Taxation without representation was the battle cry of colonial America’s war for independence.
Representation is also one of the drivers of the incorporate Stansbury Park movement, according to Wade Hadlock, the prime sponsor of the petition to incorporate the community.
Around 10 Stansbury Park residents attended a meeting Wednesday night at the Stansbury Park Clubhouse to hear Hadlock answer questions about incorporation.
Hadlock started by explaining why he started pushing for incorporation.
“After attending various public meetings over the 13 years I’ve lived here, I came to the conclusion that Stansbury Park would be better off if it were incorporated,” he told the group. “We just don’t have a seat at the table where decisions about our community are being made.”
The county’s master plan for Stansbury Park lacks vision, zoning decisions are made for Stansbury by people who don’t have to live with those decisions, and transportation planning doesn’t include the needs of Stansbury Park, according to Hadlock.
“Incorporated, we would have a legal entity to represent us,” he said. “We would also have people from Stansbury Park making our zoning decisions and hiring our planning staff.”
Questioned about the cost of running a new government, Hadlock admitted that a city would be another layer of government.
“Stansbury residents already pay taxes to six different entities for municipal services,” he said. “The county alone takes $3 million a year out of the municipal services fund for administrative expenses. Our administrative costs would be a lot less than that.”
Past efforts to incorporate Stansbury Park fizzled out because residents were afraid that without a lot of businesses in the community, the tax base would require a high property tax rate for residences, according to Hadlock.
Sales tax and road tax dollars are also allocated to cities based in part on population, so the newly formed city of Stansbury Park would receive those taxes in addition to property tax, he said.
An incorporation feasibility study for Stansbury Park, completed by an independent consultant in 2014, found that initially, Stansbury Park residents would pay a higher tax rate to cover municipal services. However, by 2019 property owners in Stansbury Park would pay the same amount of property tax that they would have paid if the community did not incorporate.
Incorporation is the answer to growing Stansbury Park’s tax base, according to Hadlock.
“The city would be able to promote economic growth and give us better control over what kind of businesses we attract to our community,” he said.
The sponsors of Stansbury Park’s incorporation petition have until Feb. 6, 2016 to collect the required 437 signatures to put the incorporation question on an election ballot.
Right now signature gatherers have collected about half of the required signatures, but an earnest door-to-door signature campaign has not been mounted yet, according to Hadlock.
Petition signers must be registered voters that reside in the boundaries of the proposed city.
Once on the ballot, the incorporation issue will be presented to voters in Stansbury Park in the form of three questions.
Voters will be asked to vote yes or no on incorporation.
They will then be asked to choose from a list of options the form of government they prefer for the new city if incorporation is approved.
The final ballot question will ask voters if they want city council members to be elected at-large or by districts.
Hadlock has two more informal meetings planned to discuss the incorporation of Stansbury Park. They will be held on July 14 and 30 at 7 p.m. at the Stansbury Park Clubhouse.