MAPLETON — Small aircraft won't be landing or taking off on Maple Mountain in the near future.

Last week, the Mapleton City Council rejected Wendell Gibby's bid to build a private airstrip there.

Defeated but undaunted, Gibby said he will try again after the Utah Supreme Court rules in the case of a group of residents attempting to stop Gibby from developing more home sites on the mountain than originally allowed. Before the City Council changed the zoning to allow 47 homes, just 23 were permitted on an average of one per 3 acres.

City attorney Eric Johnson said because city ordinance doesn't specifically allow airstrips, they are prohibited. Additionally, if the council allowed an airstrip on the mountain, the residents group Friends of Maple Mountain could use it to bolster its case against the city for rezoning Gibby's property to allow a subdivision.

The crux of the Friends of Maple Mountain lawsuit against the city now before the Utah Supreme Court is whether the rezoning was administrative or legislative. If ruled administrative, the city wins and the rezone remains. If ruled a legislative action, the rezone could go to a referendum.

The council also rejected Gibby's attempt to rewrite a city hillside-preservation ordinance to allow him to modify slopes of 30 percent or greater. He argued that the city has no rules in the code to measure mountain slopes and that he was being singled out. City engineer Gary Calder disagreed.

A long line of residents voiced their objections to Gibby's proposals during a public hearing Nov. 4, demonstrating that the radiologist and developer has turned the community against him. Not only don't they want the mountain acreage turned into a subdivision, neighbors who live at the east end of Maple Street also object to the road Gibby is building between their houses to his property.

Gibby calls it a utility-access road, but residents say that's a ruse to build a road to his planned subdivision. The city has asked him to stop work several times, city planner Cory Branch said, but Gibby refuses. He has permission from Rocky Mountain Power to run a three-phase power line to a well, Branch said.

"It makes no sense," resident Diana Aldana said of the airstrip and Gibby's argument that small aircraft would make no more noise than a lawnmower at that distance.

The updrafts and downdrafts coming from mountain canyons would make taking off and landing dangerous, Aldana said.

As for the utility-access road, Lilly Graham said Gibby has turned the mountain next to her home into a gravel pit. Graham complained of the dust and shaking that has gone on for months.