When Heber City handyman Mr. Weefix, also known as Nathan Rushton, crouches under a leaky sink, wrench in hand, he might tell a tale of glorious warfare.

“We had to go through this alleyway, and we got hit with an RPG. … We were in between two, two stories, and every window had people in it,” he said. “It was the quintessential trap.”

Veteran Rushton was recruited fresh out of high school in 2004 — not by the U.S. military, but by Special Ops Paintball, a company in North Salt Lake. 

Ruston helped assemble and sell paintball equipment for four years. Sales trips involved participating in tournaments from Oklahoma to Florida. He was his team’s tank driver, operating a Tomcar that his employer had modified with a 3,000-round paintball turret.

While Rushton has never felt the heat of real warfare, he’s had enough scrapes with death to make a seasoned sergeant blush.

For example, he fell two stories while rock climbing in Escalante.

“I put my hand in a hole that I wasn’t supposed to, and there was something else in that hole, and I did the one thing you’re not supposed to do. I let go. Well, gravity took effect after that,” Rushton said.

He also had a late-night standoff with a bear while camping near Mineral Basin with his wife and two dogs.

“The Jeep had no top, no doors. So basically, I’m like, ‘You guys go in the tent.’ I parked the Jeep against the tent with the headlights on it, so then I could push the emergency button and it would light up the tent,” he said. “That whole night was sketch.”

To top it all off, he was hit by a car while cycling not once, but twice in the span of two weeks.

“Lady smacked me at 30 miles an hour. … She ran over my foot and hit me at the same time,” he said about the first crash. “I still have gravel in my right knee, but she was all mad because I left a dent in her car.”

Because he’s come out mostly unscathed, Rushton says he’s “immortal until proven otherwise.” That, or every time he was supposed to die, his consciousness leaped into the body of his counterpart in an alternate universe. That theory, he added, would explain the Mandela Effect.

Rushton’s many close calls with death are a byproduct of his devil-may-care lifestyle. Because his time on Earth is limited, he wants to experience as much of it as possible. He calls it “grinding XP,” as though he’s the protagonist of a video game preparing for the final boss. 

His quest began at Granger High School in West Valley City when his counselor suggested a career in manual labor instead of attending college. Rushton has dyslexia and ADHD and said that academic mentors never expected much of him. 

“Basically, you just got put into the (behavioral development) unit with the other bad dudes, and they’re like, ‘OK, cool, as long as you graduate, we don’t care,’” he said. 

So, Rushton maximized his time by taking classes like welding and auto mechanics. 

His adoration for audacious antics was apparent as soon as he asked his welding teacher if he could use a plasma cutter to turn his 1986 Chevrolet S-10 into a convertible. 

“He’s like, ‘Well, no, you can’t do that. But you can do it manually.’ And he gave me a little hacksaw blade. He thought I would stop,” Rushton said. “Three classes, pretty much all day, I just sat there, and I hacksawed the entire top off, basically in defiance.”

Rushton’s high school sweetheart, Jamie Moreno, is just as adventurous.

For example, after graduation, the pair decided to learn belly dancing and ended up performing in a troupe for seven years, balancing swords on their heads and sewing their own costumes.

“I just got sucked into it,” Rushton said. “Just keep grinding, and you keep learning new, cool stuff.”

After Special Ops Paintball, Rushton’s second post-high school gig was hauling reverse osmosis systems for a company with clients like Harmons Grocery and WinCo Foods. On one drive from Utah to Oregon, he had his first scrape with “snow demons.”

“I was sleeping (while my coworker drove the truck),” he said. “I woke up, and it was a snowstorm like no one’s ever seen. It was snowing sideways. All the semis were pulled off. And I’m like, ‘Dude, why didn’t you wake me up? This is really bad.’ He’s like, ‘Oh, I’ve never driven in snow. … I thought you just pushed harder and go faster.’”

After working in such a white-knuckle role, Rushton decided he wanted something more laid-back out of his next job. After moving to Washington, D.C., with Moreno in 2009, he applied to Starbucks. To his chagrin, he was hired as a shift manager instead of a “peon” barista.

Rushton was later promoted to store manager. The only upside to that role, he said, was learning the business know-how that eventually helped him open his own maintenance and repair company, Mr. Weefix.

After two years in D.C., Rushton and Moreno moved back to their home state. They lived in a home in Cottonwood Heights until 2017, when they decided to shed most of their belongings and become nomads.

Moreno dove headfirst into amateur motorsports around 2010, and when she said she wanted to live a life on the road, hauling her modified 2009 Subaru WRX from one race to the next, Rushton was completely on board.

Living out of a 500-square-foot trailer wasn’t entirely glamorous, and there were difficulties to not having a permanent address, but Rushton loved meeting new people, working odd, temporary jobs and exploring areas of the world map outside of “the monoculture of Utah.”

One of the couple’s pit stops as they ping-ponged from coast to coast was in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where Rushton temporarily worked at Intel’s semiconductor fabrication plant. 

Rushton worked with Front-Opening Unified Pods, or FOUPs — sterile, plastic containers that hold silicon wafers. His job was to transfer FOUPs across the facility as the machines that typically moved them were being replaced. 

Rushton called it a job straight out of “Severance,” Apple TV’s dysotpian workplace thriller.

“We picked up a FOUP and looked at the phone. It told us where it needed to go, and we just walked it there. It was a 14-hour shift with two one-hour breaks. You were in a clean room. It was this nasty orange light,” he said. “There’s always noise, so it felt like you were in a machine, and you were wearing a garbage bag.”

Not even allowed to listen to music during his monotonous shift, Rushton spent much of his time thinking through deep, philosophical questions, like the nature of consciousness.

“I tried to separate my mind and my body. When you’re in a car, are you a car? … Are you a body, or are you whatever’s driving this dumb meat mech?” he mused. “I call my meat mech Agnew because, in ‘Futurama,’ Agnew is the headless vice president for (Nixon’s cryogenically preserved head).”

Letting Agnew take the wheel is how Rushton survived some of the grueling cross-country road trips during his nomadic six years with Moreno. 

They slammed on the brakes in 2023. Rushton had picked up steady work with a maintenance and repair company, and both he and Moreno had grown tired of the trailer life.

Rushton and Moreno moved to Heber City early last year. 

“We always call Utah our main campaign because it drives us back. I think we’ve tried to escape at least three to four times, and we keep coming back to the main campaign,” Rushton said. “So, we’re like, ‘OK, there’s something here that we need to do, so I guess we’ll just do normal people stuff.’”

For Rushton, that turned out to be starting Mr. Weefix and becoming a self-employed handyman. 

His goal is to be a “safe contractor” who takes on jobs for “disenfranchised groups.” For example, he recently helped build the basement game room of The Legendarium, an LGBTQ+ fantasy book store in Salt Lake City. 

Rushton’s other heroic aspiration is to become Captain Planet. He recently earned his general contractor’s license and wants to design and build homes similar to the Earthship community in Taos, New Mexico, which incorporate garbage as building materials and run on renewable energy.

“There’s so much trash everywhere,” he said. “Everything’s parts. You can rebuild anything out of everything.”

What is the final boss of Rushton’s main campaign? He’s not sure. But, at 40 years old, he still has plenty of time to find out.

Rushton’s advice to anyone wanting to get more out of life is to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

“I try to make myself uncomfortable all the time,” he said. “Just be loud. Talk to somebody. Get their experience. You never know what they have.”

For Rushton, seizing the day is as simple as treating his life like a timed match in a competitive video game.

“When you get a rocket, you think, ‘Oh, I’m going to save this rocket. This rocket’s going to be the best.’ Then, you finish the game, and you never used your rocket. You don’t get to use it anywhere else. It’s just for this game. So, why are you saving all your rockets?” he said. “Just shoot them off into the sky.”

The post Meet Mr. Weefix, Heber City’s Renaissance (handy)man appeared first on Park Record.

Heber City Americana musician Alicia Stockman was driving home after a horrible house show in Dallas when her engine block cracked and began leaking coolant into the oil, which may as well have been a terminal diagnosis for her car. She “limped” her way to a Kia dealership in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she called her ex-boyfriend and parents, in tears and beside herself. 

“I was 36 at the time. I was not a young kid. I was a full-ass grown adult,” she joked. “My parents came and picked me up, and we towed my car home, and I sold it for salvage. It was this dark window of time when everything was upended, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Stockman had been contemplating a move to Nashville, Tennessee, but at that moment, she realized she wanted nothing more than to be safe at home in Heber City. 

“The whole point of leaving was to run away from my problems. Then, coming home, (I had) no other (option) but to face them head-on and be upset,” she said. 

The experience inspired the title track on her latest album, “Homebound.” The album’s lyrics, which Stockman wrote between 2021 and 2026, explore break-ups, bowling and, most often, place. 

For example, “Jerkwater Town” is an ode to a small town and its residents who refuse to abandon it. Though it mentions a train and “our own Dairy Queen,” bringing local favorites like the Heber Valley Railroad and Dairy Keen to mind, Stockman actually wrote it about an artsy town of 2,000 people in West Texas called Marfa.

“Marfa is a weird word, and no one knew what I was talking about, so I took it out of the song, which, at the end of the day, serves it better. I’ve had people from all over be like, ‘This is my hometown you’re talking about,’” she said.

Meanwhile, “League Night” is indisputably an ode to Heber City’s Holiday Lanes. 

“Growing up in Heber, it was every birthday party, every gathering. … My boyfriend is in the league on Tuesday nights in the winter, which is 34 weeks long. That is almost a human child’s gestation period,” she joked. “I’d spend a lot of time there being like, ‘This is such a vintage vibe. It’s so weird. It’s got so much character.’”

The track’s been a hit at shows, so much so that one family showed up to a concert in Layton in matching bowling shirts. 

“Bowling is like Dolly Parton. It brings everyone together,” Stockman said. 

But “League Night” hasn’t been nearly as much of a crowd-pleaser as the album’s closer, “Crimson Blues.”

“I would not know which song to end a set with, and I’d be like, ‘Do you guys want to hear a song about murder or bowling?’” she said. “You would think there would be more debate, but 98% of the people not requested, screamed the word, ‘Murder!’”

“Crimson Blues,” Stockman explained, is a clapback to bluegrass murder ballads.

“They’re all in major keys, and they’re just fun, upbeat songs about killing women for various reasons that aren’t very compelling,” she said. “This is … my unhinged, slightly psychotic, true crime-loving murder ballad.”

Moving from bowling to a murder ballad in the span of a few tracks is a reflection of Stockman’s growth as a songwriter in the five years since her last album, “These Four Walls.”

“The rule of thumb is you have to write 100 songs before you really have your voice,” she said. 

Stockman feels she finally found that in “September.” She’s particularly proud of the lyric, “The first frost feels like closure, nature’s way of starting over. The woman I’ll be next fall, will I know her?”

Stockman’s voice, she said, is more “pedestrian” than “poetic.” She uses visual imagery to paint scenes of particular moments in her life or conversations she’s had. 

Stockman’s growth in the past five years hasn’t been restricted to her songwriting. She’s also become more comfortable identifying as an artist instead of just “someone who plays music on the weekends.” These days, musicianship is her primary source of income, despite the fact that she doesn’t put too much effort into her social media presence and barely pays attention to her streaming statistics. 

“It’s been a really weird space to navigate, to release a record in this day and age of AI and Ticketmaster and all that stuff,” Stockman said.

Her focus has been playing shows, selling merch and making in-person connections with fans and fellow musicians. 

“(A fan) emailed me to tell me that he had to get an MRI. They asked him what he wanted to listen to, and he picked my music to help calm him while he was there,” she said. “That’s worth all the Spotify streaming numbers.”

Stockman’s work has been especially focused on her hometown. She started a house concert series as an incubator for local and touring musicians and hopes to launch songwriting workshops. 

Stockman’s determination to move to Nashville a few years ago was driven by her desire to be part of its music scene and explore more of the world outside of Utah.

“I live one block from where I went to kindergarten. There were many times when I wrestled with the idea of feeling ashamed about living in my hometown still. It’s a pretty small town, or it was. So, 17-year-old me was really disappointed in mid-30s me for not going anywhere,” she said.

But Stockman has realized she doesn’t need to move to a music mecca; she can create one where she grew up. 

“Once I embraced it, it changed things for me, and I started to build community in a way that I think I had been kind of avoiding,” she said. “I am on a mission to force my friendship any time I meet a new musician in the area. … What those cities have that we don’t have as well is that networking and that cohesiveness.”

Though Stockman has lived in Wasatch and Summit counties her entire life, it wasn’t until the last few years that she finally felt at home.

“The theme that I say about the record is, ‘Home is big enough to hold all the versions of yourself,’” she said. “Coming home, you can be who you were before and who you’ve become now. You don’t have to pick one or the other.”

Stockman’s next local shows are at Heber City Main Street Park on Thursday, and on Aug. 29 and 30, Le Depot Brasserie in Park City on Sept. 4 and St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Heber City on Sept. 12. Learn more at aliciastockman.com.

The post Heber City musician Alicia Stockman finally comes home appeared first on Park Record.

Emily and Phillip Ross have lived in Heber City for three years. Already, they’re certain they want to spend the rest of their lives there. 

“Heber is just perfect. All the parks, the access to the lakes, the camping, hunting, golf, especially, and all the things we have going on in the city center area and city park is just phenomenal,” Phillip said. “We just love it.”

The couple lived in Provo but dreamed of moving to Heber City. They were able to move into an apartment but thought they would be “forever renters,” given the local home prices. 

The Rosses recently put themselves on a track to homeownership through Utah Housing Corporation’s Credits to Own, or CROWN, program. 

CROWN allows qualifying tenants to rent units owned by Utah Housing Corporation for 15 years. After that period, the tenants can buy the home for less than market rate. 

The Utah Housing Corporation on Tuesday celebrated the ribbon-cutting of six new four-bedroom, two-bathroom CROWN townhomes in Heber City. 

Emily and Phillip will pay a little under $1,800 per month. Most of the townhomes of a similar size they had looked at in Heber City were around $2,500 per month.

“You’re not home, poor. You’re able to still live and function because, when you have to pay those astronomical rents or mortgages, you’re eating ramen noodles every day,” Emily said. “Plus, it gives you 15 years to really focus on your credit and your budgeting.”

The tenants of these six townhomes will be able to purchase their home in 2041 for around $300,000, according to CROWN program manager Scott Harmon.

“(When) you think how prices keep going up, $300,000 would be affordable today, but it would be really affordable in 15 years,” he said.

CROWN is available to tenants making 55% of the area median income, which is about $75,000 for a family of four in Wasatch County. 

Much of the funding for these townhomes came from Bank of Utah, which purchased federal low-income housing tax credits from Utah Housing Corporation for about $2.1 million to cover most of the construction costs, Harmon explained. The rest will be repaid by the tenant’s rent.

Utah Housing Corporation has run CROWN since 1993 and built over 500 homes in the program throughout the state. About 75% of tenants purchase their homes after 15 years, according to Harmon. 

As program manager, Harmon has heard plenty of success stories from tenants. For example, a woman was living in her car before renting and eventually bought her home through the CROWN program.

“That’s what it’s all about,” Harmon said. “This is an opportunity for the missing middle, for the people who can’t afford to purchase a home any other way.”

Utah Housing Corporation hopes to build another six CROWN townhomes in Heber City in a few years, Harmon said. The first CROWN homes in Wasatch County were the six Wheeler Park townhomes near the Heber Valley Airport. Those hit the 15-year mark about two years ago, and all six tenants bought their homes for around $110,000, according to Emily, who was the property manager.

She’s also the property manager for three other affordable housing communities in Heber City: Elmbridge Apartments and the Prestige I and II senior apartments.

“What we need here in Heber is more affordable housing, especially for senior citizens, in my opinion, because my wait lists are quite long. Two years long,” she said. 

That’s why Mountainlands Community Housing Trust donated the six lots for the CROWN townhomes to Utah Housing Corporation. They’re part of the 49-lot Parkview Place subdivision that Mountainlands Community Housing Trust established in 2017. There are now 18 lots left.

Executive Director Jason Glidden said Mountainlands Community Housing Trust’s vision for the subdivision was a variety of affordable housing types to meet Heber City residents’ diverse needs.

Other lots have been donated to Self-Help Homes, which allows residents to build their own homes for a lower purchase price, and to the Wasatch County School District to continue its student-run homebuilding program, which houses school district employees.

“Having housing for the local workforce is such an important piece of the community. It helps to build the community, sustain the community, not only just by having folks here long-term and full-time, but also economically,” Glidden said. “I think that the more and more we can continue to provide these opportunities, the better off we’re going to be.”

The post New rent-to-own homes unveiled in Heber City appeared first on Park Record.

Heber City-based nonprofit accountant Carol Sonnenberg was sifting through the finances of an AIDS nonprofit in San Diego on the day of Magic Johnson’s November 1991 press conference. The nonprofit’s staff members and volunteers huddled around a TV in the conference room as the basketball star announced to the world that he’d contracted HIV.

“There were people in the building who were really sick and had lost their jobs and lost their homes,” Sonnenberg said. “He gave a very positive message, and it helped turn the tide on how people looked at (HIV and) AIDS because he publicly owned it.”

That same year, she saw the AIDS-focused nonprofits she was auditing be hit with a “fire hose” of funding as the federal government distributed $220 million in grants through the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act. 

Being a Certified Public Accountant, or CPA, in the nonprofit sector has allowed Sonnenberg to watch life unfold from the unique perspective of a number cruncher. 

Her involvement in nonprofits has also been invaluable in her personal life. For example, when her nephew was born with a heart defect and needed a blood transfusion, she knew how to handle the situation and whom to contact because she had been audit committee chair of the San Diego Blood Bank.

“I knew how to form the family blood bank, and my blood went into my nephew. I would have never been able to do that if I wasn’t on the blood bank board,” she said. “You never know when you’re going to need a nonprofit.”

Sonnenberg’s involvement in nonprofits began with becoming a Girl Scout at 6 years old. It was at a Girl Scout camp where she learned horseback riding, one of her lifelong passions. She later served as the leader of her younger sisters’ and daughter’s troop and audited Girl Scouts San Diego. 

That experience, along with participating in her local Special Olympics with her brother, who has Down syndrome, as a teenager, formed the basis of Sonnenberg’s passion for nonprofit organizations.

Sonnenberg graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona with a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1988. She began her studies as an equine science major before realizing just how cutthroat and expensive the industry was. But it turned out that auditing was very similar to wrangling horses. 

“Being not just an accountant, but a consultant and a partner to my clients, you have to be brave, and you have to be kind. So, both at the same time,” she said. “If I’m hard with my clients, they’re not going to want to listen. If I’m hard with the horses, they’re not going to want to listen.”

After graduating college, Sonnenberg began working at her father’s CPA firm, which had “hundreds of homeowners associations” and only five nonprofit organizations as clients. But the nonprofits provided Sonnenberg with a greater sense of purpose in her work.

“I’m like, ‘My people!’ So, I would audit those, and I’m like, ‘Can we get more of these?’” she said. “Within 10 years, we had over 100.”

That’s in large part because Sonnenberg began teaching classes at Nonprofit Solutions in San Diego in 1992. The organization, which had launched a year prior, has now taught over 110,000 practitioners how to more effectively run their nonprofit organizations.

Sonnenberg’s involvement began when she drove to their headquarters and asked to teach a class: “How to Save $1,000 on Your Audit.”

“They said, ‘Sure, but we also need someone to teach nonprofit budgeting and nonprofit tax, and we’re not going to pay you.’ And I’m like, ‘What a good deal!’” she said. 

Teaching was an opportunity for Sonnenberg to provide advice to nonprofits before she audited them. Nonprofits were typically “ill prepared” for audits.

“It’s like movers showing up on moving day and your boxes aren’t even packed,” she said.

Volunteer teaching in the sector she was most interested in was not only a smart business move, allowing her to make connections with potential clients, but enjoyable for the same reasons being a Girl Scout troop leader was. Sonnenberg later taught courses about nonprofit finance at University of San Diego as an adjunct professor between 2004 and 2013. 

Putting together audit reports isn’t all “checklists and forms,” but also involves meetings with the nonprofit’s accountant and CEO, culminating in a brief presentation to the board of directors followed by advice and a Q and A. 

“Now that I’ve already visited 100 other nonprofits and I’ve seen best practices and I’ve seen challenges, I say, ‘You know what I saw somewhere else? I think you guys should try this,’” Sonnenberg said. “Speaking in front of people when you mean it, when you care, when you want them to grow and do better is so easy. People don’t want to look at their audit. I get it. … But this is a tool they use to get bigger.”

Some audit findings, like financial oversights or improper internal controls, require that Sonnenberg create a corrective action plan for the organization to execute by its next audit. 

“Sometimes, I get called in in a crisis. Emergency CFO. I’ve had it where someone’s died and they need a replacement, or someone’s committed fraud and they want a limited investigation,” she said. 

Then, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper, Sonnenberg confessed that financial crisis response gigs are the most “fun.” She thinks that’s because her outdoorsy interests have prepared her for all sorts of survival scenarios, even financial ones. 

Sonnenberg now lives in Heber City with her golden retriever, Daphne, and three horses: mama Zeta, her daughter, April — also known as Wink because of her missing eye — and “mean girl” Lucy, short for Lucifer. Whenever Sonnenberg has a bad day or difficult meeting, her solution is to “hug a horse.”

Sonnenberg started her own CPA firm in 2016 and moved to Heber City in 2021 to be closer to her sisters and daughter, who was attending the University of Utah at the time. 

Some Utah nonprofits she’s audited include Wasatch Immigration Project in Park City, Friends of the Bear River Refuge in Brigham City and Utah Nurse Practitioners. She’s also the founding treasurer of Outdoor Access Project, a nonprofit committed to accessible outdoor recreation statewide.

Sonnenberg’s advice to those wanting to start a nonprofit is, in most cases, not to. 

There are about 1.9 million nonprofits in the United States, and over 12,000 of them in Utah, according to Candid, a nonprofit focused on nonprofit data. Chances are, there is already a local nonprofit that meets a particular need, Sonnenberg said.

“I really encourage people before they start one, ‘Do you know one that’s nearby, or now, even remote, that you can join and make better?’” she said. “If you want to start one, then let’s do the accounting right. … If not me, get another accountant. But don’t waste your time on your computer doing your own accounting and finance and banking when you need to do your mission and purpose.”

The post Heber City accountant finds purpose in nonprofit finance appeared first on Park Record.

Heber City couple Michele and T.C. Thomas’ 9-year-old son, who has Down syndrome, likes to explore, even if he doesn’t have an adult with him.

“One day, I was in the bathroom, and my husband was gone, and my front door camera went off, and it was him. He was walking straight out the front door. He had figured out the childproof door handle and lock and just went on his way,” Michele said. “There’s so much to see, so many people to meet.”

Wandering is common among those with certain developmental disabilities, such as Down syndrome and autism spectrum disorder, but it also affects people with other conditions like Alzheimer’s disease. It refers to situations where someone leaves a safe area or a responsible caregiver, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Reuniting the individual with caregivers can be complicated when the individual has communication differences or is nonverbal.

Because of risks like drowning and traffic injury, it’s important for law enforcement to “act fast” in such situations, as Michele put it. That’s why T.C., formerly a Heber City Police Department officer, created a vulnerable persons form about eight years ago. 

The voluntary form allows residents to provide information about themself or a loved one in the case they go missing or have an interaction with law enforcement. It advises police on how best to communicate and interact with the individual and provides emergency contacts and photos of the person.

T.C.’s plans to expand the program “fizzled out” when he left the Police Department last July, according to officer Travis Price. So, Price took up the mantle himself, launching the new Project Safeguard last week.

Project Safeguard published the vulnerable persons form online, which includes sections about an individual’s triggers, calming techniques, likes and dislikes. 

Likes have ranged from soothing music to the flashing lights of police cars, Price explained. Meanwhile, one person’s dislike was “males.”

“In that instance, we may rely on our female officers or deputies or first responders to have a key role in that. Maybe we want them to be the ones to initiate the conversation with the individual once we find them or calm them down,” Price said.

The Police Department is also distributing Project Safeguard stickers at the police station that can be placed on car or home windows to alert officers that a vulnerable person may be present.

The Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office is working on launching a similar Red Dot program, according to public information officer Leo Lucey. Residents can put stickers on their cars to indicate that someone in the vehicle may have special medical needs and provide a letter detailing those needs to law enforcement if pulled over. 

The Police Department can also share information from Project Safeguard with the Sheriff’s Office, Price said.

The goal of Project Safeguard is for vulnerable persons to have “win-win” interactions with law enforcement, according to Cheryl Smith, the former president of the Autism Council of Utah. 

She said her son, who is 28 and autistic, “does a lot of things that look sketchy” but are actually driven by his special interests.

For example, he may look into someone’s car window if he spots some VHS tapes, which he loves to collect. But because he is nonverbal, he would be unable to communicate what he was doing if he were to have a run-in with law enforcement. 

“One of your fears as a parent is that your kid’s going to have an interaction with officers, and it’s going to go wrong,” Smith said. 

That’s exactly what happened to Golda Barton in 2020 when she called 911 for assistance amid her 13-year-old son Linden Cameron’s meltdown. Salt Lake City Police arrived on the scene, and when Cameron, unarmed, ran from the house, officer Matthew Farillas shot him six times, injuring him. The family sued the city and was awarded $3 million in 2022.

Cameron’s shooting by police was part of what inspired Price to launch Project Safeguard.

“It’s very unfortunate what Cameron and his family had to go through. However, we can educate our officers when they see or hear, ‘Hey, this individual may be on the spectrum,’ to take a step back and realize … their boundaries may be different from other individuals and communication,” he said.

The incident also inspired legislation requiring Utah law enforcement training and intervention responses for mental illnesses, autism spectrum disorder and other neurological and developmental disorders at least once every three years. 

In 2024, Crisis Intervention Team Utah trained the Police Department and Sheriff’s Office. The 40-hour program provides education about how to recognize symptoms of various mental illnesses and disorders and walks officers through scenarios, explained Executive Director Dr. Todd Soutor. 

But he said the most valuable part of the training is connecting police officers with community officers who have “lived experience” and having them share their stories.

“Empathy is such an important component of responding in an informed and educated manner,” Soutor said.

The Autism Council of Utah also provides law enforcement training, but its interactions with local law enforcement agencies have been limited to providing autism sensory bags, free of charge, to the Police Department, Sheriff’s Office and Wasatch Fire District. The bags include fidget toys, noise-canceling headphones and Picture Exchange Communication System sheets, which nonverbal individuals can use to communicate by pointing at pictures or writing.

“We’ve had successes with that, where people have been so anxious they have actually gone nonverbal and were able to write out where they came from, so the officers could get them back home safely,” Smith said. 

For example, body cam footage recently released by the Salt Lake City Police Department shows officers using a sensory bag to de-escalate an incident with an autistic child last month.

Soutor said Utah law enforcement’s treatment of vulnerable persons is “moving in a positive direction.” Project Safeguard, he said, is just one example of that. 

To sign up for Project Safeguard, visit tinyurl.com/mrbccxnh. Summit County law enforcement agencies have a similar program. Learn more at tinyurl.com/rs96rb2b.

The post Heber City Police Department launches Project Safeguard for vulnerable people appeared first on Park Record.

An Atari controller with hands plays itself. A friendly, lean fellow in a bow tie, looking like an extra in the 2005 animated film “Robots,” pours four drinks at once. A 4-foot-tall troll holds a spear in one hand and dangles a key in the other, seemingly asking for a password. 

The father of each of these metal creatures is sculptor Adam Holman from Tucson, Arizona, one of 195 artists who exhibited on Park City Main Street over the weekend during the Kimball Arts Festival. 

Holman has been obsessed with Jim Henson, “Star Wars” and LEGO since he was a kid, if it wasn’t obvious from his passion for birthing weird little monsters using his imagination and hands.

“I kind of think of them as steel cartoons in a way. I’m always thinking, ‘What story do they fit into? What world do they fit into? What might their backstory be?’” he said. “That’s, I think, why they have so much life.”

Holman’s creations incorporate both new metal and found objects from estate sales and junkyards. The troll’s key, for example, comes from an actual castle. Homan’s stepfather, an Army veteran stationed in Germany in the 1960s, brought home lots of strange souvenirs.

“On the weekends, he’d go in the German countryside, and he’d pick through these bombed-out castles from World War II. He came home with, like, 50 keys,” Holman said. “They’re probably stolen and hot merchandise, but perfect for that.”

The strangest object Holman has ever used was a component of a radiology machine that a radiologist client gifted him.

“It looks like something out of a ‘Buck Rogers’ movie,” he said. “We actually had to take a Geiger counter to it, make sure it wasn’t radioactive.”

Holman started his artistic practice as an eighth-grade English teacher, picking up welding from family members. He’s now been an artist full-time for 30 years. 

This was Holman’s second year at Kimball Arts Festival. He first attended about two decades ago and finally freed up his schedule to make the trek to Park City again. The crowd was just as enthusiastic as he remembered. 

Artists in Holman’s circle constantly recommend the Kimball Arts Festival, he said.

“That word of mouth becomes so important, especially from other artists,” he said. “That’s firsthand experience, not ‘I hope it’s a good show.’ It is a good show. They get a good crowd. It’s well organized. It’s a beautiful location. You can’t really lose.”

Artist Cassidy Watt from Santa Fe, New Mexico, said the same. This was his third year at Kimball Arts Festival. 

Watt specializes in “totems” of copper and brass, composed entirely of scrap metal left over from making jewelry. 

Each stripe of the rectangular prism shows a different pattern — one turquoise and marble-like, another black and etched with gold. The catch? Watt produced the various colors and patterns without using a single drop of paint, only chemical reactions. 

“Everything I do is a patina. It’s a reaction,” he said. “But I’m self-taught, so everything you see here is something I’ve invented myself, whether it’s a chemical formula or even the process of how to get the patterns with said chemical formula.”

Watt uses chemicals ranging from those found under the kitchen sink to those you’d only ever find in a science lab. And no, there haven’t been any exploding test tube incidents. In fact, the only time the artist has injured himself was when he sliced his hand with a wire wheel while preparing metal. 

“It’s thousands of pieces of steel wire moving at a couple of thousand RPMs,” he said. “What I learned is (that) you have to be careful. So, when I’m doing a job, it doesn’t matter how long or short, I take it seriously.”

Self-described “mad scientist” Watt wasn’t the only inventive type at the Kimball Arts Festival. Bob McNally from Rockaway, New Jersey, visited for the first time with his original instrument, the Strumstick.

McNally invented the Strumstick in 1984, wanting to design an instrument for “the musically disinclined.”

“I had been building instruments for 14 years, and I also taught guitar for about 12 years. I specifically wanted to make an instrument for beginners that would not make them quit because they were frustrated with how bad they sounded, which is why people quit guitar,” he said. 

The Strumstick has the neck of an acoustic guitar and the fret pattern of a dulcimer. It only has three strings, and the chords are much simpler than a guitar.

“That’s very, very accessible, because it’s hard to do anything that you don’t like,” McNally said.

The instrument’s been picked up by professional musicians, including Tracy Chapman, Amy Grant and Jon Anderson from Yes. Its dulcet tones were a hit with Parkites, too.

While many artists came to the Kimball Arts Festival from across the country, there were also plenty of locals.

Painter Sadie AbuHaidar was raised in Park City and currently lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where she works as a wrangler and ski instructor.

AbuHaidar takes equal inspiration from pop art and the Old West. Her works range from javelinas painted on discarded diner placemats to cowboys on horseback, but a self-portrait sticks out among her body of work. It depicts AbuHaidar in melancholy orange and blue hues staring down two trout. 

“I fly fish quite a bit. As a woman, you are pretty alone out there on the river, and it’s a very gatekeepy world out there as well. I mean, you’ll go into a fly fishing store, and the workers in there would rather do anything but tell you where to fish or how to get resources or what flies to use or anything,” she explained. “I made that piece around that lonely feeling. You’re kind of having to stick up for yourself.”

Womanhood is a central theme in AbuHaidar’s work. Her goal is to modernize romanticized Wild West stereotypes by including more gender and racial diversity in the subjects she depicts. 

“A lot of times you don’t see (women) represented, or they’re represented in a pin-up, objectified way,” she said. “A lot of my stuff has that kind of more working, gritty feel to it, no matter who’s in the piece.”

AbuHaidar’s sole passions growing up were horseback riding and painting. In high school, she was a student in the Kimball Arts Center’s Young Artists’ Academy and a volunteer at the Kimball Arts Festival. For AbuHaidar, participating in the festival as an artist for the first time this year was a full-circle moment. 

“It was very cool growing up, being able to go to this festival. It gave me that first thought that I can be a working artist, and this is not some stupid vision for the future that’s not attainable,” she said. “To be able to work my way up … and be able to show my own stuff is really, really special to me.”

The post Artists come from near and far for Kimball Arts Festival appeared first on Park Record.

The Heber City Council on Tuesday approved new penalties for parking violations that raised fines but lessened the severity of the offense. 

A committee comprising representatives from city staff, the Police Department, Justice Court and Prosecutor’s Office proposed the changes. Assistant City Manager Mark Smedley said the committee drafted the ordinance in part because of events at Main Street Park.

“This has really occurred because of the Heber Market on Main and all of the other events that we’re having. I think we have three to four events during the summer per week, and it has brought a lot of people,” Smedley said. “Mayor (Heidi Franco said) … we need to be careful and conscientious of the residents that live down there … so we’ve brought this proposal to do that.”

The ordinance raised the minimum fine amount from $25 to $50.

“It’s intended to create a meaningful deterrent because the prior amount was so low that people would park illegally as a convenience,” Smedley said. 

Late penalties of $50 and $75 apply after 14 and 40 days, respectively. Heber City did not formerly have late penalities for parking tickets and modeled its approach on cities like Park City, Ogden and West Valley City.

Heber City Code Enforcement Officer Travis Price explained that the Police Department will start with written or verbal warnings for unpaid parking tickets and, as a last resort, issue an arrest warrant.

Parking illegally was formerly classified as a Class C misdemeanor and has now been reduced to an infraction, the lowest classification for a criminal charge. Infractions do not appear on a person’s criminal record, while Class C misdemeanors do and may appear during background checks. 

Smedley hopes reducing the severity of the charge will place less burden on the Justice Court and reduce the likelihood of residents contesting their parking tickets.

“Sometimes people would get so frustrated that they would say, ‘I want to have a jury trial.’ And because it was a Class C misdemeanor, we would have to go through the process. And it was frivolous to do those types of things on a parking violation,” he said. “Dropping it to an infraction takes that option away from people that just have an axe to grind.”

The new parking ordinance went into effect Tuesday with unanimous City Council approval.

The post Heber City raises fines, lowers legal classification for parking violations appeared first on Park Record.

Eve Christensen has lived in Heber City since 2021 and, since she’s raising five kids there, wants to be involved in “making Heber as awesome as possible.” 

A freelance structural engineer, she thought maybe the best way to do that would be serving on the Planning Commission. But she quickly realized when she started watching public meetings that she “(didn’t) even have the vocabulary to get involved.” Despite her engineering expertise, she knew very little about the inner workings of city government. 

That changed after a friend told Christensen about the Heber Leadership Academy, a nine-month city program giving residents a behind-the-scenes look at public works, the police and fire departments, Heber Valley Tourism, the Intermountain Health Heber Valley Hospital, the Wasatch County School District and much more.

The program culminates in a project chosen and organized by students. Christensen’s class last year designed an America250-themed geocaching scavenger hunt around town, which is still being implemented before its public launch. Past class projects have included the splash pad outside of the city building and a historic walking tour.

Now that Christensen has participated in the program, she’s attended public meetings and voiced her opinions much more often. She’s also been a more informed voter, in no small part because her Heber Leadership Academy class organized a candidate forum with KPCW. 

The Heber Leadership Academy, Christensen said, bridges the gap between city and county administration and residents.

“There are no conspiracies. Everyone that lives here loves here,” she said. “It makes you proud of Heber and the care and effort that goes into keeping it running by good, down-to-earth people.”

With the Heber Leadership Academy now accepting applications for its sixth class, Christensen has texted all of her friends, urging them to get involved.

“The more informed that people are, the more aware they are of their city leadership and the leaders of the utilities and other public services, the better off we’d be,” she said.

Plus, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the program. In the class devoted to public works, Heber Light & Power Company brings out wire and creates searing electric arcs to cook hot dogs and marshmallows. Meanwhile, the city public works department lets participants operate a backhoe.

“We’ll actually go out into our yard and get a piece of pipe, bury it up with some road base and let the academy attendees get inside the backhoe and experience taking a scoop alongside of a pipe without actually touching the pipe,” said Public Works Director Matthew Kennard. “It’s a real-world demonstration of the skill that’s involved with operators.”

The Heber Leadership Academy, Kennard said, helps participants gain a greater appreciation for the little miracles of electricity, sewer and running water. He’s always impressed by “how much they want to learn and understand about how society actually works.” 

Heber City Police Chief Parker Sever said the same. He said there are always questions about “what we do to keep the officers sane.”

Sever explained that officers can also book therapy through BlomquistHale and are required to see a counselor once per year and after “serious events.”

“At my last agency (in Hanford, California), we had an officer that had to do CPR on a baby that had just had open heart surgery. Imagine doing compressions on a baby that has sutures all the way down its stomach. Horrible,” he said. “So, we made an appointment with him to see a counselor to talk.”

Beyond officers’ mental health, Sever has also taught Heber Leadership Academy students about everything from the Police Department’s SWAT team to youth mentorship opportunities. 

Students kick off the Heber Leadership Academy with an introductory lesson about leadership from former history and politics professor Matthew Heimburger. He focuses on all the various ways one can be a leader in one’s community. 

That’s a lesson he personally learned while lobbying against the construction of Heber City’s 105,000-square-foot Walmart in 2007. The city did not allow retail outlets larger than 60,000 square feet until the City Council changed zoning ordinances to approve the store. 

Seeking to overturn that decision, Heimburger organized a citizen group that put the issue on the ballot. But voters narrowly approved the new zoning, paving the way for the Walmart still standing today.

“There were a lot of weird feelings there,” Heimburger said. “But it was totally worth it for us because we think we helped the community understand that they had a right to be involved in decision-making, whether they’re in office or not in office, that they have a right to go to meetings and to express what they prefer, to be a part of vision boarding for the community.”

Heimburger loves the Heber Leadership Academy for its fostering of civic engagement.

“It seems like a lost art, but it’s not. It’s just that people are crazy busy. They want to leave the politicking to the politicians until the wrong decision gets made,” he said. “Then, they’re up in arms. Well, then it’s too late.”

Heimburger said informing residents about the inner workings of the city empowers them to guide their elected officials, not just react to the decisions they make.

“You’ll have a businesswoman next to a real estate developer next to a stay-at-home mom next to a construction management guy next to an environmentalist,” he said. “The fact that you can bring those people into a room and get them talking about cooperating and the building of a community, I think, is a tremendous concept.”

Applications for the Heber Leadership Academy close Aug. 17. The program runs Aug. 20 through May 20. Program tuition is $275. Learn more at envisionheber.com/leadership.

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Heber City resident Keaton Hansen nervously checks his bank account every time he gets groceries at Walmart. He has five kids, aged 2 to 12, and said he can’t afford daycare. He drives a car manufactured in 2003. Despite working as a nurse at Intermountain Health Heber Valley Hospital and having two side hustles, he’s “drowning” in bills to the point of “depression.”

So, when Hansen heard the Heber City Council is considering a 4.8% property tax increase, he knew he had to voice his dissent. City Finance Director Sara Nagel provided context to the tax increase at a Heber City Council public hearing on Wednesday, explaining that a home valued at $850,000 would pay an additional $16.83 — about the price of a burrito meal at a restaurant. 

“I’m not getting $16 burritos. I’m getting PB&J’s,” Hansen told the City Council. “It really is that dramatic. … We’re dying out there.”

Heber City’s proposed tax increase would generate an additional $174,000 for its general fund during fiscal year 2027, which began July 1. The general fund supports administration, public safety, planning and general operations. 

Nagel said the proposed increase is intended to keep up with inflation and maintain the current level of service. She added that the city is essentially asking for more property tax revenue to maintain its current purchasing power.

The city’s yearly budget is built by Nagel and City Manager Matt Brower from the ground up every year. That means every department must request and justify every dollar they plan to spend.

“We’re not asking for frosting here, and we’ve already achieved that by saying no to many (department requests),” Nagel said. 

But residents who attended the public hearing said they were more than happy with the city cutting back on spending to lessen or eliminate the tax increase. 

Rick Anderton suggested the city “DOGE” its overall budget, referring to the cost-cutting federal agency led by Elon Musk that dissolved last month.

Several residents said they would be more than happy to sacrifice spending on downtown revitalization projects like the Main Street Park redesign and the pedestrian-only alleyway, C Street. Part of the purpose of these projects is to draw in tourists and bolster the local economy, but they also come with price tags as high as $15 to 18 million, in the park’s case. 

“You don’t need extravagance. We don’t need luxury. Let’s get back to basics,” Hansen said.

Nagel clarified that the general fund does not directly funnel into these projects and that they instead have indirect fiscal impacts, like staff time spent working on them. In the park’s case, the only city funding will be Trails, Arts and Park tax revenue and impact fees, one-time fees paid by developers.

A trip to Folsom, California, that Brower and several city councilors are taking next month became a subject of ire from many of the residents who packed the room. The one-day trip, Brower explained, will allow them to meet with Folsom elected officials, learn how they operate the city and bring the insights back home. City officials went on a similar trip to three cities in Colorado two years ago. Funding for the trip will come from the general fund, according to Nagel.

Wasatch County Republican Party Vice Chair Patty Sprunt suggested Heber City and Folsom officials meet virtually instead, given the current economy.

Sprunt recalled a conversation she’d had with a financially struggling resident who called his taxes “death by a thousand cuts.” She added that she moved from California to Utah for the lower taxes. She’s concerned by Heber City’s trajectory of more frequent tax rate increases. 

Heber City has increased its property tax rate five times in the past 30 years. Three of those increases were in the past five years, the most recent being a 9.3% increase in 2024.

Nagel said several cities are moving toward smaller, more frequent tax increases to avoid larger, infrequent increases like the 32.3% increase Heber City experienced in 2015.

“When city councils delay property taxes to the point of a crisis, and then they have to, it creates headlines,” she said. “No government agency wants to be a headline.”

Former Heber City Councilor Scott Phillips, who ran an unsuccessful campaign for mayor last fall, agreed. He was the only commenter in favor of the increase.

“These nominal increases are important so that we don’t have to have a 50, 60, 70% increase in one year,” he said. 

But for Mayor Heidi Franco, that wasn’t a good enough justification. She pointed out that everyone is facing inflation, and that the city could cut costs to avoid placing further burden on residents. 

“We can defer some vehicle purchases to more than make up this deficit,” she said. “To me, making sure that you are able to pay your bills and be able to take care of your own situations is just as important as the city being able to pay its bills.”

It will be the City Council, not Franco, that votes on the proposed tax rate increase, scheduled for Aug. 18. None of the councilors shared how they plan to vote. 

However, City Councilor Yvonne Barney said she felt “angry and frustrated,” just as many other residents did. She said most of her family cannot afford to live in Heber City and recalled her mother never buying anything she asked for as a kid, even if it was only 10 cents.

“For a single mother raising a child in Arizona, who was renting all the time, it was too much,” Barney said. “It is hard, and we need to recognize that just nickels and dimes really do affect the budget.”

The post ‘Death by a thousand cuts’: Heber City residents oppose near 5% property tax rate increase appeared first on Park Record.

The Utah Department of Transportation will delay its decision on the Heber Valley bypass route until the spring of 2027, representatives from the state agency told the Heber City Council on Tuesday.

UDOT had formerly anticipated publishing its final environmental impact statement for the new highway, which will divert through traffic off of Heber City’s Main Street, by the end of this year. It published the draft environmental impact statement in January. That document included a preferred route that cut through the North Fields, a freshwater wetland habitat that has seen agricultural use for generations.

The announcement about the proposed route provoked months of pushback, public comment and protest by residents, farmers and elected officials.

Numerous local and state elected officials jointly signed a letter to UDOT in March rejecting the proposed route. The letter requested the bypass be shifted further east, as close to existing U.S. 40 as possible, to avoid bisecting existing farmlands, protect groundwater quality and preserve open space and conservation easements. 

UDOT is considering shifting the bypass east, but exactly how far is to be determined. That’s one reason why the state delayed publishing the final environmental impact statement.

UDOT is also considering other amendments suggested by the City Council, like moving a section that runs along 1300 South into undeveloped land to minimize impacts to existing homes and businesses, and redesigning an interchange at Midway Lane to be more pedestrian- and cyclist-friendly.

UDOT Project Manager Craig Hancock said the group secured $1 million in funding from the Utah Transportation Commission to consider these changes and conduct additional traffic and wetlands analysis.

“We have our wetland experts who are actually on the ground doing the wetland delineations. So, it’s a much more granular look than the general wetland data that’s available (from state and federal agencies),” Hancock said.

UDOT is also collaborating with stakeholders like the North Fields Irrigation Company, which has controlled water use in the area since 1860, to better understand the potential impacts the bypass could have on the North Fields.

This information will help UDOT formulate a plan to preserve at least 2 acres of wetlands, canals, ditches and perennial streams for every acre impacted by the bypass. That’s 54 acres affected by the route UDOT proposed in January. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will approve or deny UDOT’s mitigation plan.

UDOT, in the final environmental impact statement, will also respond to the over 700 comments received during the public comment period between January and March. 

“There were a lot of comments that were very similar, so there will be some aggregation,” Hancock said. “What we’ll be doing is developing a response that could go to several comments. So, when we respond to those comments, it may (refer) back to a similar comment.”

After publishing the final environmental impact statement, UDOT will submit its record of decision to the Federal Highway Administration. Then, it will determine funding sources for the project.

The alignment proposed in January was estimated to cost $760.5 million. UDOT representatives have acknowledged that costs will likely increase by the project’s horizon year of 2050.

Hancock and other UDOT representatives plan to return to the Heber City Council with another update sometime next month.

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