The rocky relationship behind Logan City Council and Utah State University

The Logan Municipal Chambers filled up slowly at first, people coming in from the February cold one by one, shedding jackets and scarves and wiping the fog from their glasses. Then, not long before 5:30 p.m., people came in droves. They stepped over coats and backpacks to fill every seat in the room and more. Once all available seats were gone, dozens of additional people stood in the lobby, where a livestream of the city council meeting would play on a TV. At least half the audience was young, presumably university students.

This was unusual.  

Most Tuesdays, the chambers are not busy. Besides the council members themselves, a few other government officials, a couple reporters and a handful of city dwellers, the rows of chairs set up in the room are empty.

This particular Tuesday, however, nearly everyone in the meeting was there for one reason. Councilmember Herm Olsen had proposed a plastic bag ban, legislation that would prohibit stores in Logan from distributing single-use plastic grocery bags. And, for some reason, this was the issue that motivated students to show up and get involved in a city council issue.

Despite Logan’s reputation as a small, community-driven college town, university students are not involved in local politics and there’s a clear disconnect between the council and students. 

But that might be changing. Whether that can be directly attributed to the national political climate or identification with Olsen’s crusade against plastic pollution is unclear. Regardless of the cause, something is happening right now, and some hope that momentum isn’t lost after city council elections end in the coming week. 

“It is simply really hard to get young people involved in local politics, especially when most of them will be moving away in a couple of years anyway,” said Sam Jackson, Utah State’s former student advocate vice president. “It is the same reason the laws of the city are designed to benefit long-term residents — not many students vote in elections, and the ones who are passionate about changing current laws leave after a few years when they graduate.”

One such student is Augusta Scott, the director of the Government Relations Council at Utah State.         

“I got involved with the GRC last fall because I love politics and I wanted to share my excitement for civic engagement with others,” she said. Scott is a sophomore, and while she isn’t leaving Logan soon, she will eventually pass her baton on to the next student leader, who will pass it on again, and so on and so on. 

If a specific issue isn’t pushed through quickly, it can get lost in transition. 

When Jackson was still in office, his council advocated for solutions that it believed would improve a student-city relationship he described as “shaky at best.” Some of those ideas included adjusting parking laws in residential areas, changing zoning laws and appointing a non-voting student member to city council. None of them worked, and most haven’t been picked up again.

Shaky At Best

In past years, some of the biggest issues between the city and USU students have been parking and zoning laws. 

The city council passed legislation in April 2018 to raise the fines for violations of over occupancy laws that prohibit more than three unrelated residents from living in the same house. The mayor’s plan included hiring a new intern to inspect and report houses in Logan suspected of violating zoning laws, proactively enforcing over occupancy rather than relying on complaints to the Logan police.

“Many students, myself included, opposed this measure because we felt it was unnecessary and had potential to create conflict with local officials and law enforcement officers when none is needed,” Jackson said. “It also just put students, many of them just 18 years old, at risk of being evicted from their house with no knowledge of laws that are in place.

At the meeting to discuss the legislation, only about five students sat in the audience, including Jackson. Another student present was Erik Olson.

Olson lived in a rented house two years ago with four other friends. They had planned to live together and found “no other options.” 

“The house was huge,” he said. “The biggest house I’ve ever lived in, besides my parents’ house. There were like six or seven bedrooms and a two car garage and a big driveway. These are houses made for more than three people.”

Despite suspicious neighbors, they weren’t caught. They made sure of it.

“We tore apart two of the bedrooms so it looked like only three people lived there,” he said. “We would take the sheets off one bed and say it was a spare bedroom for guests. The other one we would get rid of the mattress and say it was a game room. Sometimes we would put the mattress in a closet or under someone else’s bed.”

While the legislation may have been designed to protect property values and keep too many cars from parking on the street or on yards, Olson believes those concerns have been weaponized against students who only want affordable housing.

“We didn’t park on the street. We mowed the lawn and shoveled snow in the winter,” Olson said. “This is creating an artificial bubble of rent, where landlords charge way more for student housing than anywhere else in Logan.

“Residents hate the fact that students are here, or they’re at least annoyed with our presence. It’s nimbyism at its finest.”

Olson doesn’t blame city council, knowing that lack of student voting is part of the problem.

“City council reflects the people that vote for them,” he said. “They’re not trying to screw students. They just don’t think about it.”

Without much opposition, the plan passed. 

The discussion over plastic bags brought in a much larger, more contentious crowd. But what changed?

Olsen theorized that young people show up for sustainability issues because they’re more idealistic, still harboring hope that they can have an impact on the greater environment.  

“And they’re right,” he said. “They’ve not yet been polluted by wealth. Students can be a powerful, moving force.

“Some councilmembers were hesitant on the plastic bag issue. But fifty to sixty students staring in your face makes a tremendous difference.”

Voice by Vote 

Besides attending council meetings, one of the most effective ways for students to be involved in local politics is voting. 

Current student advocate vice president Paulina Rivera-Soto believes the national political climate seems to have been increasing young people’s realization of the importance of voting. But students tend to be more enthusiastic about national politics than local. 

“Most are only here for four years,” Rivera-Soto said. “I think there’s a lack of attachment.”

With or without students, voter turnout is already low in local elections. The primary council elections held in August were determined by 4,335 voters — only about 23 percent of all registered voters in Logan and 10 percent of Logan’s adult population. 

Students make up only a portion of those 4,335 voters. These are the same students who make up over 40 percent of Logan’s adult population.

The voting power is there, but largely left unused. 

Student Brianne Sorensen has attended council meetings for a couple years. It started as a requirement for class, but has since turned into a self-motivated duty. 

Sorensen said perhaps because students may not know how meetings or public comments work, they may be intimidated to speak.

“Our generation thinks social media is the place where voices are heard,” she said. “But these councilmembers are older, and some aren’t even on social media.”

Sorensen wrote a story about a city council issue in the student newspaper, which received a lot of comments from angry students. At the next council meeting, no students came. 

Of everyone who came to that crowded February meeting, how many will turn up to vote? “As terrible as it sounds,” Sorensen said, “zero.”

Like Sorensen, student Rachel Chamberlain is involved with city council not to fulfill any official obligations, but a personal sense of duty. With a few friends, she formed an informal group called the Environmental Action Network, which has attended council meetings and various campaigning events for the six candidates running for three open seats on council. 

They even created a rubric to grade candidates on environmental responsibility, social equity and community development and vision. 

The proposal to appoint a student member resurfaced this year when Chamberlain discussed the idea with councilmember Tom Jensen, a councilmember up for reelection this year. 

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“I’m guessing that wouldn’t go too far,” Olsen said. “It opens an unwieldy can, because then we have other groups — Logan High, Bridgerland Tech, the firefighters — saying ‘What about us?’ In every meeting we invite anyone to stand up and share concerns. Being a vocal advocate is at least as effective, if not more than being an ex officio member.” 

Chamberlain said if this was going to happen, it felt like it needed to happen before election day. There’s an underlying fear that candidates may only be responding positively in order to gain trust and votes, and that they may be less receptive after they’ve won. 

“It’s all empty words until you actually do something,” Rivera-Soto said.

Olson, who was also a former member of the Government Relations Council, posed the idea of having a polling place on campus.

Olsen said this used to be a reality before the city transitioned to the vote-by-mail method. 

“I would like to see one again but do see the head of the elections commission saying we’d have to put one on the west side, then the south side, etc.” Olsen said. “There isn’t a real great solution.”

“Students are busy,” said Jeannie Simmonds, who has been a councilmember for six years and previously spent 37 years working for Utah State. “But in the years I’ve been on council, I’ve seen steadily more engagement.” 

Simmonds said increased student involvement makes the council better.

“My philosophy is that I better never come with a predetermined idea of how things will go,” Simmonds said. While she was initially skeptical of the plastic bag ban, she’s since decided that it may be time to revisit the discussion. 

“You’ll remember that I was pretty strict in that meeting,” Simmonds said. “But it’s important to have everyone’s voice. We can get really stuck in our own little boxes, but those boxes should be bigger.”

Olsen’s term ends in January, and the plastic bag ban has not yet been voted on. 

“I wanted to pass it last spring so it could go into effect in April 2020 to go with Earth Day,” he said. “The notion was to give merchants time to use the bags they had already purchased and for consumers to get used to using reusable bags.”

Originally, the plan had been met with resistance from the Solid Waste Advisory Board. 

“We slowly got them to come around, and they said they want a year to educate the county and diffuse resistance,” Olsen said. This led to an alternative plastic reduction plan that would require merchants to charge customers 10 cents a bag and pay a surcharge for continued pollution that comes from entering single use bags into the waste management stream.

All this revision and waiting means the council won’t come to a vote until spring, when Olsen is gone. Because he won’t be able to vote, he plans to propose a resolution in December to endorse the ban or implementation of the plastic reduction plan.

“Then hopefully city council will go on record saying they’re on board,” he said.

The issue is important to him, something he doesn’t want to see fade away after he is replaced. 

“I’m passionate about this,” he said. “I’m embarrassed at the legacy we’re turning over to your generation. I know we could have done better. I hope we can do better in the future.”

In that first meeting in February, the plastic bag discussion lasted just over an hour. There were still several items left on the agenda, and councilmembers closed the floor for talk of plastic and opened it up for the next action time, a rezoning proposal.

Right as the council began to move on, the audience began to file out. A rustling overcame the room as people zipped up their bags and pulled their coats and hats back on, shuffling out the door with murmurs of things they had to do and places they had to be. 

“If you would like to stay and talk about zoning, we’d be happy to have you,” Simmonds said. 

“We still have half a meeting.”

When council attempts to vote on the bag ban once more in the spring, Olsen plans to be there. He hopes to see another crowd, even bigger than before. But whether the students show up — and whether they stay to the end — remains to be seen.

@naomiyokoward

naomiyokoward@aggiemail.usu.edu