Steven Taylor

Steven Taylor grew up in Whittier, Calif. He attended school at Brigham Young University, USU and several other universities as he traveled with his company, Century 21 Realty.

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

Taylor: Logan’s a pretty nice place to live, all by itself, with the quality of life that we have and everything about it. I can’t say that there’s a ton to improve, but the first thing that I would do is maintain our stance on fiscal responsibility. When we came into office four years ago, we had a negative $1.4 million, but we’ve turned that around through a good economy, and through the administration and us working together, we now have $6 million in reserve. We’re not out of the woods yet, you don’t solve problems financially overnight. The main focus is fiscal responsibilty. It has to be a continued effort for probably the next seven to 10 years, in order to have our city back where it needs to be.

Statesman: How will your decisions affect university students?

Taylor: Looking at just fiscal reponsibilty, if a city doesn’t have the finances that it needs to do what it does on a normal day-to-day basis, we can’t provide the support and the infrastructure and the things that are pleasant like trails and walking paths. If we don’t have the funds to do those things, we just maintain status quo. We can’t ever improve anything. That fiscal responsbiltiy is almost a center core to everything that we need to do in order to be able to help university students.

Statesman: What do you feel are the important issues in this year’s election?

Taylor: Power is one. We own a $30 million power company. It has very limited reserves itself. If something went wrong with that power company, it would upset the whole apple cart, so to speak. So how we manage that power company is critical. We made a decision not to buy coal and to look at affordable renewables, and that’s what we’re doing. Had we bought into (the Intermountain Power Plant 3 Program), we would’ve had everything that we needed until 2045, and we would have spent all of our resources and not have been able to go look or do anything else. We currently have resources that will provide us power until the year 2022, and by not spending all of our funds on IPP3, we’re allowed now to look at: Can we afford geothermal? Can we afford additional wind power? Can we afford other affordable renewables and encourage people to do solar? We implemented net metering. The power company and how we manage it and what we do with it is probably a very central theme. Once again, that provides the power for the university students.

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

Taylor: I think the experience and background. Four years ago, when I started in office, I thought I knew everything and could solve everything, but municipalities just run differently. They’re slow, it takes time to get things done, you have to know who to go to and how to make it happen. And once you understand that, you can enact things a lot quicker and get things more timely, if you will. I think simply from the standpoint of my experience in the last four years. I think that’s critical. Being responsive to individuals. That’s critical. Listening. I’ve learned how to utilize the position in the best interest of the constituents.