Thursday, November 5, 2015

Why Local Government Matters

On Oct. 29, the Institute of Government and Politics held a panel discussion called, "Why Local Government Matters." 

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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