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KAYSVILLE — A popular shooting range is now closed to the public, as a contract between Davis County and a volunteer organization that runs the range ends Saturday without anyone to manage the site.
Davis County Auditor Curtis Koch and his team conducted a performance audit of the contract between the county and the Wahsatch Shooters Association, finding discrepancies between the agreed-upon terms and how the range was managed.
Kim Leavitt, association president, said the audit "lacks any semblance of objectivity" and was "aggressively one-sided with a pre-determined goal of eliminating (Wahsatch Shooters Association) which has diligently served the community and county."
The Wahsatch Shooters group has overseen the shooting range for almost four decades, Leavitt told KSL.com. They are an all-volunteer organization, made up 120 range officers, who receive access to the range in return for their time — which totaled 5,280 hours last year.
An estimated 2,800 to 3,600 members of the public use the range every year.
It regularly hosted Boy Scouts and church groups for free, and has encouraged female participation in firearms training, which, according to Leavitt, has doubled in the past 10 years.
"They had no humility, no gratitude for what we've done," Leavitt said.
The range has been run through a scheduled system that allows law enforcement to train on certain days, while other times are reserved for the public, with some overlap.
In the past two years, Leavitt said the association's points of communication with the Davis County Sheriff's Office have been removed, causing conflicts between range officers and law enforcement to escalate. The audit confirmed that "the county has done a poor job of overseeing and administering the shooting range," with no one providing oversight of the contract or communication with the range.
Lack of communication has led to conflicts, as officers and their families have tried to use the range during public shooting hours, and range officers during law enforcement hours, resulting in a "potentially complex liability scenario," according to the audit, where the range's public insurance and the county's insurance become mixed.
"It became clear that the entities involved have at times very different goals and objectives for the shooting range," according to the audit, with Davis County asserting that the primary role of the range is for law enforcement training, while the shooting association balances the needs of their volunteers and public gun users.
Layton, North Salt Lake, Syracuse, Kaysville, Farmington, Bountiful, Clearfield and Sunset police officers use the range for training, as well as officers with Utah Adult Probation and Parole, Davis County Attorney's Office, Utah Division of Natural Resources, Federal Protective Service, Internal Revenue Service, Dept. of Defense, U.S. Customs, U.S. Treasury and Hill Air Force Base, according to the Davis County Sheriff's Office.
Beginning this year, the sheriff's office will also be training school guardians and other employees of the Davis County School District.
Law enforcement uses the range for free, so all revenues to maintain the facility pay for the public's liability insurance, bathrooms, electricity, gas in the winter and other costs are gathered from public use. Leavitt estimates $10,000 a year is spent subsidizing the law enforcement's need for targets and other materials.
It's been a really good program, and we've done everything we've been asked to do by the sheriff. ... I feel like the wife who put her husband through medical school, and then when he became a doctor, ran off with the nurse.
–Kim Leavitt, Wahsatch Shooters Association president
When police departments "leave a mess," Leavitt says the volunteers pick it up so the public can have clean bays. He said his group was happy to do it because it had a good working relationship.
Some public shooting times overlap with law enforcement training times, but Leavitt says this has not been an issue until recently. The audit and the sheriff's office, however, have been clear that the new contract should limit public usage to weekends, with no overlap.
"We can't keep the range going on two days a week," Leavitt said. Losing access to the range, the primary recruitment method for range officers would leave the association with a shortage of volunteers, which saves the county money in personnel costs.
Significant financial questions were raised in the audit about the organization's management of the range. The audit found the shooters association had let its nonprofit corporation registration lapse in August 2013, registering it again after the audit began, in May 2024. The association had not paid any taxes to the IRS for the last five years, according to the audit, and there was no way to track revenue due to poor bookkeeping.
The contract obligated the association to use 80% of its public revenue toward improvements on the range, but it was clear that the county and the association had different ideas about what that meant. As a result, the sheriff's office said the county "missed significant opportunities for improvement."
Leavitt says the association was "strung along for two years" and pushed out, despite decades of volunteer service, so new law enforcement personnel could have full access to the range.
A team from Davis County was asked to try to extend the contract through Dec. 31, according to a press release, to seek proposals from "interested parties, which may include Wahsatch Shooters" to operate the shooting range.
The Wahsatch Shooters was not interested in the terms presented, because the option Davis County gave "was not financially viable and it would not be possible to staff it on such terms, thus forcing WSA to take the closure option," according to the association's website.
"It's been a really good program, and we've done everything we've been asked to do by the sheriff," Leavitt said. "I feel like the wife who put her husband through medical school, and then when he became a doctor, ran off with the nurse."
The association is trying to use the last of its revenue and a prorated return from its canceled insurance policy to give members a refund on membership dues already paid; though, it might only be a partial refund. Members are clearing out association property this week, before the contract expiration on Saturday.
According to the press release, the Davis County Commission "will enter a transition period," and hopes to open the range to organized groups with already scheduled events in the "temporary closure and transition period."
