My Vision
“I love our small town!” I hear this often from residents. What’s surprising is that we have a population of 75,000 and are the fourth largest city in Utah County. So when residents say they love their small town, that tells me that in spite of our rapid growth, we have maintained that small town feel. As we continue to grow, keeping this sense of community will be difficult, but we can and will do it. We can maintain our small town feel by remaining true to the things that make Eagle Mountain special. Our trails, parks and open space are a huge part of this identity. Our city events put on by our best in state recreation team bring us together. And balanced development is also necessary to maintain that small town feel.
Open space and trails define our community. In a recent survey, over 80% of our residents agreed that open space is very important. Our city is so large geographically that we have had trouble maintaining our open space. Recently we hired some cute new employees of the four- legged variety, to help us with this. Using goats to help control the weeds in our open space should markedly improve our noxious weed fighting efforts. We are also working on a trails master plan. This is critical to me, because outdoor recreation is a huge part of who we are as a city. Our bike trails need some love, our paved walking/bike trails need some love. They need to become a budget priority, even when budgets are tight. We have amazing partners in our community who are willing and able to help us maintain and improve our open space and trails.
Affordable housing and balanced development are also important for maintaining that small town feel. Many of our adult children are leaving Eagle Mountain because they can’t afford to live here. The state is pushing cities hard to build, build, build. But I don’t want to see our city filled with ugly, cheap housing that turns into slums. Instead, I believe affordable housing can be beautiful and bring pride of ownership. Instead of building large projects, I want to see more attainable housing mixed in with normal neighborhoods. And this brings me back to balanced development. A sea of townhomes like we see on 2100 North is not the Eagle Mountain way. Instead, my vision is to have small groupings of more dense housing mixed in with single family homes in a way that doesn’t change the neighborhood feel. We can approve 4 plexes that look like a regular single family home on the outside, but provide more attainable housing. Firefly, a new neighborhood out by Tyson, has shown that you can mix product to create beautiful neighborhoods. Let’s work with our developers to create beautiful communities where people feel connected and part of something great.
I love our city and truly believe that our future is bright.
