Letter: City council rules on inland port are an exercise in futility
Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune Carlos Braceras, Inland Port Authority board member and Executive Director of the Department of Transportation confers with James Rogers, Salt Lake City Council member, Sept. 26, 2018. Before the Inland Port board met Wednesday, a coalition of community, environmental and civic organizations have raised a separate transparency issue, noting that the group’s proposed half-page budget lacks specificity. The coalition wants to see the board acknowledge concern within the community, provide more details about its budget and fund an investigation into potential environmental harms from development of the port.
The Salt Lake City Council recently approved several “new rules” concerning the inland port. The Utah Legislature has seized about one-fourth of the land area of Salt Lake City and given it to the Inland Port Authority. It is not all empty land, containing large business areas.
The new rules of the City Council are an exercise in futility because the board of the inland port, consisting of 11 members (nine of whom do not live in Salt Lake City), has by law the ultimate authority to override and reject anything the city proposes.
The Inland Port Authority was created this year by the Republican-dominated Legislature at the last moment when few members knew of its purposes. It is nothing more than a land grab that will divert tax revenues to the state rather than to the city, create enormous environmental problems (particularly air pollution), make some people rich and punish Salt Lake City for its Democratic tendencies.
The proponents of the inland port call it the biggest economic opportunity in the history of the state of Utah. And as more than a million people of the Salt Lake Valley, including children, suffer from inversions of deadly air both winter and summer, there are some who will make a tidy profit. The people of Salt Lake City and County need to learn more about this development and put a stop to it.
James King, Salt Lake City
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