During several emotional hearings, residents, school officials and law enforcement officers said if a court were located on the site, unsavory people who came to witness criminal trials could come in contact with young people at the pool and high school.

"This is a dangerous world," Rebecca Frischknecht, a parent, said at one hearing. "We don't want child predators looking at our kids and giving them drugs."

Still others opposed the project because it would take out part of the fairgrounds. Commissioners said they planned to move the fairgrounds footprint to county land north of the current site. But opponents said commissioners shouldn't move ahead with the court project until a tangible replacement plan was in place.

As the wrangling continued, some Concerned Citizen members started saying openly that they no longer trusted the county commissioners. They accused commissioners of failing to heed public input and of saying one thing while intending to do another.

Throughout the debate, commissioners denied ever hiding anything about the court project.

Ordinarily, revenue bonds do not require voter approval. But state law says that if 20 percent of active registered voters (voters who have voted within the past five years) sign a petition, the bonds must be submitted to voters.

Last April, the Concerned Citizens met that requirement. They needed 2,436 valid signatures to force a vote. They turned in 200 pages of signatures containing 2,682 names.

As the November election approached, the County Commission and Utah Judicial Council voted to change the site from the fairgrounds to property at the opposite end of Manti owned by the Division of Wildlife Resources.

But that didn't quiet the Concerned Citizens. In letters to the editor that took up to two pages of the Sanpete Messenger, some argued that if bonds were approved, commissioners would go back on their word and put the facility on the fairgrounds anyway.

The group also argued that the state should build its own building, rather than expecting the county to sponsor bonds. "It just doesn't make sense to us that if the state has funds to pay for that building, why can't they pay for it straight out, rather than going through us?" asked Concerned Citizens leader Kathy Frischknecht.