If one man gets his way, three members of the Alta Town Council will get the boot.

That man, Mark Haik, has complained to the attorney general and Salt Lake County district attorney that those three council members do not live in Alta. They split their time between apartments or second homes in Alta and houses in the Salt Lake Valley, Haik said in his complaint earlier this month.

Yet, the town maintains that all its elected officials are legally cleared to hold office, and it appears that state law supports that assessment.

Haik, who did not return phone calls Thursday, wrote in his complaint that town councilors Steve Gilman and Paul Moxley and mayor-elect Tom Pollard do not live in Alta. They have part-time houses or apartments in the town's boundaries, but they live at houses elsewhere, the complaint said.

"Frequently the persons engaged in this activity have a bed in which they may stay overnight in the canyon during severe weather episodes, but this does not constitute a residence under the law," the complaint said. "They live elsewhere with their wives and children."

Thom Roberts, an assistant attorney general who works on election matters for the lieutenant governor's office, said that Utah law allows people to vote in places they do not claim as primary residences on their taxes. The key, he said, was that a person can vote there as long as he or she intends to return to the house in that voting precinct.

"Basically, you're looking at the person's principle place of residence — the habitation, fixed, to which whenever he is absent, he has the intention of returning," Roberts said, quoting Utah municipal government and elections law.

Anyone can own more than one home, obviously, but that person can vote only at one precinct, said Paul Thompson, Alta town attorney. The house that person claims as a primary residence for taxes does not have to be the same house at which the person votes.

"If somebody wants to declare a Sandy residence as a voting residence, but wants to use a St. George residence as their primary tax exemption, is that allowable?" Thompson said. "Yes, they're not inconsistent (with state law). That is the case in a couple of instances that they take the residential exemption on one property but they maintain the other property as their voting residence.

"As long as they have that and they've never abandoned that apartment as their residence, they can continue to use that as their voting district."

Moxley said that even with a house in Salt Lake County, he meets the residency requirements.

"I clearly meet the residency requirements as spelled out in the law," Moxley said. "There's no ifs, ands or buts."

The district attorney's office forwarded the complaint to the town.

"These are their people," said Dahnelle Burton-Lee, the deputy district attorney who is handling Haik's complaint. "These are their issues."

Thompson said he is preparing a response for Burton-Lee's and Roberts' offices in which he plans to cite the state law about residency requirements that Roberts quoted.

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E-mail: kswinyard@desnews.com