I had planned on participating in last night’s caucus meetings, but life intervened and I was not able to. That being said, I am still interested to learn what happened in those caucus meetings for my precinct (Lehi-08). I would love to know the outcome of the Republican and Democratic caucuses, especially the Democratic caucus I planned to attend. If anyone was at one of those, or knows how to get information on who was elected to positions in either party in this precinct please let me know.
Category: Local
Why did State lawmakers mandate a FrontRunner stop for Bluffdale? In some ways this sounds like the decision by UDOT to toss the Lehi City proposal for the Mountain View Corridor.
SB286, sponsored by Sen. Sheldon Killpack, R-Syracuse, exempts UTA from complying with city ordinances – as long as that city lies in a first-class county and the rail spans at least two counties. . . Killpack acknowledged his bill targeted Bluffdale.
I do see some glaring differences though. In the MVC case it was an acknowledged fact that there had to be a route through Lehi as part of the Mountain View Corridor project – the only real question was what was the best way to fill that need. I do not see that same basic agreement existing in the FrontRunner case.
As far as I know, Bluffdale was not blocking the rail route, only the stop. If that’s the case, wouldn’t it be cheaper for UTA to build the line without the station – not moving the station elsewhere, just build one fewer stations on the line if Bluffdale does not want a commuter rail stop in their city. Does anyone know of a reason why they have to have that stop for FrontRunner?
UDOT has decided that the 4800 North proposal from Lehi city is not a viable alternative for the Mountain View Corridor. This decision officially takes that proposal off the table for future consideration on this project. Now it’s time for the city of Lehi to push for the most acceptable solutions from among the remaining alternatives. I hope that instead of complaining that we got overruled the city leaders will try to make the most of the options available. We still need better commercial development and more options to help people have shorter commutes. I still think there are ways that we can help Lehi to become a destination on the Mountain View corridor, and not merely a path between home and work for all the people in Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Alpine, American Fork, and Highland.
I would love to be able to contact Mike Wylie and Amiee Christensen and help them recognize why Lehi is doing things that make them feel “less desirable.” Their reactions to the idea of raising prices on non-residents for Lehi programs were published today in the Daily Herald. I’m not saying that their reactions were completely wrong, but they can’t honestly expect to have Lehi sit like a doormat while others take advantage of city programs.
“Lehi is now trying to push us out,” Wylie said of Lehi’s proposal. “It is one city trying to act like a grown-up and spank the child… I did not do anything wrong. Having lived in the South, and having lived in areas of prejudice, that is almost how I feel I am being treated now.”
Communities should work together to ensure children have access to sports and recreation programs, and when they don’t, it leaves children to roam the streets, and everyone pays a price, he said.
In an e-mail to the Daily Herald and Lehi Council members, Amiee Christensen said she grew up in Lehi but high home prices had forced her move to Eagle Mountain. She said that while she agreed with the sentiment that Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs need to “grow up, I am outraged that there is a proposal to even make it difficult for me to be buried with my family in Lehi. I am living in Eagle Mountain only because I cannot afford to live in Lehi. The low cost of living in Eagle Mountain has forced me and my family to move from the city that my family helped build.”
If Lehi is angry about traffic, the city “should punish the one that is making the problem, the state,” she said. “They are the one that is slow to act and quick to point fingers. I am sad to say that I am from a city that will throw temper tantrums that rival a 2-year-old to get their way… Maybe we should realize that the people of the cities west of Lehi are good people who are sometimes not completely in control of their destiny and they just might need a helping hand from the closest big brother — Lehi.”
Ms. Christensen appears to be unaware of the fact that the mayor of Saratoga Springs has just finished opposing Lehi’s position on the traffic problem, which was directed at the state, in a very public manner. I have a hard time believing that she would expect “a helping hand from the closest big brother” while they are poking big brother in the eye.
I agree with her that the people west of Lehi are generally good people, just as the people of Lehi are generally good people. What needs to happen right now between these cities is a conference of residents and city officials between the cities to talk about their different perspectives on problems such as overcrowding in Lehi programs and Lehi streets and the problems with the solutions proposed by UDOT and now endorsed by Saratoga Springs. If the cities want to cooperate on one issue they should be cooperating on all of them. Lehi want’s to cooperation on the traffic/MVC issue and I think they would be very willing to cooperate on the community programs issue if they felt that they would not be ignored on the traffic issue.
So let’s all stop acting like children (as each side has accused the other of acting) and sit down like adults to discuss our different perspectives and find solutions that are mutually beneficial.
A local example of the negative effect of subsidies is playing out right now. Lehi citizens have been paying taxes to support services that benefit people in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain. The result is that the people in those cities are unaware of the real costs of the services that many of them take for granted in Lehi. It sounds like they are about to find out what those costs really are.
Saratoga Springs’s commitment to a proposed freeway through Lehi appears to have cost its residents access to Lehi community programs.
Call it retaliation or tough love, Lehi is moving to make it expensive and harder for Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs residents to join community programs, or even be buried, in Lehi.
Lehi Councilman Johnny Barnes gave a letter to Lehi Council members on Tuesday asking that beginning Jan. 1, participation in all community programs “be restricted to Lehi citizens first.”
Residents from nearby communities may be invited to participate if there is space, but “the costs to those participants will reflect the actual cost of the programs,” said Barnes.
Council members instructed staff to begin figuring new fees and participation rules for the council to consider.
Councilman Stephen Holbrook said the day has come for Lehi to make recreation fees for nonresidents “extremely higher, so our citizens can have first choice” and that increase should extend not only to sports programs but library use, senior citizen programs, park rentals, the literacy center, and burial fees.
“Two weeks ago in a pre-council meeting there were comments made concerning a letter sent out by Mayor Tim Parker of Saratoga Springs indicating their strong support of UDOT’s (freeway) plan for 2100 North,” Barnes wrote in his letter to council members. “I stated that in my opinion, this was a clear demonstration of Saratoga coming of age as a city, and felt that if they want to be a city, they need to act like a city.
“In making this statement, I hold firmly to the opinion that along with having the right to take a strong aggressive position comes the right and obligation to provide services to their citizens. This would include all services, not just the ones that are convenient to them or are able to be funded.”
How did this all come about?
Well Lehi has been very accommodating of the burgeoning cities to the west and now that because of that our city council is very aware of the costs of the services that they are virtually giving away. Though this act may be seen as retaliation by some, it makes sense that we should not be too concerned about the costs of restricting access to our programs for people who are apparently uninterested in the costs we will suffer as a result of their preferred freeway.
It’s all a matter of perspective but Saratoga Springs does not appear to care about the Lehi perspective on this project. I recognize that there are aspects of the Mountain View Corridor project that Saratoga would have a perspective that would be lacking in Lehi, but if those cities want to leech off of the programs that have matured here in Lehi then they should be willing to work with us.
The mayor of Saratoga could not be ignorant of Lehi’s vocal concern over the 2100 North alignment preferred by UDOT. If he cared about them then he should have made a better case for why Lehi’s 4800 North proposal was inferior. Everything I have seen suggests that 2100 North is marginally better for anyone who is just passing through Lehi than the plan proposed by Lehi, but it is substantially worse for residents of Lehi.
I ran into one of the candidates for city council today who happens to work in the same building I do. We took a few minutes to talk (politics naturally) and as we talked we realized that both of us have a similar desire to accomplish two things here in Lehi – we want to discourage apathy among citizens and increase transparency in our local government (all levels of government really, but let’s not bite off more than we can chew right now). We have agreed to get together soon after the elections are over next week and discuss some ideas for getting more people interested in what’s happening in our local government and for making information about what’s happening with our local government more readily available.
Our hope is that by doing this we might be prepared to hold candidates accountable in future elections for what they say, and how they respond to citizens. If we can get more citizens interested in the issues that the city is facing that might encourage our elected officials to be more proactive about communicating, or at the very least they might realize that there are many people who are interested in the challenges that the city is facing.
As I sat down to write tonight I realized that I know many people who are very interested in politics (local politics in many cases, but few who are local to Lehi) who might be able to come up with some ideas on how to accomplish these aims. I decided to invite the thoughts of my fellow bloggers on how we might go about encouraging participation and transparency. Are there technologies that you would recommend for these aims? Do you have any ideas about how to encourage people to be more active? Do you know any tricks to building a politically oriented organization that could accomplish these goals?
The Daily Herald had an editorial today on what to look for in a candidate. I liked the criteria they listed:
Candidates to be wary of:
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- Have that “deer in the headlights look”
- Spout too many cliches
- Have too much experience – What worked in 1987 or even 1997 might be as outmoded as a Betamax video tape player today.
- Have no backbone
- Worry you now
They gave a good example of the “no backbone” criteria:
One test we find interesting is Referendum 1. School vouchers are not a municipal issue, of course, but at one forum recently, city council aspirants were asked to stand or sit to show where they stood on vouchers. A couple of candidates responded by neither standing or sitting, but by going into a sort of crouch. That sort of response worries us.
Look for hopefuls who:
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- Know their stuff
- Acknowledge difficulties
- Plan for progress
- Work well with others
- Accept change
I would add one more criteria for those who are interested enough to get involved in the political process early. A candidate should be responsive to voters.
I have been meaning to list my endorsements for Lehi City Council and I think that fits well at the end of this criteria. We have 3 incumbents and 3 new candidates for city council. They are largely campaigning as two groups. To a certain extent the groups are fitting. The incumbents have been largely unresponsive to individual questions outside of the few candidate forums while the new candidates have been more anxious to answer questions on their positions. As groups, both seem to have grasp of the issues comparable to the other. Some individual candidates have demonstrated a better grasp of the issues than others. Sadly, the incumbents were more likely to campaign on “I love this town.” (In one case that seems to be the entire platform.) If I had to vote for one group or the other I would vote for the new candidates. For information on each candidate visit Utah-Candidates.com.
Thankfully I get to vote for individual candidates. I know two candidates that I really want to vote for. Selecting my third choice was a bit harder. I am supporting Jeff Ray, Craig Laurence, and Mark Johnson for Lehi City Council. Overall, these three candidates each have a grasp of the issues and seem prepared to work for the city rather than working for a special interest or simply enjoying their position on the city council.
Things have been somewhat quiet on the MountainView Corridor issue until just before they released their Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). As soon as it was out I went to take a look at what the draft EIS said. For those who have been interested in the issue before there is nothing particularly surprising (from what I have seen so far – I’m not sure I’ll ever read all the pages in this 5 volume report).
I just wanted to put a link to the actual report in case anyone is interested in more than the newspaper analysis (actually there’s no analysis so far, just reports of the release) of what is in the draft EIS. I am encouraged by the statements within the EIS explaining the efforts of Lehi city to propose a better plan, and specifically the acknowledgment that the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) has not identified a preferred alternative and that UDOT and FHWA are considering the necessity of releasing a supplemental EIS once they have had a chance to more carefully study the 4800 N freeway alternative proposed by Lehi city.
I plan to use this public comment period to voice my position to UDOT, but also to encourage discussion of the issue here – I’d love to hear what others think about this plan.
Last night I went to a UDOT open house for the East-West Connector project. This has been informally known as the 1000 South boulevard and was previously part of the Mountain View Corridor project before being broken out into a separate project. I suspect that the people working on this project for UDOT already know this, but they and the public need to recognize and reconcile themselves tot he fact that there is no alternative on this project which will satisfy everybody. Planning and building this road needs to move forward not by compromising to hurt as few feelings as possible, but by building whatever is best in the long-term interests of the area.
That’s easy for me to say since there is no way the road can be built in such a way that it will inconvenience me. It can be built badly to inconvenience everyone, but it cannot be built in such a way that it would inconvenience me particularly. No matter how well, or badly it is built there will be some people who it will inconvenience particularly – the only question is who, how many, and in what ways. Those who are in danger of having to relocate, or of living very close to the new road can do a great service to everybody if they will come with an attitude of “how can we make this the best for everybody,” rather than an attitude of “what will cause me the least inconvenience.”
On the other hand, those of us who will not be directly inconvenienced by this need to be understanding of the fact that this will have some immediate negative consequences on some people. We should take that into consideration when we select an alignment.
I heard someone who lives near some of that land that Lehi City had already preserved for this road who wished that the land owners in the area would refuse to sell so that the road could not be built. I’m sure she recognizes that not building the road is not a feasible option considering our current traffic situation. As a distant neighbor I need to recognize that her wish is normal and rather than telling her to pull her head out of the sand I should help advocate for anything that might make this new road better for her and her neighborhood.
One thing to advocate for, which won’t help her neighborhood now but will help other neighborhoods in the future, is a more comprehensive master plan for the city which will preserve transportation corridors earlier and be more strict in adhering to the master plan. Initially Lehi City had planned for this road to run at 700 South. The result is that 700 South is much wider than it needs to be for a 25 MPH road. If they had set the speed limit higher (40 or 45 MPH) people would not have placed houses right on the road and they would have been able to use the original route
Rather than waiting for everything to fall in place first, I went ahead today and set up Utah-Candidates.com. That was the site I was inviting candidates to participate in. The invitation still stands, but I purchased the domain. If candidates and citizens are interested I will keep the domain and use it in the various elections each year. Right now it only includes the candidates for Lehi City Council but I have sent invitations to a number of cities in the area and will continue to invite candidates and cities to participate (so long as it’s manageable).
I hope this proves to be a useful resource for our elections – especially the smaller ones, like city and county positions, where candidates are on smaller budgets and where the resulting officials are closer to their constituents.