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The notice rule protects the application's confidentiality; Trust Lands' Wellington notice named neither Valar nor any use

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2026-07-08 · csite-005 · Utah Trust Lands Administration, Carbon County Commission, Southeastern Regional Development Agency, Resource Development Coordinating Committee

Rule R850-30-500 requires Trust Lands, on accepting a special use lease application, to solicit competing interest by giving at least 30 days' notice by certified mail to the county's legislative body, lessees or permittees of record and adjoining landowners; it may add other methods. The notice must describe the land and its location, give the agency contact, and must also include any other information 'that may create interest in the subject property' that 'does not violate the confidentiality of the initial application'. R850-30-150 also requires lease proposals to go to the state Resource Development Coordinating Committee (RDCC). The memorandum says Trust Lands posted notices in the local newspaper and on its website, sent them to lessees, permittees and adjoining landowners 'per agency rule R-850-30-500', posted the proposal on the RDCC dashboard for 30 days and sent it to the Carbon County Commission and SERDA. The web notice (which Trust Lands' own site now marks as archived) matches this format: it says an application was received for Section 16 near Wellington and invites bids to lease, buy or exchange by 7 August 2026, naming no applicant or use; it points inquiries to the Southeastern Area Office in Monticello. The notice page itself records a publication date of 8 July 2026 (last modified 9 August), 30 days before the bid deadline. Because OBAs are exempt from R850-30 (csite-004), our reading is that this notice was given by choice rather than by requirement; the memo does not say. The certified-mail list, the newspaper's affidavit and the RDCC posting's recipients were not in the records read; a matching Trust Lands notice ran in ETV News on 15, 22 and 29 July 2026 (loc-032).

In plain termsWhat the notice told readers was limited: it said only that someone had applied for the land near Wellington, and invited competing bids. That matches the state's rule, which calls for extra details that may draw interest, but only ones that keep the application confidential. The rule requires notice by certified mail to the county commission, existing users of the land and neighboring landowners; Trust Lands says it also posted the notice in a local newspaper and on its website. So the silence about who and what fits the rule rather than departing from it. Whether people were fairly informed is a separate question from whether the rule was followed (csite-018).
verified 2026-10-02: Holds, with the plain text corrected (the certified-mail list is the rule's minimum, not the only notice) and the date set to the notice's posting. Re-read in late September 2026: rulebook R850-30-150, -305, -500; memo p. 20 ('Notice and Advertising'); the notice page's own published and modified dates (8 July and 9 August 2026, UTC). Quotes exact.

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