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Willard leaders debate stay limits, enforcement for RV parks; staff to rewrite ordinance
Summary
Willard City Council and the Planning Commission discussed whether to treat campsites as short-term campgrounds or long-term RV parks, considered options ranging from keeping a 90‑day limit to allowing year- or 18‑month stays with exceptions, and directed staff to revise the city code and conditional‑use permit language for clearer enforcement.
At a Willard City work session, council members, planning commissioners and the operator of a local campground debated whether local regulations should treat facilities such as Willard Peak Campground as short‑term campgrounds or as long‑term RV parks, and directed city staff to draft clearer ordinance language and to revise conditional‑use permit conditions.
The discussion focused on how long a vehicle or RV may remain at a single site, enforcement mechanisms and whether changes would encourage or discourage more properties to operate as RV parks. City Attorney Colton told the group, “Our ordinance calls it an RV park. A mobile home park is very different by federal law,” stressing the legal distinction between mobile home parks and RV/campground uses.
Why it matters: the city’s current standard — commonly described in the meeting as a 90‑day maximum stay — is viewed by many participants as outdated for operations that mix short‑term tourism and longer seasonal or year‑round residents. How the city defines and enforces stay limits affects land use, tax treatment (transient/overnight taxes apply to stays under 30 days), police workload and whether commercial property near Willard Bay is used for tourism or longer‑term lodging.
Council and commission members discussed several options rather than taking a final vote. Proposed approaches included keeping a rolling 90‑day rotation, extending the maximum to 365 days, adopting an 18‑month cap, allowing no fixed limit but requiring periodic rotation or other management actions, and creating a formal extension process with documented grounds (for example, work or medical necessity). One speaker suggested an explicit rule that after a capped stay the occupant must leave the entire property for a set period rather than simply moving to a different site on the same property.
Operators and managers described onsite controls and business realities. The owner of the campground, who identified himself during the meeting as the property owner, said longer stays make the business more sustainable. A manager who identified herself as a manager at Liberty Campground described written terms and enforcement steps the business uses: "If for any reason law enforcement is brought onto the property ... they will be removed from the park," and said the campground performs background checks for stays longer than 30 days and enforces a repeated‑move policy. She added, "we will always be moving people every 90 days," as a routine management practice built into their contracts.
Staff and several elected officials flagged enforcement and monitoring as central concerns. City staff noted that the conditional‑use permit for the subject campground includes a compliance timeline and that the permit’s conditions currently reference older code language. The conditional‑use permit language reviewed at the meeting requires the campground to come into compliance with length‑of‑stay rules within an 18‑month period (referencing Willard City ordinance 12‑5‑04, paragraph 1, as discussed in the session). Staff recommended cleaning up the conditional‑use language so it does not reference obsolete code and suggested incorporating the operator’s written rules into enforceable conditions where appropriate.
Participants also discussed enforcement models used elsewhere. A staff member described Brigham City’s lodging ordinance, which uses a tiered system that monitors calls for police and emergency service responses; properties that exceed defined thresholds face stepped enforcement and ultimately can lose a business license. Council members said similar objective thresholds, logs and a tiered penalty system could give the city teeth to require compliance without leaving enforcement decisions solely to property owners.
Tax and fiscal implications were raised. Council members noted that stays shorter than 30 days trigger the state transient (overnight) tax, which the city receives in bulk, while longer stays generate utility and facility fees that do not replace the broader property tax base associated with permanent homes. That fiscal question figured into several members’ views about whether the city should encourage more RV park uses on commercially zoned land.
Outcome and next steps: the council and planning commissioners did not adopt ordinance changes at the meeting. Instead, they asked staff to draft ordinance language and to revise conditional‑use permit language so the rules are clear, enforceable and not tied to outdated code references. Staff indicated they would incorporate the feedback — including options for maximum stays, possible extension criteria, storage/permanent‑structure limits and enforcement mechanisms such as logs or a tiered response system — and bring a revised draft back to the commission and council. The meeting adjourned by motion at the end of the session.
