Category Archives: Miscellaneous

Provo’s City Council Prioritizes Statism

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Provo’s city council recently went on a retreat to choose their top five priorities for our city over these next two years.  Sadly (although not surprisingly), their final selections had little to do with defending our equal God-given rights better, but much to do with increasing their central planning of our city’s economy.

Our city council’s topmost issue is apparently zoning compliance.  Zoning has become rather commonplace in America, but any practice can become popular without being right.  And zoning not only violates both our property and contractual rights, but (as some hard data proves) it also curtails development, reduces competition, promotes false “order” and/or aesthetics over genuine needs, reduces housing supply while raising housing costs, excludes “undesirables,” and wastes people’s valuable time with needless paperwork.  Some American cities like Houston have thrived with barely any zoning laws—but, sadly, Provo’s city officers seem determined to not only maintain present zoning laws, but also to extend those laws to include “form-based code,” which would regulate the form of buildings in addition to their function.

A second issue is housing, as our city councilors apparently intend to determine what sort of housing should be built where, and then ensure that it gets built accordingly, rather than leave this task to free people.  And their remaining three top priorities include budgeting for “outcomes,” for Vision 2050, and for economic development.  As for this last item, they are apparently assuming that they shouldn’t leave the economy free to grow on its own, but should actively direct that development according to their central plans—even though such planning-by-the-few is rarely as good as planning-by-the-many that naturally occurs in a genuinely-free market.

The most dangerous priority of these five is arguably the one about funding Vision 2050, which (for those who don’t already know) is an abstract vision statement that Provo’s city council has stated that it intends to gradually transform into concrete city code.  Its various statist provisions include forcibly redirecting development away from the city’s outskirts into a high-density downtown core, dictating what gets built where, impeding private cars (in order to encourage public mass-transit), encouraging symbiosis between city institutions and relatively-big businesses, attracting politically-favored companies into town, subsidizing politically-favored startups, running ever-more local monopolies, regulating homebuilding along with (mandatory) residential landscaping, restricting the local supply of rental housing, redistributing city demographics as they see fit, and even overseeing our diet-and-exercise.  Its predecessor, known as Vision 2030, also proposed both Internet censorship (seemingly) and our own local “Curtiscare.”

Such oligarchic trends, if allowed to continue, will inevitably run our now-thriving city economy into the ground.  And this course won’t change until enough Provoans “wake up,” pay attention, and then start voting for something better.  And that won’t happen unless/until we make it happen.  So, let’s please work hard over these next two years to help our neighbors to prepare themselves to elect better city officers in late 2019.  We invite you to please visit our Free Provo website for both ideas and resources, and we hope that you’ll encourage your fellow liberty-lovin’ Provoans to do likewise.

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Provo’s State-of-the-City in 2018

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Provo officially inaugurated Michelle Kaufusi this January 3rd as its newest (and first female) mayor.  She delivered her first state-of-the-city address this January 18th, which proposed both good and bad for Provo’s near-future.

As for the good, Mayor Kaufusi encouraged both community spirit and volunteerism, which is always commendable.  She also proposed a new wastewater treatment facility, which sounds like a fine idea, as long as it’s genuinely needed.  And she proposed a newly-consolidated customer-service department to better help patrons of the city’s growing array of business ventures.  So far, so good.

It’s this latter item that introduces the bad, though, because no city should ever need a customer-service department.  This department has become necessary only because our city officers have followed our federal government’s bad example by running so many businesses.  In fact, for all practical purposes, our city’s mayor currently doubles as C.E.O. of over a dozen city-run business ventures, which now include a redevelopment agency, a power company, an airport, a television channel, a library, a money-losing performing arts center, a thriving recreation center, a fitness center, a golf course, an ice rink, a water park, a park service, a gun range, a garbage-collection service, a recycling service, and a cemetery.  And, by the way, our city officers have shown interest in expanding this list to include both a museum and a beach.

Altogether, this diverse array of at least 16 businesses arguably constitutes far too much responsibility for a single conglomerate to manage effectively, especially a conglomerate that’s entirely led/managed by politicians.  Whenever such public businesses perform well (as Provo’s new recreation center has been doing), it’s always a rare-and-fleeting exception to the timeless universal rule, which is one reason why we would do well to fully spin-off all such businesses into the private sector.  Another reason for such spin-offs is that our public sector should avoid distracting itself from its core responsibilities (and proper role) of expertly helping us to defend our God-given rights.

And our politicians should definitely only defend rights and never violate them!  Sadly, our city officers have already been infringing upon our equal God-given rights by trying to centrally-plan development in west Provo, while cracking down on landlords’ private property rights, which are two other sad items that Mayor Kaufusi mentioned in these remarks.  If she continues to exert ever-more political control over our now-thriving city economy, then such control will ultimately devastate it, much as Detroit governed itself to death in 2011.

So, altogether, Mayor Kaufusi seems poised to perpetuate the relatively-statist policies of her predecessor, sadly, and to fulfill her campaign slogan of wanting a “strong” Provo—which, as best as I can tell, includes rendering our city government strong enough to control the local economy and even decree grocery stores into existence at will.  This means that we’ll need to remain vigilant, and prepare ourselves to mobilize our like-minded neighbors to oppose such bad policies—and to help them to choose better in 2021.  If you haven’t already done so, then please peruse our website to learn more about what’s wrong with Provo, along with how we might solve those problems together.

Do you agree with this analysis?  Why or why not?  What more can or should we be doing to foster a freer Provo?   Please leave your feedback below.

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Provo’s General Election Results for 2017

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America’s general election was held yesterday and, in Provo, that included elections for both mayor and three councilors.  Election results are not yet finalized, since our county clerk has not yet counted all ballots cast; but, if present trends continue, then here are this year’s election results…

For mayor, Establishment candidate Michelle Kaufusi, who seemingly wants a municipal government “strong” enough to decree grocery stores into existence, has defeated both fellow Establishment candidate Sherrie Hall Everett, who apparently wants to keep Provo “moving forward” toward the statist Vision 2030 future that she helped plan for it, and write-in candidate Odell Miner, who didn’t seem especially likely to either continue or reverse such trends.

For city council, Provoans re-elected incumbents David Sewell and David Harding, plus seemingly-like-minded newcomer George Handley.

These candidates were elected by only about 8,000 participating voters, who together constitute about 19% of Provo’s 42,000-ish registered voters, as well as less than 7% of all 117,000-ish current Provo residents.  This is an unusually large turnout for an odd-year election in Provo, but such high turnout likely resulted entirely from this year’s special election for U. S. Representative.  Altogether, these 8,000 participants, by majority vote, upheld Provo’s increasingly-statist status quo of higher taxes, deeper debts, increased spending, multiplied ordinances, disrespected rights, et cetera, which is tragic for one of America’s most “conservative” cities.

We Provoans who value our rightful liberty can do no more for it in this election, but can only start preparing for our next one.  We need to engage our neighbors in conversation, identify and/or proselytize like-minded ones, educate them, inform them, activate them, and organize them for perpetual victory.  And also actively seek out worthy candidates whom we can encourage to seek public office, and then uphold in doing so.  Which will hopefully avert a bleak future like Detroit’s and perhaps render Provo’s best days yet-to-be again.  Will you commit to engage in such political activism over these next two years—and beyond?

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Provo Mayor 2017: Miscounts and Write-Ins

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For those who haven’t already learned about it, Utah County’s clerk has discovered that at least 150 Provoan’s votes for mayor this year were never counted; also, Odell Miner (who placed third in this year’s primary election for Provo mayor) has now officially filed as a write-in candidate in this year’s general election to provide an alternative to statists Kaufusi and Everett.  We still favor Miner best of these three, but not enough to endorse him at present.

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Provo Mayor 2017: Kaufusi versus Everett

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Provo’s primary election (whose results were mostly certified this week) has determined that Provo voters will choose between Michelle Kaufusi and Sherrie Hall Everett for their next mayor in this year’s general election on November 7th.

Michelle Kaufusi was asked by Provo’s political/economic elites to run for office, and advocates a “strong” Provo—so strong, some might say, that it can wrangle our municipal economy into submission such that, when she says “dance,” it will dance, when she says “jump,” it will ask how high, and when she says “let there be a grocery store in west Provo,” it will produce a grocery store according to her will.

Sherrie Hall Everett wants to keep Provo “moving forward,” which presumably means moving in the statist direction that she helped to expound in Vision 2030—a vision that includes “sustainable development,” “Smart Growth,” homeowner subsidies, restrictions on rental housing, mandatory neighborhood diversity, city-run business monopolies, business subsidies, Internet censorship, socialized medicine, health regulation, and an expanding array of city-run recreation facilities.

Between empowering the state and subjugating the economy, there aren’t any good mayoral options this year for Provoans who cherish America’s wonderful political heritage of rightful liberty under Constitutional law.  Which means that we’ll need to work hard over these next four years to produce such options in 2021.  If you’re both willing and able to help with this task, then please visit our website for a proposed gameplan of what to do between now and then.

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