School plan opposed

AMERICAN FORK — About 40 Eagle Mountain residents packed an Alpine School District meeting Tuesday, furious over tentative plans to build a school in their equestrian-friendly subdivision.

Administrators with the 56,000-student district are considering building an elementary school for 850 students in the Cedar Pass Ranch subdivision, in the Ranches area of Eagle Mountain.

But subdivision residents do not want a school in the neighborhood and cite homeowner association codes that prohibit a school in the area. They have hired an attorney. The residents spoke with members of the Board of Education before Tuesday's regularly scheduled meeting.

The Cedar Pass Ranch subdivision has 124 developed lots, each of which is between four and eight acres in size. The subdivision is home to 224 large livestock, 80 percent of which are horses.

The area has narrow streets without sidewalks.

If horses, school buses and other traffic associated with the proposed school are mixed in with schoolchildren, an accident is bound to happen, residents say.

The school district wants to purchase two neighboring houses on the southeast corner of the subdivision, one for $675,000 and one for $875,000, Alpine District business administrator Rob Smith said.

District administrators have signed an agreement with property owners, and the Board of Education has approved the deal.

"We have not yet closed," Smith said.

The subdivision's homeowners association (HOA) has had strict rules since it formed in 1995: no apartments, no condos, only one residence per lot.

The HOA has rejected in the past The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints' request to build in the subdivision, HOA president Brett Wright said.

Attorney Curtis Kimble, who is representing the HOA, said he's researching the answer to the legal question, "Can government come in and can they not be subject to these codes?" The school district, too, is exploring whether it can ignore HOA codes, Smith said.

Alpine Superintendent Vern Henshaw told residents he spoke with the city's mayor and manager about plans to build a school in the subdivision because he thought they would know about planning and zoning.

"I didn't anticipate as big of an issue," Smith said.

The new school would provide relief to crowded local schools and keep up with growth in northwest Utah County.