Bill to scuttle SLC homeless campus is actually about helping the Great Salt Lake, top Republican insists

Why would one of the top Republicans on Utah’s Capitol Hill file a bill that could effectively scuttle emerging state plans to locate a 1,300-bed homeless campus in Salt Lake City’s northwest quadrant?

House Majority Leader Casey Snider, R-Paradise, said that isn’t the overall intention of his bill, HB523, filed on Monday near the 45-day legislative session’s halfway mark. Instead, Snider said, it is more of a bargaining chip to strengthen the state’s hand in its efforts to help protect the Great Salt Lake.

A debate forced by the bill has revealed some of the behind-the-scenes dealings and proposals involved in finding a spot for the homeless campus.

HB523 would forbid the Utah Office of Homeless Services from spending money to establish “a large-scale, low-barrier shelter” of 300 beds or more, while allowing money for “a temporary emergency shelter.” It would also repeal a law Snider helped to pass last year that let the state essentially revoke a conservation easement on city-owned property in the Northpoint area to allow for the construction of the homeless campus.

Yet Snider and House Speaker Mike Schultz, R-Hooper, said that rather than being aimed at derailing the homeless campus, HB523 was meant to ensure that commitments from private landowners were kept for a series of land swaps to dedicate open space as a protective buffer for the Great Salt Lake.

In short, lawmakers appear to be applying pressure for those land swaps with the specter of pulling the plug on the campus altogether.

“We should continue to have discussions and make sure everybody’s being transparent,” Snider said Monday. “If we can resolve these other issues, I can resolve my bill.”

The Cache Valley lawmaker did not respond Wednesday to a request for additional comment.

Gov. Spencer Cox, meanwhile, is pressing ahead with requests that lawmakers pour $25 million into constructing the homeless services campus in that largely rural Northpoint area and earmark $20 million for running it once it’s built.

Bill meant to nudge land swap

Snider said his bill, which sat as of Thursday in the House Rules Committee, was filed in response to inaction on promises made in those homeless campus talks to address the long-term sustainability of the lake and help create protective barrier to development on its southeastern fringe.

The lawmaker said wiping away the conservation easement on the city-owned land for the homeless campus with eminent domain was supposed to be part of a broader deal to yield open space next to the ailing saline lake — but that, Snider said, now seems to have stalled.

“If we’re not having honest conversation about preserving that corner and moving forward with conservation,” he said, speaking to reporters alongside Schultz, “I don’t want to be a party to that.”

For his part, Schultz pointed to Utah’s broader efforts to create a protective buffer for the lake and its wetlands and wildlife habitats, including the state’s purchase of 600 acres and extensive water rights to protect the area.

“There’s still another few hundred acres that need to be worked out in order to protect from encroachment upon the Great Salt Lake,” Schultz said in the context of HB523. “That’s the overall goal we’re trying to achieve as a state.”

Influential Utahn urges cooperation

A prominent charitable foundation run by the CEO of Ivory Homes, Clark Ivory, is raising concerns that the surprise bill could disrupt some of the complex and delicate negotiations that have gone into carving out a nearly 16-acre site for the campus at 2520 N. 2200 West.

The Clark and Christine Ivory Foundation said it began laying groundwork for the complicated exchanges by agreeing to donate 16 acres of its own land to the state — a gift the foundation said was “made knowing that its purpose was to ultimately contribute to the creation of a homeless service campus.”

With a different site now chosen for the campus, the foundation said, “we made our property available for trade” to potentially offset the city’s lost conservation easement.

“But those outcomes,” the foundation said, “require cooperation from all involved.”

SLC Council holds key with rezone

Specific details of the land swaps that would solidify protections for the Great Salt Lake have not been made public, but they appear to hinge, in part, on an Ivory property rezone request before the Salt Lake City Council.

The Ivory Foundation currently is pursuing a rezone of 80 acres of grasslands it owns not far from the fringe of the lake, seeking to convert it from farming to industrial uses. The open space, located north of the Salt Lake City airport at about 2699 W. 3300 North, was annexed into the city last summer.

Should the rezone go through, a portion of it could be offered in an exchange involving another private landowner whose acreage is closer to the lake, according to foundation officials.

In a statement issued a day after HB523 was released, the foundation urged continued talks to avoid sinking prospects of the campus, saying it was “committed to join good faith partners who are willing to collaborate in benefiting the state, the city, and private property owners.”

It cautioned, though, that the effort was akin to “a three-corner pool shot, but it only works if every angle is considered and all involved are working together.”

City officials also put out a statement in reaction to the bill, though it did not address HB523 directly.

“Salt Lake City leadership has long identified additional shelter, services, and funding as critical needs for the homeless services system,” said the statement from the office of Mayor Erin Mendenhall. “We will continue to work in partnership with the Office of Homeless Services to find solutions that protect our community members, improve public safety, and help the unhoused.”