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Mapleton • The city put the ball back in Wendell Gibby's court to end multiple lawsuits the developer has filed.
The council voted 4-1 late Tuesday night to rezone Gibby's 60 acres of Maple Mountain for development — with Gibby getting almost 10 extra acres on slopes he sought if he makes good on his promise to drop his litigation within a week.
"This motion is a step toward healing in this city," said a tired looking Councilman Ben Christensen.
Gibby offered to drop all his litigation against the city if he were allowed to have an extra 10 acres to build his 47 planned homes.
"How would you like to have the lawsuits dropped and we just walk away?" Gibby asked the council.
But city officials, while eager to put nearly a decade of costly litigation behind them once and for all, wanted more than just Gibby's word that he would drop the suits. Nor were they willing to accept Gibby's scrawled "This will end it all" on a map showing the additional acreage for his project.
"If you want to compromise, a verbal representation from you here does not mean anything from a legal perspective," said Councilman Jim Lundberg, who cast the only no vote.
Thursday afternoon, City Attorney Eric T. Johnson said he had sent Gibby's attorney a transcript of the council's meeting, with the council's proposal spelled out so a written agreement could be drafted.
M. Dayle Jeffs, Gibby's attorney, said he was reviewing the council proposal to see if it complied with the terms of the 2007 agrement.
The council earlier voted to modify the Residential Agriculture Zone to allow Gibby to develop his property. The council added requirements for additional setbacks near slopes, as well as allowed houses to be clustered on half-acre lots rather than the one-acre minimum.
But Gibby said his engineers determined that the 30-percent slope used to define the environmentally critical area was too extreme. Instead, he recommended a 58-percent slope, which was twice as steep.
The council agreed to make the concession on the slopes if Gibby drops the lawsuits.
Lundberg said letting Gibby build on steeper slopes than originally allowed opened the city to potential litigation if the slope fails and destroys houses.
The dispute dates back to 2001, when Gibby barricaded a path leading to the Bonneville Shoreline Trail across his property.
The action led to lawsuits between Gibby and Mapleton, a citation against Gibby for illegally plowing up the path and legislators sympathetic to Gibby threatening to rewrite eminent domain and environmental zoning laws on Gibby's behalf if the city didn't back down.
In 2007, the city and Gibby entered into an agreement in which Gibby would be allowed to build homes on the property in return for granting access to the trail and allowing a water line to be built across the land.
But Friends of Maple Mountain — led at that time by Lundberg — challenged the zoning that was created for Gibby, and sought to put it on the ballot.
A 4th District Court judge ruled that zoning ordinances were not subject to referendum, but it was overturned last year by the Utah Supreme Court.
Voters subsequently rejected the zoning, pushing the city back to the drawing board, which led to Tuesday's action.