The Utah Lake Commission has become too popular, forcing two cities to rethink their decision to eschew the group.

Payson and Eagle Mountain have been told to cough up a combined $14,000 or they might find themselves sitting in the audience next year instead of having a seat at the commission's round-table discussions.

The commission was created by the state Legislature earlier this year to study Utah Lake issues and provide cities around its shoreline a common place to make lake-related decisions.

For the past year, cities that did not want to pay the annual membership fee, ranging in the four- and five-figure range, have been allowed to participate without having a vote in decisions.

But in the past few months, so many groups have wanted to join without paying dues that the cities that make up the commission have now decided to limit the participation of non-voting entities, Payson and Eagle Mountain among them. Neither city directly borders the lake, but they are both nearby.

Had the commission allowed all entities that requested non-paying membership, the commission would have had 30 entities trying to make decisions, said director Reed Price.

"They did not want to pay for something when they could sit at the table and have the same input," said Eagle Mountain Mayor Heather Jackson of the city's decision not to pay the estimated $10,000 annual fee to join the commission. Fees are figured by a formula including population, land size and shoreline length.

Now the city has been told it has until June to pay up or sit in the audience, said Jackson and Price. Sometime over the next few months, the city will vote on the issue again, Jackson said.

"A lot of what is going on with the lake directly affects us," Jackson said, noting proposed Utah Lake bridges and recreation.

Payson Mayor Burtis Bills said the city's $4,000 lake commission membership fee was simply too much in hard financial times.

"That was something that unfortunately got cut" from the city's budget, he said.

Price said a handful of commercial and environmental groups had requested non-paying memberships to the group, and those groups have been told the commission will form a new sub-group, the Public Advisory Group, which will allow those entities to meet, vote and place items on the commission's agenda for discussion.

How exactly those groups will work together will be finalized soon when the advisory group meets for the first time.

The Sierra Club of Utah, the Utah Valley Sierra Forum, the Nature Conservancy, the Utah County Association of Realtors, Utah Valley Home Builders Association and the Utah Valley Convention and Visitor's Bureau are among those that have applied for non-paying membership.

None of them have voiced any complaints about the formation of the Public Advisory Group; to the contrary, they seemed to support the idea that 30 entities on the commission was too many, Price said.