, which will significantly help Midvale City cover the required mitigation costs. When the bill was first released, it had several requirements that were worrisome to our city outside of the increased funding. First, it required existing shelters in Salt Lake County to increase capacity in the shelters to fire code limits during winter months. As an example, Midvale’s family shelter has capacity for 300 beds, but fire capacity is 720 people. Increasing our shelter to 720 people would have been harmful to those who are in the shelter and to the surrounding areas. We worked with the bill sponsor and the Road Home to successfully remove this provision from the bill. Secondly, the bill originally allowed for the State of Utah to choose a winter overflow shelter within any Salt Lake County city, if the mayors of each municipality in the county could not come up with a plan on their own. Though there is a need for overflow shelters in the winter, it was concerning to Midvale City that our city would take on a secondary shelter when what we really need is other communities in the valley to help house those in need. Ultimately, we were able to negotiate with the bill sponsor to not allow any new overflow shelter to be within one mile of an existing shelter, and if a city hosts an overflow shelter, then they are exempt from doing so for three years. Lastly, I’m thankful to Representative Eliason, the bill sponsor, for working with Midvale City on this bill. As a smaller city in the Salt Lake Valley, it could be easy to overlook our concerns, but Rep. Eliason was constantly responsive and kept us in the loop on what his bill was going to propose.
HOUSE BILL 462 – UTAH HOUSING AFFORDABILITY AMENDMENTS HB 462 is a massive bill that requires cities to plan for the development of low and moderate income housing city-wide, as well as multi-family, high-density housing around fixed-rail stations. Midvale City has three Trax stations that are considered fixed-rail. This bill requires that within a 0.5-mile radius from each Trax station, the City must create and implement Station Area Plans that meet the criteria required in the legislation. As a roughly 6-square mile city, implementing plans with a 1-mile diameter around each station, will significantly affect our city. Much of this work has already begun to take place, especially around the Bingham Junction Station and the Midvale Center Station. Though our city is already doing much of the work that the State is now requiring us to do, this new law will push forward the City’s timeline for completion.
The State Legislature has increasingly created new laws that place blanket requirements on cities regarding land use that do not take into consideration the unique needs and characteristics of the cities they impact. Often this can be a source of frustration for residents that feel that their city leaders are not being responsive, when the reality is that the City is simply following state law. Luckily, HB 462 does still give some discretion to cities, but there have been conversations in the State Legislature that if cities do not step up to increase housing supply to fight our affordable housing crisis, then they will step in and take over the process for us. If this were to happen, it removes residents from the process and will drastically limit our ability to control our own destiny as a city. Midvale City is committed to working on these Station Area Plans and implementing them, so that our residents can still have a say in their community, instead of the State deciding for them. Ultimately, it’s important to know that though the Utah Legislative Session happens for only 45 days each year, that the city works on proposed legislation throughout the year to fight for our residents and our city’s future. Even though the City does many tasks that residents can directly see, such as plowing the streets or picking up trash, we also work on many important issues that our residents may not directly be affected by in that moment.