Matthew Nagie majored in transportation engineering in college because he wanted to make better cities and that desire motivated him to run for a seat on the Park City Council.
“I think that we are at a very important time as we think about our future,” Nagie said. “I think I have important perspective to bring as somebody who lives in affordable housing. I think I have important perspective on the housing conversation. As somebody with a transportation engineering degree, I think I have important perspective on the transportation conversation so I want to be part of the conversation.”
Ultimately, he wants to help Park City do better in the future, Nagie said. He is among the nine candidates seeking election to one of the three open City Council seats.
Nagie, 29, lives in a condo in Old Town that he purchased through the city’s affordable housing program. His family moved to Heber City in 1999 and then to the Snyderville Basin in 2001.
He participated in the Park City Police Department’s Citizens Academy, which introduces community members to the inner workings of law enforcement.
After graduating from Park City High School, Nagie attended the University of Utah and earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering with a major emphasis of transportation engineering. He worked for a year in the field and liked solving technical problems but found that building highways wasn’t what he wanted to do.
Nagie had worked briefly as a substitute teacher and decided to become a full-time teacher. He has taught physics at Park City High School for five years and will also teach a computer science class in the upcoming school year.
“I now teach physics at Park City High School in the same classroom where I learned physics,” Nagie said. “I miss the technical problem-solving stuff but I love the teaching technical stuff, too. I love being around young people that are learning and growing.”
Nagie is a member of the Feasibility Study Advisory Committee, which is assisting the municipal government in considering the long-term future of city-owned land off the Kearns Boulevard-Bonanza Drive. The city originally acquired the land with the intent to develop an arts and culture district.
One of his priorities is workforce housing and Nagie said he is “cautiously optimistic” about public-private partnerships being the model for delivering those developments. He said a housing project at 1875 Homestake Road that is heavily weighted toward workforce or otherwise restricted affordable housing being developed by a partnership between the city and a private developer should be evaluated for its advantages and disadvantages.
“This might be the first of many projects as we start to accelerate the pace,” Nagie said.
To deal with Park City’s parking and traffic issues, Nagie said he supports in the short term the existing push to get drivers to leave their vehicles at park-and-ride lots and the continuing effort to improve bus service, including frequency.
Longer term, he wants to see a more robust effort to develop communities that deemphasize the necessity for a car for both tourists and locals, he said, adding the city has a parking surplus.
“I believe that when you have 3,000 parking stalls in downtown, you shouldn’t be surprised when 3,000 cars show up every day,” Nagie said. “I think there are options that make more sense.”
There have been big increases in bicycling nationwide and in Park City, with electric bikes being especially popular, and roads should be designed to integrate them, he said.
With federal funds for child care expiring, Nagie said, he wants to see all options on the table and get input from the community.
“I can say for City Hall itself that providing child care for its own employees is obviously a way to use an economy of scale to attract talent and retain talent,” he said. “I think that’s a wise business decision.”
Nagie said he supports a proposed general obligation bond that would fund recreation improvements including pickleball courts, an outdoor ice sheet and expanded fitness space, with a caveat — he’s happy voters will decide at the polls whether to approve the proposal.
Economies of scale give the city the ability to build infrastructure for everybody, he said.
“If hundreds of people want to play pickleball, then all of us can come together as a community and if we so choose via the ballot process, we can build that infrastructure and then it’s there for us to use,” Nagie, who is faculty advisor for Park City High School’s pickleball club, said. “I see it as a pretty straightforward proposal.”
Nagie is in favor of the Winter Olympics returning to Utah.
“I think that the opportunities we have to make a name for ourselves, nationally and globally, are opportunities that might happen without us if we’re not careful,” he said. “I think it would be foolish for somebody to fight against something like the Olympics and then have it happen anyway. I think that it’s better to embrace it and to think very carefully and plan ahead on just how we can make it work best for our city. At the very least, transportation infrastructure improvements that would be on the table if we won the Games would be huge.”
Nagie does not like political labels, saying they give people an opportunity to argue over different definitions of words, which is a big frustration for him. However, he did say when it comes to the local issues of housing, transportation and child care, “you can put me down as progressive.”
“As far as culture issues nationwide, I think I can honestly say that I try to stay disconnected from it because I don’t think it’s an honest attempt to actually solve any problems,” he said.
Nagie said his campaign is about perspective “because the reality is I can’t beat some of my opponents on experience.”
“My ask of the community is whether or not they value perspective,” he said.
The other candidates running for a council seat are Bill Ciraco, incumbent Ryan Dickey, David Dobkin, John Greenfield, Ed Parigian, Bob Sertner, Betsy Wallace and Jody Whitesides. Incumbents Max Doilney and Becca Gerber are not seeking reelection.
A Sept. 5 primary will narrow the field of nine council hopefuls to the six top vote-getters, who will advance to a Nov. 21 general election. The three candidates who get the most votes in that election will take office in January and serve a four-year term.
Voters will get to vote for three candidates in both the primary and the general election because there are three open seats. State law requires that a primary be held if more than twice the number of candidates file to run than are to be elected. The election is nonpartisan.