A group of Orem residents are pushing back after the Orem City Council decided in a 4-3 vote to rezone the Wilkerson Farm property from open space to R-8 single-family housing last week.

James Brown said he was among eight residents who filed a referendum application to overturn the decision, believing the council voted against the will of the people.

“You had 2,000 people who told you no, and you ignored them and did it anyway,” Brown said. “That’s not OK. I don’t care what the issue is. That’s not an OK thing to do. You’re supposed to be representatives of the people, and four of the seven of you completely failed at that job.”

After the referendum application is approved by the city and county and the city provides necessary materials to collect signatures, the referendum organizers have either 45 days from when they receive the signature materials or 30 days from the the date of the first signature collected to get the signatures.

In order for the referendum to appear on the November ballot, signatures are required from at least 27.5% of the registered voters in each of at least 75% of Orem’s nine voter participation areas.

That comes out as roughly 7,500 people, Brown said.

“We have to go all over the city, right? It’s supposed to encourage you to not just have a little blob in one section of the city that wants something and the rest of the city doesn’t doesn’t have a say,” Brown said.

On May 13, the council approved a request from Keystone Construction, which is in contract agreement with the landowner to buy the property, to build 53 single-family homes on the land.

The property has been owned by Pleasant Grove Tabitha’s Way co-founder Al Switzler since 2015 through his charity, Candide Charitable Enterprise. He leased the land to Rachel and Richard Wilkerson, who operated Wilkerson Farm, an agri-entertainment business, but said he wanted to sell the property and donate the profits to Tabitha’s Way.

Brown hopes the referendum effort will keep the land the way it is.

“We don’t need any more housing in Orem,” he said. “We need to preserve these open spaces.”