Meet the candidates for City of Logan Municipal Council
Katie Lee-Koven
Can you introduce yourself to USU students?
Hi, I’m Katie Lee-Koven, and I am running for Logan city council. I look forward to serving you students in this role. I am currently — in my day job, I work at Utah State University as the director for the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art on campus. So, hopefully you’ve been there. And my free time — I have served on various committees for Logan city council or for Logan City, the Public Art Committee, the General Steering Committee and other things. So I feel really well-equipped to take on this role.
If you had to describe Logan in three words, what would they be?
Breathtaking, safe and quaint.
What do you do when not running for office?
Well, I have a nine-year-old, and she keeps me busy, coaching her basketball team or running her to soccer practice, serving on the Community Council there. But also as the director for the art museum, we have a lot of things happening outside of normal hours. We had the Dock Sessions we just launched, which is a music concert series on our loading dock. Hopefully you’ll hear more about it. We’ll have another concert coming up in October. So, there are a lot of fun evening things that we do at the museum that keep me busy as well. I also enjoy running on Logan trails and enjoying those and enjoying everything Logan has to offer us.
What makes you stand out from other candidates, and why should students vote for you?
I think I’m uniquely positioned in terms of the current volunteer roles I have with Logan City and the relationships I have built there as well as the relationships I have at Utah State University. You know, Utah State University is a huge part of the economy here in Cache Valley, and it’s also a huge part of just the day-to-day experience of living in a college town, and so I want to be able to facilitate better opportunities between Utah State University and Logan to support the student experience, as well as thinking about the impact that USU has on our local economy.
Why should students care about who is on city council?
If you take the bus, if you walk down the sidewalks to go to the grocery store, if you use the trails in Logan City, if you want clean water and your trash and recycling picked up — these are things that Logan City provides, and this is where you’re living for four years or maybe more. So, you can really notice that impact if you are living somewhere and there aren’t nice sidewalks to get from A to B — or bus service. So, I think it’s really important, and students actually can have a larger voice in their local elections.
What advice do you have for college students?
Oh, my advice to college students would be to do what you’re passionate about because whatever that is, you’re going to be doing it for a long time. And most people, you know, change careers multiple times. But if there are things — and it’s probably maybe not one thing that you’re passionate about, or one thing you’re passionate about that you can sort of take in different directions — do that thing.
What will you do for students as a member of city council?
I’m always thinking about the student experience and my day-to-day job because I’m immersed in it running the art museum and thinking about both the learning experiences we can offer as well as the social experiences and even the social-emotional support kind of experiences we can offer. So, with Logan City, culturally, there’s a lot that it offers, I think, that we have been really strategic between campus and Logan City to maximize those opportunities and thinking about student engagement. So, that’s one thing I would love to expand on, and otherwise, a critically important one that I hope that I can tackle is housing. Logan has, you know, about, I think, 16,000 or so housing units. We have about 21,000 students and about 3,000 or so housing units provided by USU. So, it’s a challenge that compounds itself every year if we grow, and we want to make sure that Logan has housing for its students at USU and Logan has housing for its residents who live here. I really think there’s a huge opportunity for the city and USU to work more together to think strategically about expanding housing opportunities and options for students that are affordable.
If you had a DJ show on Aggie Radio, what type of music would you play?
I like a lot of different genres of music, but one that maybe isn’t offered now that would be cool would be jazz, I think — a jazz kind of vibe situation. Maybe it’s like study hour or something or “chilling with your friends” hour or something like that. So, yeah, I think it would be in the realm of jazz.
Brian Seamons
Can you introduce yourself to USU students?
Hello, everybody. My name is Brian Seamons. I’m running for city council. I’m a native of Cache Valley. I was born and raised in Hyde Park, went to Skyview, and I live on the Island area that’s just below Cliffside. I met my wife up here at Utah State. I studied economics, but I’m a builder now. Primarily, I build student housing, so I spent a lot of time up in this area. I have three sons: 21,19 and a seven-year-old. Kind of a funny story: The seven-year-old was planned, the 21-year-old wasn’t, so kind of counterintuitive of what you would expect. But anyway, my biggest worry and the reason I’m running for city council is that I’m worried about the cost of living. You know, generally, that’s a worldwide problem, but it would surprise you how our local policies and local government affect that, and I see it every day as a builder — the ways that we administer housing and roads and taxes, property taxes, sales tax, things like that — how much that affects our lives. And you wouldn’t necessarily notice that, or realize that, everybody tends to pay attention to the federal government and what they pay on their, you know, to the IRS, but they don’t realize so much what they pay on property tax. Now, I know that that doesn’t affect you guys so much right now, but it will, and it’ll be important to you, but it does in other ways, and so I think I bring an interesting or an experienced perspective to city council if I were to be elected, and I would really appreciate it if you all would take the time. Typically, you guys don’t vote very much, or it’s not a very high percentage, and I understand that maybe that’s because you are registered at home. Maybe you’re not going to live here long term, but it would be very important if you stayed involved, or you were involved, and you took the time to vote. So, thank you for the time and effort you put into listening to this today.
If you had to describe Logan in three words, what would they be?
It’s got to be the greatest place to live. I was talking to a person just the other day that moved from Boise, and I was kind of shocked that she moved her family here from Boise, and I asked her why. She said, “Because you’re so close to the mountains here.” Even in Boise, where I thought was the greatest recreation, or great recreation, she said she had to travel 45 minutes to go camping, and we have it right here, very close. What a wonderful place to live.
What do you do when not running for office?
I only build. Also, I’m very active in my church, and not that it really particularly matters to an election, but I served a mission for the LDS church in Chicago, and I remain active in my church and spend a lot of time with the youth camping, fishing and things like that, so that seems to be my favorite spot to be.
What makes you stand out from other candidates, and why should students vote for you?
100% is that I’m a builder and that I live in the world, I work in the world, that’s very important to a lot of you, trying to find places to live, wondering about how you’re going to afford a house one day, worried about why life is costing so much and inflation is out of control and things like that. You know, I see it every day, and I work it, and I’m a blue-collar guy.
Why should students care about who is on city council?
You know, if you weren’t going to stay in Cache Valley, it probably isn’t the biggest deal, but city council — there are five people on that, and they are the primary drivers of your cost of housing, the places you park, the roads that you drive on, transportation and things like that. Five people get a decision in that. So, you know, if any of those issues matter to you, it would be very wise to find a way to vote, and you can still register. You can do it online.
What advice do you have for college students?
What I always tell my boys is not — I’ve always thought that the advice “Do what you love” is kind of corny and maybe not the best advice. I always tell my boys and the youth that I work with, “Find something that you’re good at that can make you as much money as possible. Do that for 10 or 15 years and save the things that you enjoy for your hobbies.” I have a really good friend that’s a golf pro, but he never golfs anymore because it’s become a job to him. So, find something you’re good at that makes you the most money and then continue to enjoy the other stuff.
What will you do for students as a member of city council?
I would like the city to focus primarily on the cost of housing and property taxes, and you know, we don’t have as much say on sales tax. Most of that goes to the state, but property taxes and housing and infrastructure — the most important thing to me. I think that sometimes, as a city council, we, or they, get focused on — I call them “new shiny objects,” and I don’t want to point any one of those out, but you see it in a new building project, a new improvement somewhere. You know, we spend a lot of money in certain areas of the city that aren’t necessarily things that are extremely important. But if you drive around campus, you notice it’s some of the most neglected streets. There’s areas that don’t have curb and gutter that you guys are walking to school. You got to walk on dirt sidewalks. And I think if we adjusted priority to take care of infrastructure and the cost of housing to you guys, it would make your experience here a lot better.
If you had a DJ show on Aggie Radio, what type of music would you play?
It’s going to be a mix of religious stuff and country music. It just relaxes me more. But maybe not the modern country. You know, some of that’s a little too twangy for me. Maybe George Strait or Garth Brooks or Tim McGraw and then a little religious stuff mixed in there.
Ernesto Lopez
Can you introduce yourself to USU students?
Hi. My name is Ernesto Lopez, and I am a candidate for the Logan City Council.
If you had to describe Logan in three words, what would they be?
If I had to describe Logan in three words, it’s beautiful with strong neighborhoods and community, and I think it’s a blessing that we get to live here.
What do you do when not running for office?
When I’m not running for office or when I’m not serving on the city council, I am a father of two young people, married, and my wife is Jenny, who also works here at Utah State University. My full-time job at Utah State University is in extension, and I’m the director of online programs, where we produce online courses that are mostly for the community. We put them to good use, all of the research and expertise that the university gathers, and we package it into online courses and put it at the service of the community.
What makes you stand out from other candidates, and why should students vote for you?
What makes me stand out from the current candidate pool for Logan city council is that I am running for reelection. I’ve been serving on the council for almost five years, later this month, actually. I was first appointed out of a crowded pool of 15 candidates, and I won an election back in 2021, so this will be running an election for my second term, and it’s been quite an experience, a learning experience. There’s lots to learn. I feel like I continue to learn every meeting, and it’s a privilege to represent our community. I feel like the experience I bring, after this number of years, has prepared me to give more input and to represent our community better in many ways. I also am somebody that works here at the university, which is a huge partner to Logan City, right? We interact quite a bit. I’m also an immigrant. I was born in Mexico, moved here when I was 15 to the U.S., and I am bilingual. I speak Spanish, so I serve and bridge many groups in our community. I make a great representative.
Why should students care about who is on city council?
You should all care, we should — everybody that lives in Cache County should care who is on the Logan city council, and I’m expanding beyond Logan because Logan is the hub. We have many of the services that people in the county use, and students should care because there is interaction between the university and Logan, and even outside of the university, the things that students get to enjoy and where they live could be affected by how Logan is developing. What kinds of decisions are made on Logan city council could affect them. I feel like they should care, and I hope that they are engaged. And even if it’s not for me that they vote, they still vote on Nov. 4
What advice do you have for college students?
I feel like you guys are living probably one of the most memorable times of your lives and when a lot of things are going on. You’re discovering things, exploring things. You’re kind of making up what your life is going to look like, maybe, in the future, and you’re influenced by a lot of things that are going on, including government, and not only local government, which has a lot of influence in your lives, but federal government, state government. So, I think it’s a great time for you to get engaged, to learn more about what’s going on and how things and decisions affect your lives. I do encourage you to continue with school and finish whatever the program is that you’re working on and that you take advantage of all the opportunities that Utah State has to offer to you.
What will you do for students as a member of city council?
The student population is a population that sometimes we don’t put as much thought into, so I look forward to hearing from students the things that matter to you because hearing from students, both through email, through phone calls or at the actual city council meetings, actually, is very informative for us. I love when we have students come and kind of sit through some of the meetings. And I look forward to hearing more comments from students because when you guys speak up, we do listen, and I love to hear from you more.
If you had a DJ show on Aggie Radio, what type of music would you play?
Coming from a Latino background, I really love Latino music, and I feel like nowadays, we have access to all kinds of music. My daughter, who’s a college student here, actually loves K-pop, but I personally still probably listen to old, older music, even within Latino standards. I love boleros, which I believe are some of the most wonderful music that you can listen to. But Bossa Nova is another one that I really enjoy listening to. I would encourage people to explore more world music, and nowadays, we have the ability to do that through some of the online platforms. Back when I was college age, that was not really the case, so you kind of have to be at those places to really find some of that enjoyable music.
Melissa Dahle
Can you introduce yourself to USU students?
My name is Melissa Dahle. I am a Logan resident. I have lived in Logan for about 22 years, but I have lived in Cache Valley my whole life
If you had to describe Logan in three words, what would they be?
Growing because, obviously, we are growing. Let’s see, community. I think Logan has a great community going on, but I think it also needs to rebuild, and so I think Logan, you know, is tightening it that way. And also, I think Logan is progressive. We’re making changes. We’re trying to look at ways to make Logan a better place to live.
What do you do when not running for office?
I’m a mom of four kids. I have, actually, two who are attending Utah State University now. And then, I have one in high school and one in the middle school. They’re all involved in soccer, voice lessons, piano lessons, everything you can name and golf. And so, I spend my time chasing them around, to be honest. I also love to travel myself. I love to golf and spend time with my family.
What makes you stand out from other candidates, and why should students vote for you?
My main thing is that I have a lot of experience within the city. My family calls me a professional volunteer because I have volunteered for a lot of different things throughout my life. I’m currently the chair of the Logan City Parks and Rec Board. I am the chair of Logan High School Community Council and Mount Logan Middle School Community Council, and I’ve also been the chair of the Woodruff Neighborhood Council.
Why should students care about who is on city council?
Because they are part of the city just as much as any resident that’s here full-time. You should have a say. You have a big part in our city and the progression of our city, and so I think it’s good to hear from students’ voices as well
What advice do you have for college students?
Have fun. I know you hear that a lot, but truly, college life is short, so enjoy every moment of it, and get out and explore this beautiful city and valley. We have a lot of areas and places that you can go and hike and enjoy the outdoors. Do it while you’re here.
What will you do for students as a member of city council?
My hope would be to give them a voice. If they have something to say, I want to be the person that they can talk to, and I will listen and hear their opinions and their ideas that they might have.
If you had a DJ show on Aggie Radio, what type of music would you play?
You know, my family hates me because I do a mix of genres all the time, and so it depends on my mood. One day it might be country, another day it might be classic rock, but probably mostly classic rock. Well, honestly, I go back to the old — I love old time country, like Kenny Rogers, things like that. And that’s probably what I play the most. I listen to a lot of soundtracks, you know, for movies and shows.
Interviews were conducted by news editor Malory Rau. Candidates appear in ballot order.