Heber City has re-elected Mayor Heidi Franco, the city’s Leslie Knope from “Parks and Recreation” — a woman who’s more than a little passionate about local government.
An online American government professor by day, she spends her nights running from meeting to meeting, whether it be with the city or as one of the many boards she’s a part of: Heber Light and Power, Animal Control, Wasatch Open Lands and the Heber Valley Historic Railroad Authority, to name a few.
“When you’re chair of these other boards, it’s like a whole ‘nother bureaucracy that you need to manage,” she said. “If you’re not going to be proactive and make sure the agendas are efficient … things are not going to get done. And then minor things will turn into crises over the year.”
Like her sitcom counterpart, Franco is an avid fan of parks and open space. Ask her for trail recommendations and she’ll tell you where to find the most deer and which areas of Mount Timpanogos look the most like idyllic “Teletubbyland.”
Franco believes Heber City’s parks should be world-class, but that doesn’t mean they have to be a big-budget item. For Franco, accomplishing that goal starts with meeting the bare necessities in existing parks, like water fountains and appropriate shade to hide under on scorching summer days.
Franco is against high-density annexations, particularly east of the city and in sensitive land areas like the North Fields, but she rejects the branding that she’s anti-development. She simply believes growth should be responsible and protect natural resources.
Franco thinks Heber can learn a few lessons from their neighboring town, Midway.
“Midway has set strong standards for development in their city: on density, on architectural standards, on where they want annexations,” she explained. “When developers come in, they know that they want to meet those standards. They want to build to those standards because that’s going to protect their investment — their investment will be successful, they hope, because of those standards. I would love to be able to do that within Heber City. … I’ve just seen a lot of examples where we don’t have that same protection culture in our city.”
Developments “dump(ing)” traffic onto Highway 40 and Main Street, instead of solving the problems they create, is another concern for Franco. She wants to ensure roads are built to accompany growth.
The Utah Department of Transportation’s announcement of their bypass route in January will be Franco’s foremost concern in her second term. She wants to ensure citizens are well-informed about how they’re affected and “what is really at stake” so they can participate and comment in public meetings.
Interacting with residents on the campaign trail, Franco observed that many are “very happy” to live in Heber City, but longtime residents are “struggling.”
“Yes, we deal a lot with affordable housing, but it’s the people that already live here that are really struck with being house rich and cash poor,” she said. “I’m always really focused to make sure that our impact fees are keeping up with inflation and the higher and higher costs from our capital facilities plan.”
This election, Franco tried new strategies she’s never employed: targeted text messages, a beefed-up social media presence and endorsing two city councilors, Yvonne Barney and Nick López. Barney was elected for a second term, while Morgan Murdock will be taking Scott Phillips’ council seat. Although she did not endorse him, Franco has known Murdock for over a decade and said that he is “well-respected” in the community and that she looks forward to collaborating with him.
Although Franco was impressed by a 49% countywide voter turnout, she encouraged all Heber residents to register to vote because “city issues are only growing along with our growth.”
Her message to those who voted for Phillips is that she still wants to hear their voices.
“The city council — in political science, we call it a marketplace of ideas. And all the ideas get heard. That slows things down, and it makes us take time, and we need to learn the facts and get things documented, but that is the point of government — to take its time, to be able to hear as many voices as want to be heard,” she said. “If things don’t work … then we revise, and we do more public outreach. And I will continue that public outreach and push the city council to do more surveys so that we can get a really accurate picture of what the public wants because the public gets to pay for it.”