Mayor urges students to get involved
Logan City officials will listen to Utah State University students.
That is, they will listen if the students get more involved in the political process.
Logan Mayor Doug Thompson and a number of other Logan City officials spoke to USU students Wednesday at a neighborhood council meeting in the Taggart Student Center.
The meeting was meant to be an open forum for students to voice their concerns and ask questions to city officials about items such as emergency preparedness, air- quality issues and Logan’s landlord/tenant ordinance.
Few students took advantage of the opportunity, as only a handful of Associated Students of USU officers and others asked the mayor questions.
“What you can do to get your voice better heard is to get more people to come to these things,” Thompson said.
The mayor said the city is more than willing to work with the university students, but the student voice is not very strong. As evidence, Thompson referenced the university voting district as having the lowest voter turnout in Cache County in the last election.
While there was not a large audience at the event, Thompson answered a number of questions pertinent to the students. He answered multiple questions regarding transportation in Logan.
He was asked whether the city plans to construct a large highway running through or around Logan, to which he quickly said no.
City officials are doing the best they can with the space and resources available for transportation, he said.
Logan has conducted a transportation study to determine whether a highway along the west side of Logan would be used. The results from the study showed that a four-lane highway, presumably 1000 West, would not be heavily used, Thompson said.
Another option would be to expand a road that already goes through Logan, which would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.
“I don’t care what you say about traffic being a pain in the neck; losing your home would be a bigger pain,” Thompson said.
Expanding an existing street through Logan would involve tearing up homes, compensating the homeowners and massive amounts of capital, he said.
The mayor told the audience that Interstate Highway 15 was being considered for construction through Cache Valley years ago, and the fact it did not happen was a saving grace for the community.
“Along freeways we see crime rates rise,” Thompson said.
The mayor also talked about efforts that are being made to improve traffic flow through Logan now. New computer synchronization of traffic lights will be operating in March to help the flow of traffic.
A student questioned Thompson as to why the city did not make it possible for a car to travel the length of Main Street without having to stop at any traffic lights.
“The best we can possibly do is to synchronize it with computers,” the mayor said. “The best we can do is what’s going to be happening in March. All the cables have been laid and almost all of the lights have been put up.”
The video cameras, which students have seen on the top of traffic lights along Main Street, will work in conjunction with a supercomputer to determine how to optimize the flow of Main Street.
“What we’re trying to do is optimize the traffic flow for everybody, not just individual vehicles,” Thompson said.
–str@cc.usu.edu