Cottonwood Heights voter guide 2021

Mayoral candidates

Maile Evans

Occupation: Graphic designer.

As the Salt Lake Valley continues its booming growth, what are your solutions for affordable housing, preserving community character and creating a high quality of life for city residents?

Cottonwood Heights, in particular, has seen an extremely high influx of residents moving in or wanting to move in. To provide sufficient housing, there must be adequate infrastructure to accommodate the growth. Our community wants to ensure that high-density housing is only in areas that can be easily accessible to the main roads and not in residential neighborhoods. This still creates a problem with transportation, which needs to be addressed with the extension of the rail system or some other means. Green space or open spaces should also be included in the building area, providing for a healthy environment and keeping the feel of the community still intact.

Besides affordable housing, what are the two biggest challenges facing the city in the next four years, and what are some specific programs or policy changes you will introduce to solve them?

Infrastructure is a top priority. Cottonwood Heights has seen enormous growth and the roads are not sufficient to handle the traffic. A solution may be to extend the rail system to the east side of the valley. Also the communication networks, such as fiber optics, should be in place for residents as well as businesses.

Environmental health is a major concern. The pollution in the air is currently unacceptable. There should be educational opportunities to assist the residents and be made aware of our air, water and gases that are emitted into the air. Everyone should be motivated to transition to clean energy and transportation. We should also be looking at effective recycling programs.

What are your ideas for investing federal pandemic aid in the city, including funds left over from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act as well as funds from the American Rescue Plan Act?

Funds for small businesses, then offering a simple forgiveness plan. Most of these operations are still trying to recover, recoup and reestablish their business. The CARES Act and other funds available would remedy many of the problems they are still facing. Small businesses are a necessity to any city.

What is a fun or unique fact about you?

Depending on the colors I’m wearing, my eyes will either be a deep green or hazel blue.

Timothy Hallbeck

Occupation: Retired software engineer

As the Salt Lake Valley continues its booming growth, what are your solutions for affordable housing, preserving community character and creating a high quality of life for city residents?

The keys to growth are balance and infrastructure. When it comes to housing, you need a mix of high-end homes, single-family subdivisions, medium-density condominiums and high-density apartments. In the medium- and high-density areas, you also need affordable transportation that reaches all regions of the greater Salt Lake area. We have great rail verticals on both sides of Interstate 15 and to the airport, but we’re seriously lacking real east-west connectors along 3300, 4500, I-215, 9400 South, etc. Especially as expansion continues westward, long term we need rail connectors as far as Herriman and Saratoga Springs all the way to Little Cottonwood.

Besides affordable housing, what are the two biggest challenges facing the city in the next four years, and what are some specific programs or policy changes you will introduce to solve them?

As mentioned above, mass transportation is the biggest thing we’re missing. You can only widen roads so much, and they’ll always fill up. Having worked in both Chicago and Boston, a well organized above- and below-ground mix solves many problems.

Next would be water supply. We have very confusing rules right now about mandatory lawn “greening” and only watering twice a week. You get penalized one way or the other, which is very frustrating. Encouraging xeriscaping and even subsidized low water planting would help.

For Cottonwood Heights specifically, providing rent assistance for both residents and small businesses to keep the base economy vibrant is key. Sewer, water, road, sidewalk repair second.

What is a fun or unique fact about you?

After every painful incident or injury (I used to race motorcycles) I’d get a new musical instrument. This year, I got an upright grand piano.

Eric Kraan

Occupation: Self-employed.

As the Salt Lake Valley continues its booming growth, what are your solutions for affordable housing, preserving community character and creating a high quality of life for city residents?

I intend to champion organic growth by implementing incremental zoning policies like “form-based zoning,” which empowers the community to invest in our neighborhoods and allow them to evolve into a more inclusive, productive, resilient community, and avoid gentrification. By focusing regulation on the shape rather than the use of new buildings, I intend to enhance the neighborhoods’ character by offering more local resident control. This type of development promotes walkable communities and prevents consolidation of large parcels of land by a small number of large corporate developers, which tends to establish bland architecture and character rather than diversity and inclusivity in a city.

Besides affordable housing, what are the two biggest challenges facing the city in the next four years, and what are some specific programs or policy changes you will introduce to solve them?

Legitimacy • Our city’s form of government is the “council-manager” or also known as “weak mayor.” This means that legislative (elected officials) and administrative (professional staff) must function separately. Failure to uphold the separation of powers has led to strife, friction, lawsuits and dysfunction in the governance of our city as well as mistrust and division in our community. We must go beyond the statutory minimum and strive for a higher level of ethical governance. I propose that to accomplish this end, each city department must create a “code of ethics” and the council must create an “Ethical Citizen Committee” to review and recommend remedies to the city manager and council to hold all public officials accountable to the highest ethical standards.

Public safety • Safety is more than just increasing staffing for fire and police departments, it is about designing the built environment of our city with safety in mind. Lowering car speeds throughout the city by implementing vision zero policies, and upgrading safety and energy-efficient requirements for both new and renovation of residential housing stock will proactively improve the safety, health and welfare of the community.

Community assistance • Identify impacted local households and provide guidance and financial assistance to mitigate the impact of regressive local taxes and user fees.

Map city assets • Buy down unproductive public liabilities, and improve broadband connectivity through UTOPIA — to create a larger market of service providers within our city.

What is a fun or unique fact about you?

The name Kraan means water faucet in Dutch.

Ed Schwartz

Occupation: Substance use counselor.

Besides affordable housing, what are the two biggest challenges facing the city in the next four years, and what are some specific programs or policy changes you will introduce to solve them?

Our city leadership has managed without hardly any accountability and transparency. What do I mean? Well, going back several years, the beautiful City Hall complex was approved without public input. Now, we are paying $100k per month for rent. Yes, it is a beautiful building but did we truly need a structure of this magnitude for our small city?

Now, let’s look at the police department. I realize that this is an emotional issue for some people but let’s look at it from a different lens. The public safety budget expenses for 2020/2021 include $10,252,560 for public safety broken down as: $4,001,694 for UFA and $6,074,478 for police and $176,388 for ordinance enforcement.

The department has been leasing new vehicles every two years costing us $1.9 million. Of course, our department requires vehicles that are well maintained and ready to go at a moment’s notice; but do they need to be replaced every two years?

I believe that we can reduce the budget of our police department up to 20% without compromising the safety and security of our city. Please note that I have NEVER advocated to eliminate the police department and never will.

Mike Weichers

Occupation: Banker.

As the Salt Lake Valley continues its booming growth, what are your solutions for affordable housing, preserving community character and creating a high quality of life for city residents?

Cottonwood Heights is a city that is mostly built out with very few options for new development. My priorities for affordable housing will be to support accessory dwelling unit legislation, allowing for more affordable housing options within our community. I also believe it is highly important to encourage developers to work within our PDD (planned development district) zone, which can provide more incentives for affordable housing options in new housing or redevelopment projects.

One of the best ways to preserve and maintain the character of Cottonwood Heights is to support our parks, trails and open spaces. I am committed to maintaining our existing space, and to finding new opportunities for more parks, trails and open spaces.

I believe one of the most important responsibilities of a mayor and City Council is to ensure citizens feel safe within their community. Hence, maintaining a high quality of life is dependent on public safety. My highest priority will be supporting and cooperating with the Unified Fire Authority and the Cottonwood Heights Police Department.

Besides affordable housing, what are the two biggest challenges facing the city in the next four years, and what are some specific programs or policy changes you will introduce to solve them?

First, I believe one of the biggest challenges currently facing Cottonwood Heights is our road and stormwater infrastructure. The stormwater system, inherited from Salt Lake County, includes pipes that are now close to double their life span. Multiple pipe failures within the last couple of years have caused sinkholes and flooding of homes. As mayor, I will prioritize determining the condition of the entire stormwater infrastructure within our city and funding projects based on the most immediate needs to be replaced.

Second, assuring public safety is prioritized within city leadership. Current social environments have made law enforcement a less-attractive career, reducing the number of qualified candidates. Policies will require that we have an adequate complement of officers to assure effective community policing, appropriate workloads and properly trained officers.

Investing federal funds into infrastructure will go a long way to putting our city ahead of the curve and reducing ongoing costs as we resolve key problems. A significant investment of these funds should go to stormwater and road repair, which both qualify as eligible expenditures.