Late Tuesday night Heber City Council candidate Sid Ostergaard dozed off while county officials worked diligently to post preliminary results. He woke up around 3 or 4 a.m. to learn he was one three winners for a council seat.
He had never before run for an official office, but that doesn’t mean he’s a stranger to the community’s officials and organization.
“I’ve been on the other side of the table planning and representing clients and then had the opportunity to be a part of the Planning Commission for a little over four years,” he said. “I know both sides. I know what is needed from a potential developer and what they actually need to make something happen, and I know what is needed from the city.”
While his experience arguably gave him a leg up on candidates who know less about planning processes and the usual administrative strains projects go through before ever making it before the council, it also gave him a front-row seat of the ginormous meeting packets, late-night meeting conclusions, and sometimes harsh public feedback serving on the council often entails.
His passion for the community outweighed any wariness of a council member’s hardships, though.
Originally from the Salt Lake Valley, Ostergaard remembers stopping at Granny’s Drive In as a teenager on his way to hunt or fish near Strawberry.
He and his wife, Jennifer, eventually followed an opportunity to Park City.
While she wanted to return to the couple’s Salt Lake County roots, Sid had other aspirations.
“I said, ‘No, no we need to live up here,’ and we’re fortunate enough to be able to afford a house up here in Heber,” he said. “It is home to us. This is where we’ve raised our family — our six kids — and this is what they call home. And I want to do everything I can to protect that home and develop that home to the best that I can.”
He said he hopes to advise positive development and ensure city plans that have been put in place are appropriately enacted.
“We’ve done a lot of heavy lifting. The council and mayor and staff did a great job these last four years. Even before that, Mayor Potter started it,” he said. “There’s a lot of major things that were decided and implemented and we just need to keep on going. … We’re at a tipping point here in Heber, and we need to go in the right direction or we could go really wrong really fast.”
Implement, cultivate and collaborate, he said, were the three tenets of his campaign and are now the three keys to his approach as a city councilor.
First-hand experience has helped him understand the community’s need for a good community atmosphere and affordable housing.
“I have six kids, but only one is able to live up here, and he works for the school district and his wife works for the school district,” Ostergaard said. “Let’s figure out how we can do private, public collaboration to provide that affordable housing. You think about all the teachers and police and personally I wouldn’t be able to afford to come up here if I tried.”
One daughter currently living with him is involved in a self-help housing project and hopes to have a residence in the county within the next few years.
Ostergaard also hopes Heber City citizens will be open with their officials about their thoughts and opinions on what the city could become.
“The biggest thing,” he said, “we need to collaborate with the county and get on the same page. … They’re a major part of what’s going to happen in the city.”