How city council impacts daily life
Elections are right around the corner and this year, apart from the 2nd Congressional District special election, most of the elections happening around Utah are local city council elections. But what impact do the local city governments have and why should students care and vote in these elections?
One of the local elections happening this year is the Logan City Council elections, where three seats are open on the council and there are six names on the general elections ballot.
Damon Cann, Utah State University’s political science department head, emphasized how much city government, specifically the city council, impacts each person’s everyday life.
“When folks woke up this morning, they probably at some point turned on a faucet, water showed up in their house. They didn’t really think about how it got there,” Cann said. “They flushed the toilet, the dirty water went away. Then they went out the door to go to work, or to school, and they drove on a road, walked on a sidewalk or rode on a bus. And before you get even just a couple of hours into your day you leave your apartment or house, which was permitted and allowed to be built and exists in a particular zone. Your city government touched you in the first hours of any given day in very important and significant ways.”
The amount of money someone pays for housing depends on the zoning and permitting in the city. To travel, everyone drives on roads paid for by the municipal government in an area, along with sidewalks and bike trails.
Cann said one major concern among students, especially at USU, is not having enough student housing. He said oftentimes the type of government people learn the most about and understand the most about is the federal government. But the federal government isn’t where people will get help with the issues affecting their everyday lives, such as housing or transportation, and oftentimes neither is the state government.
“Congress can’t do anything to improve housing policy and Cache Valley, the state legislature, they’re not going to build apartments here,” Cann said. “If you want to see more student housing, then the level of government that’s going to address that issue is going to be cities and maybe to a lesser extent the county, but primarily cities.”
Logan City Mayor Holly Daines shared what she sees as the biggest impact a city council has on a city, and that is the financial and budgetary power the council holds. She said budgetary issues are the council’s primary responsibility.
“They approve any finance, I mean, the annual budget, which basically outlines what the annual financial expenditures are, so that’s everything from capital projects, which are bigger items to, you know, just departmental line item budgets,” Daines said. “So they’re very important, because the way things get done in the city is, you know, the budget gets appropriated to solve a problem or to build a building or to, you know, whatever it is.”
The other major responsibility of a city council, according to Daines, is legislative. All laws in a city are created, approved, changed and amended by the city council.
There are things under the power of the city council that affect the lives of students. One of those things is zoning laws.
“So in terms of housing, in neighborhoods surrounding a university, one thing that’s been talked about back and forth over the years, and it’s currently under discussion right now is occupancy limits,” Daines said.
Occupancy limits affect the number of people allowed to live in a rental space, and oftentimes those limits are no more than three unrelated people or one family.
Bike lanes and public transportation, such as buses, are other things dictated by the city council.
Cann said there are a few things that prevent students from voting in the local election where they are living for school. One of those is students remain registered to vote where they are from because their address changes so often in college. One thing Cann said could help with this is same-day registration.
“Now if you go on election day to a voting center and you bring your ID and your materials, you can register on election day,” Cann said. “It’s a little bit less of an issue given the strides we’ve made in making registration available for people in the student phase of life. Not being registered is not as good of an excuse as it used to be.”
Daines said with the number of people who vote in the Logan City elections, there were 4,564 ballots cast in this year’s general election. If enough students voted then it could have a significant influence on the election.
“So there’s a wide range of issues that have a wide range of levers, pulleys and buttons that municipal governments can push that have implications for students for their quality of life, for their happiness and for their opportunity,” Cann said. “And so students would be wise to come out, learn about that and then cast an informed choice for what they think would be best for them.”
In order for students in Logan to get to know the City Council candidates for the upcoming elections, the Statesman will be holding an elections town hall on Oct. 30 at 12 p.m. This event is taking place on the Hub Stage at the TSC and this event will allow students to ask questions of the candidates and voice their concerns.
For more information on the individual elections happening around the state this election year, visit Vote.Utah.gov The website gives information on voter registration, election dates and how people can vote in their individual local elections.