Most towns start with people. People move into an area. More homes get built. Businesses open. Roads get busier. Eventually, the residents decide they want their own local government, so they go through the process of becoming a city or town. They elect a mayor and council, and those people make decisions about zoning, taxes, roads and future growth.

Utah’s preliminary municipality law does things in a very different order.

It allows a small group of property owners to begin creating a town before there is much of a town at all. There may be no neighborhoods, no voters, and very few residents. Even so, the landowners can gain authority over decisions that would normally belong to a county, city, or town. That may sound like a narrow government issue, but it has become a big one in Wasatch County.

Two preliminary municipality applications submitted in Utah during 2026 involved property here. The proposals are known as Bear Canyon and Wasatch Highlands. Both have raised questions about development, housing, infrastructure and local control. The simplest version of the issue is this: Who should get to decide what gets built in Wasatch County?

I asked Wasatch County Manager Dustin Grabau to explain. Grabau is not arguing that Wasatch County should stop growing. That would be unrealistic. The county is already growing, and that growth is expected to continue. His concern is that the preliminary municipality process allows major decisions to be made before the people most affected by them have much of a voice.

“The difference with a preliminary municipality is that three or fewer landowners can start this process, and they are granted land-use authority before the town is incorporated,” Grabau said. “Elections would not be held until long after construction is complete and the town formally incorporates.” That is the part of the law that takes a minute to get your head around. A town can begin taking shape before the townspeople show up.

What exactly is a preliminary municipality?

The easiest way to picture it is as a town being built from the ground up, including its government. It is not yet a normal town with an elected mayor, council, and residents who vote. Instead, the landowners create a temporary governing structure while the property is being developed. That structure can make decisions about zoning, density and land use.

The law does include requirements. No more than three people or business entities may own the land. At least half of the area must be undeveloped. The owners must show that the future town is expected to reach at least 100 residents, and at least 10 percent of the planned housing must qualify as affordable under the law.

The application goes through the lieutenant governor’s office. State officials review whether it meets the legal standards, and a consultant prepares a feasibility study.

The study does not decide whether the project is a good fit for the area, whether the roads can handle it, whether the county’s general plan supports it or whether nearby residents like it. The study is mostly about money. It evaluates whether the future town can generate enough revenue to cover its operating costs. “It’s not a study on if or how the town would be built,” Grabau said.

That is an important distinction. The state is being asked whether the town could pay its bills if it does move forward. If the financial numbers work, the project can proceed through public hearings and the remaining incorporation process. Those hearings allow people to speak, but they do not work the same way a normal county land-use hearing would. Residents can object. County officials can raise concerns. Neither side has the power to vote the project down.

Why would the state create something like this?

The reason is housing. Utah has grown quickly, and home prices have climbed along with that growth. State lawmakers have spent years trying to find ways to build more homes. One of their arguments is that cities and counties make construction too difficult through zoning restrictions, long approval processes, and local opposition.

From that perspective, a preliminary municipality is a way around the bottleneck. The landowners do not have to rely entirely on the county’s existing planning process. They can create a future town and make many of the development decisions themselves. Supporters would say that means more homes, faster approvals, and less red tape.

Grabau understands what the Legislature is trying to accomplish. However, he does not believe these projects will solve the housing problem the way supporters suggest.

“There is a requirement for some affordable units,” he said. “But the idea that building several hundred more homes that will cost in excess of $1 million to construct will somehow become attainable to the general public is a farce.”

The wording is blunt, but the point is easy to understand. Building more homes is not always the same as building homes people can afford

Grabau said Wasatch County already has enough approved housing to accommodate the growth the state projects through 2060. He argues that the main problem is not a lack of permission to build. It is what developers choose to build once they have that permission. The most profitable homes are often the expensive ones. “No amount of building high-end homes helps those trying to take their first step on the housing ladder,” he said.

Why the county is worried

Wasatch County already has a growth plan. The county’s general plan looks at where development should go, how dense it should be, and what infrastructure will be needed. It takes into account roads, water, sewer capacity, wildfire risk, wildlife habitat, watersheds, emergency services, and the effect development will have on nearby communities.

I asked Grabau how the preliminary municipality process fits into that plan.

“It ignores it,” he said.

That answer says a lot in three words.

A preliminary municipality is not simply another development coming to the county for approval. It creates a separate government that can make decisions outside much of the county’s normal planning process. Both Bear Canyon and Wasatch Highlands involve land the county had planned for less intensive development. County officials have raised concerns about water, wildlife, watersheds, and infrastructure that was never designed for another large population center.

Developers would be responsible for much of the infrastructure inside their own project. But new residents do not stay inside the project boundary. They use regional roads. Their children attend schools. They call police, fire departments, and paramedics. They use water and sewer systems. Employees and customers travel in and out every day.

“Regional roads outside the project would have no means of funding improvements, potentially requiring county or city funding,” Grabau said.

The county’s concern is what happens when those protections meet the real world.

A company can be legally responsible for fixing a problem, but that does not help much if the company runs out of money. “When projects fail, companies go bankrupt, and there’s no one left standing but the local government to pick up the pieces,” Grabau said.

If a project stalled with unfinished roads, inadequate services, or major infrastructure problems, the county could be left choosing between letting the problems sit or using public money to fix them. From the county’s perspective, that’s a significant potential responsibility for a project it had no authority to approve.

There is another side to the argument.

People who own land have rights. The Government should not be able to make property essentially useless through endless delays and restrictions. Counties can also be frustrating to work with. Planning takes time. Public meetings can drag on. It is not unusual to hear people say they support more housing, followed immediately by a long explanation of why it should be built somewhere else.

That is the strongest case for the preliminary municipality law. It gives property owners another option when they believe local government is blocking reasonable development. The difficulty is that large developments do not affect only the person who owns the land. They affect traffic, water use, views, wildfire risk, and public services. One person’s property rights eventually run into someone else’s.

The normal planning process is supposed to work through those conflicts. It is not fast, and it is not always pleasant, but it gives the public a place in the process and puts the final decision in the hands of elected officials. Grabau believes this law pushes the balance too far toward the original landowners.

“The process usurps the balance by favoring a small number of private property rights—one to three people—by granting them the ability to ignore the impacts to and input of their neighbors, with no means of holding the decision-makers accountable,” he said.

His argument is not that landowners should have no say. It is that they should not be the only people with real power in the room.

Where Things Stand and What Happens Next

Bear Canyon was proposed near Sundance in Provo Canyon. The application initially moved forward, but the state later found that the proposed land did not meet Utah’s requirement that the property be geographically connected, halting the current application. The sponsors may still have a chance to fix the problem and submit a revised version. Wasatch Highlands has progressed further and is now in the feasibility-study stage.

Wasatch County opposes both the law and the level of development proposed in these areas, particularly because the process bypasses the county’s general plan. Grabau said the County Council intends to call for the law’s repeal. For residents who want to weigh in, the most important action may happen at the Utah Capitol. The county cannot repeal a state law or reject a project simply because local officials believe it is a bad idea.

At first, this looks like an argument about housing. It is really an argument about who gets to make decisions. Who decides where growth belongs? Who decides how much is too much? Who gets heard when a project affects roads, water, and public services? And who is responsible if the plan falls apart?

Grabau helped separate the issue from the political noise around it. His position is not that growth should stop or that private property rights do not matter. It is that decisions this large should involve the people who will have to live with them.

The preliminary municipality law may make development easier. The bigger question is whether it makes development wiser.