Colleen Bonner, a candidate running for the at-large Seat B on Wasatch County Council, is looking to get back into the game of local politics.
In 2002, she was elected to the Midway City Council, where she served for 12 years before running for mayor, and serving a four-year term in the position. She was outvoted in 2017 when she ran for a second term.
Though she’s stayed involved in the community, her run for County Council will be her first time competing for an elected position since then.
Bonner has lived in Wasatch County since the summer before her last year of high school and — except for a few months — has been here ever since.
“What is not to love?” she said when asked why she’s stuck around.
Her four kids live close by — one in the valley — and she recently retired from a 42-year career as a cosmetologist.
She spoke of her work on the municipality’s parks and trails committee, the 10-year road plans she helped put into place, and a water audit the city conducted with the state during her time as mayor.
The seeds she helped to plant back then, both figurative and literal, have grown in noticeable ways.
“I’m very proud of the parks and the trail system,” she said. “One of the things that I love to look back on is these parks developed now as the trees grow and you see them being used.”
In 2018, she wasn’t sure if she would return to the political arena. But after retiring, she believes she has something to contribute at the county level.
“There’s the individual cities in the counties that we have to be able to work together with,” she said. “I want to see those relationships strengthened. … I feel like that’s really important.”
She talked about the transportation issues within the county. She believes solving them is going to take a working relationship among Wasatch County, Heber City and the Utah Department of Transportation. Her comments were similar to those made by Mountainlands Association of Governments’ lobbyist Dave Stewart earlier this month.
“It’s big. We’ve talked about it for over 30 years,” she said.
She’s also concerned with preserving the county’s open lands and wants to help strike a balance between growth and conservation, a hot topic among legislative bodies in the county.
“I really want to focus on the health of the community as it grows,” she said. “How do we manage that so we can keep our clean air and we can have safe transportation? Good planning has always been something that I feel is really important.”
While Wasatch County has a general plan in place, she worries that the growth trajectories have outpaced what was anticipated.
“I’m not blaming anyone for that,” she said. “I think the growth came so quickly that we maybe weren’t as well prepared for it as we could have been.”
Right now, she said, it’s important to consider what the valley should look like 20 years down the road so the county can work with necessary stakeholders.
“There’s only so many things that are within our realm of governance that we can do,” she said.
While she doesn’t have the answers regarding affordable housing, she also wants to look further into the issue to find possible solutions.
She believes her experiences in Midway have given her a basis for how to address the issues she hopes to tackle.
“During the 16 years that I served at Midway City, we readdressed the general plan often.” she explained, “We did it often so that we could try to stay abreast of the growth and the things that were coming.”
With that experience, she feels she’s the person for the job.