City status for Cottonwood Heights?

COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — The two-word dateline you just read might soon indicate a city rather than an unincorporated area.

Voters in Cottonwood Heights, an area of 34,500 people between Sandy, Midvale and Holladay, will go to the polls May 4 to decide whether they want to be a municipality rather than a county-run township.

"The only way we can permanently protect our tax base is to incorporate," said Gordon Nicholl, who is leading the incorporation effort. "When we saw how (adjacent) cities wanted to chop up our area, I got very concerned."

Northern neighbor Holladay wants to annex the Cottonwood Corporate Center, located where east-side I-215 turns from north-south to east-west, and Sandy and Midvale are interested in the southern commercial areas.

Legally, the area has been established as the unincorporated Cottonwood Heights township and thus protected from annexation. But the current township law will expire in 2006, and whether the Legislature opts to renew it is an open question.

Should the Cottonwood Heights township cease to exist and the tax-rich commercial areas be annexed, Nicholl said the remaining island of residences — "the heart of Cottonwood Heights" — will never be viable as a city because they can't generate the necessary tax revenue.

"We have a window of opportunity," said state Sen. Carlene Walker, R-Cottonwood Heights.

No organized opposition group has materialized, and most people involved believe residents will vote in favor of Cottonwood Heights incorporation. Many attendees at several informational community meetings, for example, have asked about details of government after incorporation, not incorporation itself.

Residents will also vote on whether to have a council-mayor or council-city manager form of government, and whether council members are elected by district or at large.

Apart from taxes and form of government, there's the issue of the name — "Cottonwood Heights" is the latest moniker of an area known variously as Butler, Butlerville and even Poverty Flats.

"I just picked a name," Nicholl said. "We can change it later if we want."