In a packed meeting Wednesday, the Vineyard City Council tabled a resolution to begin the process of considering a Utah Inland Port Authority project within the city.

Tensions were high between the City Council and the residents in attendance, many of whom couldn’t fit into the council chambers and were listening virtually in the hallway.

Some residents asked the council and mayor during public comment to postpone the meeting to give them more time to review the issues being discussed that night. They also expressed concern about transparency and what they believe was a lack of notice regarding the public notice on the hearing for the port and Wednesday night’s 199-page agenda.

The agenda was posted 24 hours before the meeting, still in accordance with state law. The notice about a public hearing on the port was posted on the city’s website 10 days before the meeting was to occur. As the resolution was tabled, a public hearing on the inland port did not occur.

Incoming council member Jacob Holdaway said he was “very troubled” leading up to the meeting.

“This is just un-American, the whole process, you know — sneaking in, publishing the agenda, 200-page agenda during Christmas with 24 hours before the meeting with such great, massive proposals on the budget,” he told the Daily Herald before the meeting began. “It’s so un-American.”

In some instances, residents clapped, booed and shouted, leading Mayor Julie Fullmer to remind attendees to remain quiet during discussion or other residents’ comments. At one point, after more than an hour of public comment and while discussing another agenda item, Councilman Tyce Flake threatened to have disruptive attendees removed by deputies.

Aside from the inland port, other items on the agenda included the creation of two public infrastructure districts, some small budget amendments, city code updates on how a city manager or planner can be removed and the Forge Development agreement. The meeting lasted six hours, with the public infrastructure district items being moved to the next meeting.

The inland port resolution

While the vote on the inland port was tabled, a presentation from the Utah Inland Port Authority was still provided.

Ben Hart, executive director of the UIPA, stated that if, in a month, when two new council members are sworn in, Vineyard no longer wants the port, he will not take it to the board.

“The inland port authority is not going to be the reason that this community tears itself apart,” Hart said.

Hart spoke to the council and the public, addressing the economic benefits he and his organization believe a port project will bring to Vineyard.

He also noted that Vineyard and the surrounding area are growing extremely quickly, saying that Utah is “underserved” in multimodal transportation and that if decision-makers continue to put “everything on cars, we’re going to fail future generations.”

An inland port could bring more diverse jobs to the area, Hart said, instead of people having to commute to more populous areas like Salt Lake City.

“You have to diversify into other types of economic growth,” he said.

For an inland port project to begin development, the first step is for a municipality to invite the state agency to start exploring the possibility of development, which the resolution would have done.

In a previous interview with the Daily Herald, Hart explained the resolution doesn’t set an inland port in stone. Rather, it is the first step in a longer process that would include more public comments and hearings.

The UIPA also has to approve a port project area but can’t do that until after a city invites them in, he said.

City code on removing city officials

The council also approved administrative updates on how a city manager or planner can be removed from their position. The update requires any removal of a city manager or planner to have the approval of the majority of the council and the mayor or all city council members without the mayor.

City Attorney Jayme Blakesley explained that, at the moment, the city code did not address the procedure for removing an appointed city official as it does for appointing one and that was the purpose of the update.

Before the change, city officials in those positions could be removed “with or without cause,” but the code didn’t specify how many votes it would take. Previously, the city’s procedure when removing an official was a simple majority among the council and mayor.

Fullmer stressed that this did not change any person’s authority, just that it clarified procedure.

“It creates a lot of comfort and solidifies protections for our directors and our appointments that are here,” she said. “But like I said, no real authority is changed.”

The change comes after the controversial selection of the new city manager, Eric Ellis, who was formerly the executive director of the Utah Lake Authority, of which Fullmer is the board chair.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Ellis sent letters promising millions from the Utah Lake Commission to a now-defunct Utah Lake dredging project. Tribune reporting also showed that Fullmer sent letters to the Environmental Protection Agency indicating the city had appropriated $5 million toward the Utah Lake Restoration Project.

“No money was ever offered to the group,” Fullmer later told the Daily Herald in a text. “Money only was approved for Vineyard’s shoreline. Even the ability for them to show Vineyard was improving their own shoreline was subject to approval of the RDA, as written in the letter described. This was voted down unanimously.”

Holdaway, who will join the council in January, spoke up, saying that once he is sworn in, this procedural update changes his ability to vote.

“What we’re fighting for is that the counting and the ability of the power of the council over your authority is equal,” he said, addressing Fullmer.

The mayor later provided this statement to the Daily Herald about the code changes: “This is just part of standard business. If there is a void in policy, our council works to bring it up to standard and add clarity. This is very common practice. It is not a hot button item,” she wrote. “The form of government doesn’t change, no real powers are altered, it’s adding a super majority, it simply guides process. It’s common.”

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