The Sandy City Planning Commission met on April 16, 2026, for an executive session on recent state land use changes followed by a regular meeting that included five annexation recommendations, two preliminary subdivision reviews, and a conditional use permit decision. All items were approved unanimously.
Oh no. All right, everybody. Welcome, welcome. Today for our executive session, we have our city attorney, Darien Alcorn, who will be presenting to us on recent state land use changes that will affect this body as well as the city and other stations around us. But we're gonna get an overview of some of those things and uh some of the code amendments that will be coming to a planning commission meeting near you as well. Wow. Oh, really, Darren? So I tried to start with what I thought would be the most interesting for you. It's a really really long bill. And um hopefully I have enough to fill all the plan we need to fill. There just is no way. I don't know how you read actually, but yeah. Sorry, A, I'm not that creative, and B, it's you know, a really long on the best landy bill. Okay. Um I did try to put like the most fun stuff first. So they uh the state legislature decided that we need in our code a uh ordinance that establishes the planning commission procedures for removing a planning commission member, which I don't think we have in there right now. Okay, yeah. And then there, and then also requirements for when a planning commissioner recuses the um recuses themselves, and we do already have that in your bylaws. I think we adopted that not that long ago. Um, but they wanted the planning commissioner removal to include some specific reasons, and those reasons are using public funds for a floatal purpose, so I'm thinking that means like maybe if you're campaigning and sound in another city. Public funds, yeah. Um violating the municipal officers and employees ethics act, which you guys already get training on and know about and are aware of, and I don't know that we've ever we've always thought that it applied, but I guess now if you don't follow it, you can actually get removed. Cool. Um, yes. But you can also voluntarily so you don't have the ethic violation just because you want to leave, right? Um and then if you're acting with the intent to influence a land use decision, and then this is a quote because I'm not really entirely sure what it means, or did I think anyone who I've talked about it with exactly me in a manner that creates actual impermissible bias or an unacceptable risk of impermissible bias. Um I would think any bias would be impermissible, but it's not biased based on like your knowledge and your expertise and your experience, right? It's that you can predetermine in advance that there's some reason why you need to make a certain decision a certain way, and you're biased against that application for some different reason other than um yes. That would if you if you got abroad, that would be the impermissible bias. So I'm not entirely sure what that means, but uh you shouldn't act in a manner that creates actual impermissible bias. So maybe it's that you probably shouldn't be lobbying your other members of the commission before the meeting, telling them how bad the project is and those sorts of things. Um and then if you are acting in your administrative or your place judicial role. Both of those functions are functions you might be doing and where the information bias isn't allowed. So our next one is so then I went second into maybe I did. Oh no, the second one I did was training, because I knew how much you loved training. And so I wanted to tell you that they did not change your annual annual training requirement. It's still four hours. Yes, we can carry over the excess computer. Right. So next year we have like cumulative hours. The word annually actually is in there. Um you can still get one hour credit for attending as an appointed member 12 public meetings of the planning commission within a calendar year. That wasn't revised. And now that the other requirement for the general powers and duties was fine-tuned to include the role of the planning commission and administrative, legislative, and quasi traditional function. So before I think we were just doing a general powers, just kind of a broad one. Now that general powers has to talk about the role of the planning commission in these three uh functions, and then the other three hours now have two new topics that could be included. One is ex partake communication, and one is conflict of interest as potential topics. There's a pretty long list of topics, and so now there are two new exciting topics because you know before ex parte communication was allowed, it was just a satellite. Um this was the big chunk of what was done in SB 284 was detached accessory dwelling units, and it actually is gonna be effective in October of this year. So the city doesn't have a really long time to do its new ordinances that are required under this legislation because they have to be done by October 1st.