By Bill Hardesty | [email protected]

New South Salt Lake City council district boundaries were approved at the April 27 city council meeting. This action was required based on the 2020 census numbers.

“We had two main goals,” Josh Collins, SSL city attorney, said. “To have an equal population in each district and have current council members stay in their district.”

With the new boundaries, both goals were achieved.

Old boundaries

According to the 2022 Census, the city’s districts looked like this:

District	Council Member	Population
1	LeAnne Huff	5387
2	Corey Thomas	4615
3	Sharla Bynum	4075
4	Portia Mila	4867
5	Shane Siwik	7833

 

New boundaries

Collins explained the district numbers are based on census data. It has nothing to do with registered voters.

The 2020 census puts the South Salt Lake population at 26,777. When split across five districts, the goal is to have 5355 residents in each district.

“So, district one is pretty close already. But you can see that district three is very low compared to that number, district two, also district four, but then district five is well above that based on the census population number,” Collins said.

The new boundaries numbers are:

District	Council Member	Population
1	LeAnne Huff	5387
2	Corey Thomas	5368
3	Sharla Bynum	5376
4	Portia Mila	5374
5	Shane Siwik	5272

 

This action resulted in councilmember Siwik going from the largest district to the smallest district. It also means that district one stays the same.

District two takes part of the area south of 3300 South from district five. District two loses part of the east area north of 300 South to district three.

District three no longer dips past 3300 South between 300 East and 500 East. This area is now part of district four.

District four takes a bite out of district five’s old boundary, working its way west to State Street. In turn, district five takes a bite from district four between 3900 South and Fenton Avenue.

The best way to determine your district is to use the city’s interactive map on the city’s website at https://sslc.gov/Enter your address, and the map shows your district.

Referendum Update

Two referendums were filed with the city in March. Referendum 2022-06 focuses on the raises given to SSL elected officials. Referendum 2022-05 refers to the stormwater utility fee passed by the city council.

On April 5, the city rejected Referendum 2022-06 based on the belief that the referendum refers to two city ordinances. According to state law, a referendum can only be related to one ordinance. Sponsors appealed to the Utah Supreme Court.

“We got word on Monday [May 16] that the Utah Supreme Court is going to be hearing oral arguments in the case, and they are working on scheduling this,” said Timothy Webb, founder of the local political action committee called POET (Promising Oversight, Equity and Transparency).

Due to this pending action, the mayor earmarked $25,000 for a special election in November.

The city also rejected referendum 2022-05 on May 20 because the ordinance passed on March 23 set the stormwater utility fee, which was administrative, not legislative.

“The challenged action is administrative in nature because it merely implements ordinance number 2021-17 passed by the South Salt Lake Council on October 27, 2021,” Collins wrote in his rejection letter.

The October 27 ordinance created the stormwater utility fee. The March 23 ordinance determined the rate.

“There were arguments on both sides in precedence, but after discussing it with our council, we decided to focus our efforts on the raise referendum. People should see the tax increase shortly,” Webb said.