Cottonwood to vote on city status

COTTONWOOD HEIGHTS — Residents here will go to the polls Tuesday to decide whether they want to form a city, and incorporation sponsor Gordon Nicholl is sanguine about the results.

"The meetings have been going really well," he said of a series of community gatherings to inform residents about incorporation. "We've had very good, positive response."

Should residents decide to incorporate, the area of 34,500 people between Holladay, Sandy and Midvale — known at various times as Poverty Flats, Butler, Butlerville and finally Cottonwood Heights — would draw its tax base from the Cottonwood Corporate Center, five grocery stores, three large "box" stores (Target, Circuit City and Home Depot), Union Park Office Plaza, the Old Mill II Office Complex and other businesses along Fort Union Boulevard and Highland Drive.

It cost the county $9.9 million in 2002 to supply Cottonwood Heights with municipal services (police, fire, garbage collection, etc.), with the area generating $11.6 million per year in municipal services fund revenue, according to an incorporation feasibility study.

"Our commercial tax base is extremely viable," says a Web site, www.cottonwoodheightscity.org, set up by incorporation proponents. They maintain that taxes should remain at current levels, but concede that higher taxes are a possibility if the area becomes a city.

Incorporation proponents say they want to become a city primarily for two reasons:

With a township law protecting them from annexation by neighboring communities due to expire in 2006, proponents say Sandy, Midvale and Holladay will gobble up Cottonwood Heights' commercial areas, leaving residents orphaned of their tax base and destroying the area's identity, unless they take action now.

"There is going to be change anyway," said community activist Kelley Bollinger, "and we should be able to be in control of our own community."

Proponents also say they want to make their own planning and zoning decisions, instead of giving the county the final say.

"It was very frustrating to have community meetings where we would get feedback from the community," Bollinger said. "We would give that information to the county and they would do whatever they wanted anyway."

Among other things, residents have been upset about the proliferation of billboards along Union Park Avenue. (The County Council is now considering a new billboard ordinance.)

In addition to incorporation, residents will vote on the form of government they want (council, council-mayor, council-manager) and whether council members would be elected by district or at large.

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