Tag Archives: mayor

Provo’s Primary Election 2021

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Provo, like other Utahn cities, is hosting its biennial primary election this August 10th (Tuesday), and we urge all liberty-lovin’ Provoans to please participate. Please strive to empower ONLY virtuous wise statespeople who will consistently defend our rightful liberty under Constitutional law rather than aggress against it.

Why bother with municipal elections? Local elections should ideally be our society’s most important elections. This is because political authority should ideally remain as decentralized as possible, with individuals remaining sovereign with respect to their fellow mortals, and individual households (as any society’s most basic political unit) retaining maximal authority for themselves, while contractually delegating minimal authority to larger jurisdictions to serve (not rule) the smaller jurisdictions within themselves, with their services limited almost exclusively to rights-defense. According to these principles, proper political systems should maintain an authority-structure that resembles an upside-down pyramid, in which authority is concentrated toward its massive top, from whence largely-self-governing people rule over the rest of it. Local offices sometimes serve as starting-points for political careers, and it’s important to screen-out unworthy candidates (like John Curtis as explained extensively our website) early before they gain significant influence and wealth and power.

Along with undervaluing the importance of local elections, too many American voters (including Provoans) also neglect to involve themselves in elections until Election Day, which comes after nearly all decisions about candidates have already been settled. By engaging in such procrastination, liberty-lovin’ voters essentially abdicate nominations to their statist adversaries, which is because politics naturally attracts corrupt cunning statists more readily than virtuous wise statespeople, who must be actively sought and encouraged to campaign. And this problem applies to both major American political parties, which have always been “big tents” that attract a wide variety of factions. In short, we who cherish our freedom should never assume that our fellow partisans share our values, nor should we depend upon them to nominate worthy candidates without our help.

This is true even in Provo with its high concentration of conservative voters, where political homogeneity has excused political complacency. Only maybe 10%-15% of Provoans normally participate in municipal elections, and over half of those voters seemingly favor candidates who uphold higher taxes and fees, multiplied city code, increased central planning, and insufficient respect for others’ equal God-given (or natural) rights, as detailed on our website. Such wanton statism has remained Provo’s sad status quo for at least 2 decades, as liberty-lovin’ candidates haven’t often sought municipal office and, whenever they’ve done so, they’ve been routinely defeated by their statist alternatives. Such statist victories have sometimes been incredibly slim, as even a dozen votes might have reversed them. Where were YOU then?

YOU have the power to help improve this sad status quo by participating in Provo’s biennial municipal elections, including its primary elections! And, since you can only do so much as one person, you can do more by multiplying your effects by helping your like-minded neighbors to do likewise. This may involve instilling their hearts with a passion for rightful liberty under Constitutional law, educating their minds about its principles, informing them how those timeless universal principles relate to current municipal politics, and organizing them for lasting political victory.

Political victory ideally begins by identifying worthy neighbors and then encouraging them to run. Sadly, it’s too late for anyone to enter this year’s election, but we can still examine our existing options, eliminate unworthy choices, and select the best options from among any that remain. As for judging worthiness, both personal virtue (especially honesty) and political wisdom are paramount (and normally don’t improve significantly in office), experience is a valuable added bonus but can always be gained, records are far more reliable than rhetoric, both partisan affiliations and labels don’t necessarily mean very much, and outward appearance is frivolous. As for who needs evaluation this year, Provoans are electing a mayor plus three new city councilors (one city-wide and two from city districts). Below are some initial impressions about each current candidate for each of these municipal offices.

  • For mayor, Michelle Kaufusi (the incumbent) represents the sad statist status quo described above, Neil Mitchell seems highly competent but shows no indications of changing the status quo, Caleb Reeve seems like a political-outsider centrist with some libertarianish leanings but perhaps not enough, M David Gedo Sanchez has expressed some concerns about big government and may be a good option, and Ken Dudley is saying many things right and therefore may also be a good option.
  • For city councilor (city-wide), Aaron Skabelund is very competent and civic-minded but strongly leans liberal, neither Katrice MacKay nor Landon Johnson seem to favor the principles of both limited government and individual rights, Tom Sitake has disclosed little about himself so far, and Hoc Vu is the only candidate who is expressing the right principles consistently.
  • For city councilor in district 2, Dave Handley (the incumbent) represents the status quo and currently runs unchallenged.
  • For city councilor in district 5, both Coy Porter and Rachel Whipple seem poised to perpetuate the status quo of both central planning and sustainable development, and Zac Green does not seem significantly better.

So, we encourage further investigation into David Sanchez, Ken Dudley, and Hoc Vu as possibly-worthy candidates who may merit endorsement, donations, and votes. Please scrutinize their principles pertaining to God-given (or natural) rights, free speech versus censorship, gun rights versus gun control, both property rights and contractual rights, free markets versus central economic planning (including zoning), so-called sustainable development with so-called smart growth, Valley Visioning, privatization versus city-run businesses, borrow-and-tax-and-spend policies, efforts to militarize and nationalize and dumb-down our local police officers, et cetera, all of which are featured on this website. And please pose such questions to the other candidates, as well. And please share their answers with anyone who would benefit from knowing them, including as a comment below, if you wouldn’t mind. Whereas ignorance invites tyranny/slavery, a well-educated well-informed citizenry is essential for self-government.

We can do far better than we’re presently doing, and we need to do far better in order to reverse Provo’s slow political degeneracy. If you want to enjoy a greater selection of worthy candidates in 2023, then please commit yourself over these next two years to slowly-but-steadily find them (or become them), encourage them to campaign, and build support for them among your neighbors. If you find our website helpful for this purpose, then please feel free to use it. Thanks!

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Provo’s Ballooning Budget for FY 2022

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Provo’s city council recently approved a budget for the 2022 fiscal year, which will total about $304,140,333. Provo’s budget only 2 years ago was about $254,000,000, which indicates a 20% increase over 2 years, which is significantly more than inflation, even as Provo’s total population has shrunk slightly over this same time-frame. Yes, that’s right, most of Utah County’s flood of new move-ins are avoiding Provo! Thankfully, Provoans are not yet fleeing in droves, like over-governed Detroitans or Californians have done, but they might start to flee eventually if present trends continue unabated.

Since Provo is now home to approximately 116,594 (and falling) residents, this means that each Provo resident’s share of this newest municipal budget is about $2,609/year (or $217/month), which is surprisingly close to the $2,812 that socialist-dominated Los Angeles spends per year per resident. In fact, Provo budgeted more spending per resident than Los Angeles budgeted only two years ago, as we previously reported. However, Provo’s residents include a higher percentage of children than LA’s—and, considering that Provo’s average household size is still something close to 3.24, this means that each Provoan household’s share of Provo’s newest municipal budget will average about $8,452/year (or $704/month).

Along with spending profligately, Provo also ranks among Utah’s most indebted cities, owing about $99,236,398 total (partly for various boondoggles), which averages to about $851 per resident or $2,758 per household. And this is sad because it’s generally bad policy to burden future generations (or residents) with present expenses. If Provo’s budget were perfectly balanced, and if Provo’s revenue came only from taxing its own residents rather than from outside sources (such as from state and/or federal taxes of citizens who don’t even live here), then this would mean that each Provoan household would be paying an average of $704/month, as well. Thankfully, Provo isn’t sending such huge bills every year to every household—but, even so, that’s still a LOT of hard-earned money to be told what to do!

And, speaking of being told what to do, Provo’s city code has also more-than-doubled since 2001, which may constitute one reason why it budgets are ballooning also. In fact, about 2011, Provo’s mayor supervised the development of Vision 2030 to serve as a central-planning guide for Provo’s city council, whose members have openly admitted their intentions of gradually translating its abstract vision into concrete code. This statist vision originally included provisions like “sustainable” development, “smart” growth, impeded traffic, public transit, Internet censorship, business subsidies, a municipal Obamacare, improving residents’ diet-and-exercise, and more. During a “checkup” of Vision 2030 in 2016, which was then deemed more successful than expected, Provo’s city council even discussed implementing mandatory city-regulated landscaping for every single-family home!

Do you like Provo’s ever-increasing centralized command-and-control? Are these “services” truly worth the $704/month that your household is paying for them? Perhaps liberty-lovin’ Provoans should give a bit more scrutiny to how politicians are spending their money! Ideally, a municipal government (like any other political system) should focus on rights-defense, and perhaps on some basic infrastructure like roads, but it shouldn’t be running either our economy or our lives, nor managing a vast array of business operations that are better left in the hands of private entrepreneurs. As noted previously, such municipally-owned-and-operated business ventures currently include a redevelopment agency, a power company, an airport, a television channel, a library, a performing arts center, a recreation center, a fitness center, a golf course, an ice rink, a water park, a beach, a park service, a gun range, a garbage-collection service, a recycling service, and a cemetery.

Such ongoing statist trends are unworthy of Provo’s relatively freedom-loving residents, and they can only be thwarted by replacing Provo’s mayor and entire city council with liberty-lovin’ alternatives, not only in this year’s municipal elections but lastingly. So, if you want to keep Provo free and, therefore, both prosperous and progressing (unlike Detroit), then please involve yourself NOW to scrutinize this year’s city candidates and to actively promote any worthy ones that you can find!

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Mayor Kaufusi Is Listening, So Please Speak Up!

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Provo’s mayor Michelle Kaufusi plans to embark upon a “listening tour” around Provo this autumn. As part of this tour, she will welcome input from residents during meetings at the following times in the following places:

While she’s listening more intently than usual, this may be a prime time for us liberty-lovin’ Provoans to speak up about various things that are concerning us, such as our growing array of city-run businesses, increased central economic planning, multiplying municipal ordinances (and city employees) along with increased business regulation, subsidies for startups, overpriced underused public transit, and an official vision for our city’s future that includes a variety of statist goals.  These are items that our blog has highlighted since this year began, while many additional concerns are outlined on our website.  We shouldn’t be upholding such statist policies in our city, or even acquiescing to them, but actively seeking to thwart them—not through threats or condemnation but through effectively persuading others (whether our neighbors or our elected politicians) to change their hearts/minds for the better.

Perhaps our passionate reason will never persuade Mayor Kaufusi (or our city council) to implement any major course-changes, but we should at least try.  And also try to help our neighbors to vote more wisely in 2019.  In fact, if you’re not already knocking on your neighbors’ doors regularly to try to build passionate well-informed support among them for better local government, then there’s no time like the present to formulate such plans, especially while the weather remains favorable.

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Provo’s Mayor and Central Planning

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Provo’s newest mayor, Michelle Kaufusi, is simultaneously serving as a columnist for the Provo Daily Herald, which is helping to extend the reach of her “bully pulpit” to expound her views.  It’ll be nice to know what she’s thinking and intending over time.

In her first column yesterday, she wrote about how to preserve Provo’s “unique, family-friendly, close-knit feel” as it grows, and proposed three solutions, about which we’d like to comment briefly.

Firstly, she proposed “a neighborhood-first city.”  The details of what this phrase means are not obvious but remain somewhat debatable—but, in any case, although it’s a fine thing to maintain distinct neighborhoods within a city, there’s one political unit that’s always even more important than any neighborhood.  And that unit is the family, which is the basic unit of any society, including of any church or state.  In fact, each individual household constitutes the Earthly source from which all political power is delegated to public officers.  And each political system should not only respect the equal God-given rights of its constituents, but it should also help defend those rights, even when doing so contradicts the special interests of certain groups.  Like neighborhood majorities.  So, it would be better to propose a family-first city.

Secondly, she proposed “smart urban planning.”  Although it’s alright for the city to plan some things like public streets, the rest is best planned by the many rather than the few.  No small oligarchy of central economic planners, now matter how expert, can plan a city better than its residents interacting contractually within a genuinely-free market.  The people should decide what gets built where, not their city councilors and definitely not their mayor.  The purpose of a city’s mayor should not be to direct his/her constituents’ efforts like a monarch, but rather to defend their rights as a servant, while allowing them to work out the rest amongst themselves as free people.  Free people, when guided by virtue, can accomplish amazing things—in fact, they always work best as free men and women rather than as slaves.

Thirdly, she proposed “an aggressive plan to increase economic development in our city.”  Again, it’s free people who should freely develop their economy, while their public officers should simply help defend their rights to do so, rather than dictate those efforts.  It shouldn’t be a mayor’s responsibility to make a “shopping list” of specific businesses to bring into town, and then devise strategies to finagle them into doing so via subsidies or tax-breaks or other special favors, all for the purpose of increasing the city’s tax revenue so that it can control everyone better.  Instead, public officers should simply help defend everyone’s equal God-given rights, and equally welcome ALL legitimate businesses into town by maintaining a genuine free market—a market in which entrepreneurs naturally thrive according to how well they serve residents (NOT how well they curry political favor), and in which they are equally free (including from burdensome regulations) to figure out how best to do this, as long as they don’t overstep their own God-given rights to violate the equal rights of others.  Economies always perform best when they’re kept free, not when they’re whooped into submission to serve political objectives.

Either we the people rule our public officers, or they rule us.  A controlling state makes a weak citizenry, but a strong populace makes a strong city.  And that’s the “Provo Strong” that we should want—a strong community in which residents fully respect each other’s equal rights, while learning to exercise their own rights well within their proper limits, and freely loving/serving each other to do likewise.  This characterizes the virtuous free society that will help Provo to remain a thriving place to live.  By contrast, our city will dwindle if we persist along our present collectivistic course toward well-funded central planning that will run our municipal economy and direct its growth.

So, let’s work together for a freer Provo, including by upholding more city officers who will respect our rights NOT reign over our lives.  Which includes preparing for our city’s next round of elections in 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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