Panel members included State Senator Lyle Hillyard, Bountiful City Manager Gary Hill and Logan City Mayor Craig Petersen. These three men discussed the importance of state and local politics and the influence your involvement can bring to your community.
In case you missed it, here are a few of the things they talked about at the event.
From left to right seated at the table: Bountiful City Manager Gary Hill,
Logan City Mayor Craig Petersen, State Senator Lyle Hillyard
On Low Voter Turnout in Local Elections:
Mayor Petersen: Here
in Cache Valley, there are a number of communities who have cancelled their
elections. This is because the law doesn’t require an election to be held when
there aren’t more candidates than there are open seats. In Logan, we have three
seats available on the city council and four candidates, and so we will have
the election. However, since it is only this single race on the ballot, people
are less likely to come vote. The fact that they are non-partisan elections
means that parties aren’t involved in getting out voters; it’s the individual
candidates that have to do that. Those are maybe a couple of reasons for low
turn outs.
Senator Hillyard:
I know a lot of people who would be good legislators, who simply say, ‘I wouldn’t
go through the process. I don’t want to pay the money.’ I think that turns
people off in voting. The strategy gets almost to be, ‘I know my hardcore
people are going to vote for me, there will be hardcore people to vote for the
other side. I just want to get the middle people not to vote. So I’m going to
say as many bad things as I can about Mitt Romney, or as many bad things about
President Obama.’ I heard a saying once that it doesn’t matter whether you get
bit by the dog or the cat. People look at the election and say, ‘It doesn’t
matter if I like the Republicans or the Democrats, it’ll all end up the same.’
And they end up not voting. That’s really a sad commentary about our election
process.
Gary Hill: I
think that people don’t appreciate necessarily how impactful the local
government is to your day to day life. I think if people appreciated how much
your city and your county do and affect your life on a daily basis, they might
be a little more interested. Sometimes there is no controversy and no voter turnout
because people are just pretty happy with the way things are going.
On Zoning and Planning for Population Growth:
Gary Hill: You
have to take the time to plan well. Your master plan should outline what areas
of town you want to have homes, what areas of town you want to have commercial
development, how you are going to get people to and from those, how wide your
roads are, and what you are doing for trails and parks. The planning is the
first step. The second piece of that is don’t get behind on your
infrastructure. If you get behind the curve, and you don’t start replacing your
infrastructure as you need to, you are just going to have to pay much more
later. It costs about 10 times as much to replace a road as it does to maintain
it. It’s extremely expensive. You also have a policy decision to make about new
growth. Do you put that burden on the existing taxpayers, or do you put that
burden on the people who are demanding the growth? In other words, who pays for
it? There’s a very big mix of what you can do, but it starts with planning.
Mayor Petersen: Growth depends on the nature of the city.
Logan City doesn’t have a large amount of area within our city limit to expand.
So our likely growth over the next 30 years isn’t going to be as rapid as it
might be in North Logan or some of the other communities. So the planning for
growth really has to be considered in light of what your capacity for growth
is.
Senator Hillyard:
A number of years ago, there was a push in the state that we would have state
planning for all of this. The threats got so heavy to the legislature that we
had to make sure we had guards at the doors. People were so concerned that the
state was going to plan it, and thought it should be left to the counties. So
no one has ever dared even talk about that anymore.
Advice to Students
Wanting to Get Involved in Local Politics:
Senator Hillyard:
On the local level, candidates don’t run by political party. So if you want to
get involved, what you need to do is pick a candidate and go say, ‘I’d like to
help you, what can I do?’ There is plenty of good work for volunteers to do and
it’ll get you the type of information and knowledge you’ll need if you want to run
yourself.
Gary Hill: I
would suggest, at the local level, go in and talk to your mayor. The mayors
would love to tell you some of the things that might be interesting to you. At
the legislature, I would strongly suggest that you find a bill at the beginning
of the session on a topic that is of interest to you and just follow what
happens. Call the bill sponsor and talk to them. They are so accessible. You
will learn so much about the legislative process.
Mayor Petersen:
If you’ve never been to City Council meetings, it is an interesting process.
You ought to see a little bit about how the system works. It doesn’t work
perfectly, but it really is designed to get people’s input and to be
transparent.
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