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Three vie for city council seats in Nibley

November 4th, 2013 Posted in Opinion

By Mitch Henline

NIBLEY – Residents will decide on new City Council members Tuesday when they vote and choose among three candidates that have filed to run. The candidates include current council member Bryan Hansen, who is running for re-election, Mark Lawver and Kathryn Anhder Beus.

Bryan Hansen

Bryan Hansen

Hansen has served two terms on the city council. He said that he is interested in a third term because he wants to continue with some projects that he has been working on with the city. “I think it has to do along the lines of the new high school coming in and the initiatives that are going on there,” he said. “I think I’d like to be able see those through. Plus I’m really excited about the possibility of creating a safe intersection on 3200 South on Highway 165 along with the high school access. I feel like I can be a part of that conversation and make the most of the situation.”

Hansen mentioned maintaining open space and agriculture within the city. “I think it’s a part of our identity that we do want to continue to hold on to, and I’m very much in favor of that.”

He said that some of the challenges associated with the new high school are sewer access, traffic responsibilities, transportation routes and a new bridge that will be built to access the high school, that Hansen says will become Nibley property and will be the city’s responsibility to maintain. He said that his experience will help to be able to help with these and other challenges the city faces.

“I think we do have a younger group on our council currently and I think that it’s a good balance to have some experience and some new perspectives as well,” he said. “I think that there’s a place for both of them. I think that I bring out that element of experience to the table.”

Kathryn Anhder Beus

Kathryn Anhder Beus

Beus grew up in Nibley and has spent much of it involved in the city. When she was younger she served on the youth city council and spent the last two years on the planning and zoning commission. She graduated from Utah State University with dual degrees – one in law and constitutional studies and the other in Spanish.

She said she wanted to run for city council because of her vision of Nibley for the future and her desire to help preserve the rural atmosphere, open space and the other things she said people love about the city. “I love Nibley,” she said. “I’ve seen Nibley change. I grew up on a dead-end street with just farm around me and now I still live in Nibley. I live on the other end of town and I live in a cul-de-sac. I’ve seen that change. I’m familiar with where Nibley has been because that’s the Nibley I knew growing up, but I also know where Nibley is now and where we need to be in the future.”

Beus said that the new high school, the sewer issues and the city parks are big issues the city will be facing. She said that one of her first orders of business will be to look at contracting the city’s services through Logan city.

“Logan city profits off of providing services to us, which I don’t think is right. Eight percent of what we pay to Logan city gets transferred into their general fund,” she said. “I would love to go in there and fight for that and maybe raise the question and say, ‘Is it time to not contract through Logan city for our garbage removal and for our sewer.’ Is it time to look at that and say, ‘Let’s go other sources and find another contractor or build our own treatment plant and deal with our own treatment?’”

Mark Lawver

Lawver was born and raised in Nebraska but moved to Nibley four years ago. He works for Stoke’s trucking in Collinston. He spent the last two years on the planning and zoning board and has been chairman this last year.

Lawver said that the biggest issue that Nibley will face over the next four years will be growth. He said he expects the economy to improve very quickly. He said that economic growth and the new high school will cause some very rapid development.

“We were ill prepared for the first building boom we had here in Nibley,” he said. “We went from 2,500 people in the year 2002 to just short of 6,000 right now. So we’ve doubled in size in the last 10 years and most of that growth occurred between 2003 and 2008 – in those five years. We weren’t very prepared for that amount of growth that quickly. We have put some things in place to handle that better. They’ve done some good planning I think we need to continue that: really allowing the growth but making sure it happens in the right order and the right places.”

He said that his biggest goal will be to rewrite the subdivision ordinance.

“We’ve had more than one instance of a development getting started and not all the streets and sidewalks get finished or storm water retention is an issue and there’s houses already built and people living in them,” he said. “These things still haven’t been addressed and all of a sudden the developer tells the city they don’t have the money to fix it and its back in the cities lap to try and take care of their citizens. I want to prevent that. Hopefully we can do that through the rewrite of the subdivision ordinance.”

NW

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