The County Commission meeting was packed on Tuesday with frustrated Kaysville residents asking the commissioners not to use the Davis County Emissions Center located in their city for a Code Blue Warming Center. The meeting is on the heels of a heated town hall in Fruit Heights last week when residents fought to keep a Warming Center from being located at the Mountain Road Church. Ultimately, the church pulled out amid complaints.

House Bill 499 passed in 2023 required the county to have a place for the unhoused to go on extremely cold days where temperatures drop to 18 degrees or below from Oct. 15-April 30.

The state approved three locations, the Clearfield Senior Center, Valley View Golf Course and the emissions center. All facilities are county owned. The plan is to pick up individuals at different locations in the county and bus them to one of the warming centers. They will stay the night then be taken back in the morning to the location they were picked up from.

However, Kaysville residents, including Mayor Tamara Tran, don't want it to be in their city out of concern for public safety. 

“We’re concerned about it becoming a long term (homeless) facility,” said Tran. “We have no reassurance that will not be the case. It doesn’t make sense here for short or long term.” 

Tran said the city is not against any individual (in the county). “It’s the process that’s frustrating. The process established by state law. Our intention is to unite the county and the community to do something. We care about these people. We don’t want them to freeze.”

A task force was created last year made up of seven mayors and one commissioner to address the requirements and submit a Code Blue only plan to the state by Aug. 1. The plan submitted was a Dignity bus with 20 spots. The state denied the plan a few days later due to lack of funding.

Tran was one of the mayors on the task force. “All seven mayors said let’s try it,” she said. “It has 20 beds instead of only 16 (at a warming center). We called cities from around the state as well as Canada who are using a Dignity bus.”

 It works, she said. “The bus gives them a place to sleep and be warm. There’s a toilet and kennels for animals. It only takes four weeks to deliver. It wasn’t supported by the county and not funded by the state. Now here we are.”

Kaysville does a lot for those in need, said Tran. “We’re in our eighth year of Kaysville GIVES to provide Christmas gifts to 140 local families and raise funds for Mercy Housing to get 500 beds for people in the shelter.”

“We’ve had a Code Blue but couldn’t respond because the church pulled out,” said Ryan Steinbeigle, Grant Administrator for Davis County. “The state approved the plan for the senior center, golf course and emissions center.”

The idea of it becoming a permanent shelter is untrue, he said. “It’s fear mongering going on. There have been no discussions about plans for it becoming a year round shelter. I’ve been in all of the discussions and it has not come up once – it just hasn’t. It’s just a Code Blue for this winter. It’s a warming center – that’s it.”

Davis County is mostly a bedroom community, said Steinbeigle. “Anywhere you put it will be near a community. The emissions center is over the railroad tracks and off I-15. It makes sense for us. The senior center is downtown and can operationally be converted to use. The golf course can be shut off from the pro shop and it has bathrooms, etc. That’s why we offered these three buildings because they could operate logistically so it makes sense.”

Steinbeigle said they haven’t received a single call or email from residents in Layton or Clearfield. “Only people in Kaysville have sent emails and called. Both of those other cities have sites.”

“We’re going to continue to stand strong,” Tran told the commissioners. “This is not the place for it (warming center). Kaysville is absolutely opposed.”

“The state has dictated what we have to do,” said Commission Chair Bob Stevenson. “There are a lot of questions to be answered. We’ve been listening to you all along. This is by far the hardest issue we’ve dealt with.”

As of press time, Steinbeigle said the county is moving ahead with its plan to use the emissions center as one of the warming center locations. λ