the Tale of 7 notebooks

by Kathy bence

“It was the best of times it was the worst of times,” Charles Dickens

Sometimes it’s not good to dredge up old times, but sometimes it seems relevant and perhaps offers some history to learn from.

Some history

Back in 2022, I was contacted by some Leeds’ residents who were concerned about abuse of a public lands acquisition act by for-profit developers. The acquisition was being sponsored by Toquerville City. The Leeds’ residents had seen me on YouTube when I commented in a city council meeting and figured I might be interested.

They were not just concerned about the public lands abuse, they were also concerned about the developer. This developer had multiple bankruptcies and other legal problems. The Leed’s residents saw the possibility that the land would be graded and the project never finished. As a Toquerville resident, living in the city where this would be built, we obviously shared a common concern.

The developer had a memorandum of understanding to work with Toquerville and the city was doing the sponsorship of the public lands acquistion.

The notebooks

One of these Leeds’ residents is very skilled at researching and she found public records about this developer. My husband and I paid for copying the material and we bought notebooks to hold the public records. There were enough notebooks for the city council, the city manager, and the city attorney.

Because there was so much material in these notebooks, the information pertinent to Toquerville was underlined. We believed informing the city of this situation was an important service and these notebooks represented a great amount of time and money.

trying to share

We tried to get on the agenda and present this information at a Toquerville city council meeting. At the last minute we were denied that opportunity so we did our best to share some of the information that was in the notebooks during the public comments at the April 22, 2022 council meeting. We obviously couldn’t share much in the 3 minutes allotted. I requested (and it can be viewed here) that the information in the notebooks be entered into the public record. Again, that was denied.

This article ran in the Salt Lake Tribune on May 16, 2022 following the April 22 city council meeting.

We handed out the notebooks at this April 22, 2022 meeting. However, the city attorney at the time said he would need to review the material before the city council was allowed to see it.

A partial Ending

Perhaps you’re familiar with the end of the story: the Athletic Recreational Sports Complex (ARC) was never built. But you’re likely not familiar with what happened to the 7 notebooks.

For more than a year, prior to knowing that the massive complex would not be built, we asked about our notebooks. We asked why the city council couldn’t see them? Which law prohibits a city council from seeing public documents assembled by their constituents? Why did the Toquerville attorney seem to want these notebooks censored? How did Toquerville get this far with this development project and with this developer? Why didn’t the city council at the time require the Toquerville attorney to let them review the information in the notebooks?

In their defense, some city council members researched on their own and discovered the same public documents that were in the notebooks, but we were still left with our questions.

empty notebooks

The end of the notebook story is that, after more than a year and many requests, the notebooks were finally returned. But to our dismay the notebooks were empty. We were told that the Toquerville attorney had made a decision to destroy the contents of the notebooks.

As I sat in the January 15 city council meeting, I heard Heath Snow representing Firelight as their attorney. For many years, he was Toquerville’s attorney. While he recused himself during discussions about Firelight, he was the attorney for Firelight while serving as our city attorney.

ask questions

Heath Snow was also the city attorney who confiscated our notebooks. I was grateful during this January 2025 meeting that our city council was asking questions and not giving into his requests on behalf of Firelight. I don’t know why in the public meetings in 2022 the council did not question him about the notebooks and what they contained.

Perhaps the difference is that at the time of the notebooks in 2022, Heath Snow was Toquerville’s attorney. Maybe council members assume that lawyers representing the city should never be questioned. It’s a fair question, a question I don’t know the answer to. The result is that, unlike a Dicken’s novel, this 7 notebooks story has a rather vague ending.