Laraine Swenson

Laraine Swenson is a homemaker who grew up in Logan. She has an associate degree from Brigham Young University and attended California State University at Hayward.

Utah Statesman: If you are elected, how will you improve Logan?

Swenson: I serve on the Cache Regional Council, and I think the biggest improvement for Logan would be a valleywide plan. That’s what we’re working on right now with the council through Envision Utah, to facilitate a plan where each city participates to coordinate issues like transportation and land-use planning.

Statesman: How will your decisions affect university students?

Swenson: University students wishing to stay in the valley will have a better place to live. The biggest problem I see facing the valley is growth and dealing with that in a sustainable way. And if we can do that, it will make this a much more livable place for any students who want to make this their home in the future.

Statesman: What are the important issues facing this year’s election?

Swenson: Looking to the future for growth and planning for that. In regards to transportation and land use, revitalizing our downtown and preserving the defining character of Logan. Making it a place where people want to move and stay. Where people are friendly, where you can get from one area to another, where it’s walkable, and pleasant, and safe. Facing the county in general, we have issues of sprawl, of growth that’s eating up the agricultural land, the valuable open space and the boundaries between cities that help each city preserve its identity. In order to address our transportation problems, we need to concentrate our growth in areas that transportation can serve, such as along bus routes, rather than just dividing up all the available land into building lots and filling our valley.

Statesman: How would things be different if you are elected, as opposed to your opponent?

Swenson: I put a lot of time into studying fiscal issues. I organized the Citizens Financial Advisory Committee that prepared a five, 10, and 20-year plan. I delve into each issue, understand it and make the best fiscal decision for Logan. For three and half years, we’ve studied some of the financial problems that we’ve had. Maybe other candidates have mentioned that to you that we came in with a $1.4 million deficit. We’ve turned that around and now have an operable reserve that’s comfortable. We’re addressing infrastructure, and a lot of that is due to the present council’s attention to that problem and to finding solutions.

Statesman: Why did you vote against the Intermountain Power Plant 3 Program?

Swenson: I voted against it because there are other options out there than burning dirty coal, and we already have a significant proportion of coal in our portfolio. We have 16 years before we need more base-load power. There are going to be a lot of options between now and then for contributing to our portfolio. If we had bought into the IPP3 power, we wouldn’t need any more power until 2040, and that would basically eliminate our options for change within the portfolio. There are some very viable geothermal options for base-load power, wind farms that are being built and solar technology that’s being developed. The wind and the geothermal technology is here now,. It’s not a question of waiting for the future, just developing it. Solar is here, but I think we’ll see a lot of changes in that in the next few years. I think that we need to be looking to the future for solving these problems. Besides that, IPP3 isn’t even going to be built, because building that plant with the infrastructure that would be required would have been prohibitively expensive, because California is not letting IPP3 use the infrastructure from IPP1 and 2, because they’re a participant in both of those phases. And the energy that would come off of that, if it was sequestered, would be comparable to what we can buy renewable energy for. Sequestration is where you take the CO2 emissions and either turn them into a solid or pump them back into the ground so they’re not part of the atmosphere or the air that we’re breathing, and hopefully not contribute to global warming. But sequestration is not a technology that’s fully developed. So that plant would actually have turned out to be more expensive than renewable sources.