West Bountiful city administrator Wendell Wild told council members he had met with the board's RDA attorney Craig Smith and consultant Randy Sant, among others. A formal report is pending, but Wild did offer a brief synopsis.
"They said that, at present, it would be hard for the RDA to step up the financial aid," he said, "and it would be some time before would be able to do that as an RDA board.
"The initial response is 'let's see what happens and then look down the road,'" Wild added. "'Let's get Phase I up and running. It's not the right time to say yea or nay.'"
In an earlier discussion that evening, West Bountiful pled its RDA case to area State Representative Roger Barrus. Wild, Mayor Carl Martin and, in turn, members of the council decried recently approved legislation removing the power of eminent domain from city sponsored RDAs.
"I don't think we could've brought 38 property owners to the table had we not had it waiting in the wings," commented council member James Behunin. "We didn't use it, but we still feel it was important to have it."
"We didn't use it and we didn't want to use," said Mayor Martin. "We worked hard to avoid using it. But, it was a factor."
"I think you got caught between the Wal-Mart-Ogden situation," Barrus said. "There were a lot of people up at the State Capitol who didn't like the idea of cities using eminent domain to acquire property for commercial projects."
Wild said the city should commend Barrus for his courage as he was only one of 14 representatives to vote against the removal of eminent domain.
"He represented his district," said Wild. "He voted how we asked him to."
bmickelson@davisclipper.com
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