Tag: Rob Shelton (Page 2 of 4)

2019 American Fork ballot - fire station bond

David’s Last-Minute Little Election Guide, 2019 American Fork Edition

11/04/2019 / David Rodeback

Tuesday, November 5, is Election Day. Of more practical importance, for American Fork, today (Monday, November 4) is the last day to mail your mail-in ballot. (Otherwise you’ll have to deliver it tomorrow, following instructions which came with your ballot.)

This post comes a little late, to be sure, but if you haven’t voted yet or made up your mind how to vote, perhaps my thoughts will help you to solidify your thoughts — whether you agree with me or not.

American Fork Ballot: Fire Station Bond Issue

11/02/2019 / David Rodeback

One of the items on American Fork voters’ ballots right now is the question of approving a general bond issue in an amount up to $8.5 million, to purchase land for a new fire station in the northeast quadrant of the city, to build that station, and to purchase land for a third fire station on the south side while land prices are still only very high, so we don’t have to buy land later, when we’re ready to build and the prices are truly ridiculous.

I’ve had my eye on this issue since before it was publicly announced, but I’ve spent my limited blogging and politics time on other things, including the city council race and a proposal that isn’t on the election ballot, to fund and build a citywide fiber optic utility.

The fiber proposal is understandably controversial, and it’s complex enough, with enough different interests and considerations needing to be balanced, that I’ve said publicly more than once that it’s “not a no-brainer.”

By contrast, the fire station bond is very nearly a no-brainer. I’ll summarize my thoughts about it here, point you to some other sources which are doing a nice job publicizing the matter, and finally, at the end, geek out a little on the ballot language for this proposal, which may be the most-read material on the subject but is hardly transparent.

2019 City Council Candidate Audio and Notes

10/22/2019 / David Rodeback

On Wednesday, October 2, 2019, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce hosted a meet-the-candidates event for the American Fork City Council race. As usual, of late, it was in a meeting room at American Fork Hospital. This post presents audio recordings from that event — one question at a time, to be easily digestable — and adds some notes from another event a week later, on October 9, at the American Fork Library.

John Mulholland Interviews 2019 American Fork City Council Candidates

10/19/2019 / John Mulholland

It is time again in our two-year cycle for city council elections. This time we have 5 candidates, 3 of which are incumbents, running for 3 seats. There are some important issues including fiber, roads, and PARC tax oversight.

Fiber for American Fork, Part 2: Anticipated Benefits

09/04/2019 / David Rodeback

This is the second of several planned blog posts about a proposal the American Fork City Council is considering to extend fiber optic connectivity to every residence and business in American Fork as a utility. You can find a more detailed description of the proposal itself in the previous post, where I also explain my head start in knowing about the proposal.

Before we go further, I should interrupt for an apology. I hoped to post this before I left for Lake Tahoe (hence the photo) for a week at the end of July. Now it’s not even August any more, and I’m finally posting it. Sorry about that.

This post explores the expected benefits to residents, businesses, and the City itself, if we build the fiber system. This is one important angle from which to view the proposal. Another will follow in the next post: good and bad reasons for opposing it.

Joe Phelon, Barbara Christiansen, Jeff Shorter, Kyle Barratt, Staci Carroll

David’s Notes and Commentary: October 7 City Council Debate

10/18/2017 / David Rodeback

Audio recordings of the October 7 city council debate in American Fork are available here, separated by question. The American Fork Chamber of Commerce also posted a single, long video recording of the event. This post is not intended to substitute for listening or watching, nor is it a play-by-play. I’ll tell you some of the things the candidates said and some of the things I think. So you are duly warned that this post contains more opinion than objective reportage.

I’ll link to a few audio segments and suggest that you listen to them. The full set is available at the link above.

Your comments are welcome, of course, and you certainly don’t have to agree with me.

The four candidates for city council on my ballot — it arrived today, and I checked — are Barbara Christiansen, incumbent Jeff Shorter, Kyle Barratt, and Staci Carroll. (I list them in the order in which they were seated at the event, alphabetically by first name. And I’ll use their first names here, to simplify your connections between these notes and the recordings.) Continue reading

Q&A with the American Fork City Council

06/05/2017 / David Rodeback

I sent a few questions to American Fork City Council members Kevin Barnes, Carlton Bowen, Brad Frost, Rob Shelton, and Jeff Shorter. Four of the five replied; Councilman Bowen did not. Here are their responses, with minimal edits for format and readability, not substance. I did not suggest a specific length for their responses; both short and long responses were welcome.

Councilman Kevin Barnes

Answers are presented in alphabetical order, by the officials’ last names.

Qualifications

Q. What qualifications should voters look for in city council candidates? Continue reading

Thank You! (and some American Fork results)

11/04/2015 / David Rodeback

Results

Preliminary voting results for American Fork City Council (from the Daily Herald, because the county doesn’t have them up yet) are these:

Brad Frost (incumbent): 2,198
Kevin Barnes: 2,057
Robert Shelton (incumbent): 2,028
Allen Simpson: 1,080

So Frost, Barnes, and Shelton take the three available seats. This is the result advocated here at afelection.info, and the margin is gratifying.

Proposition 1 (a county-by-county measure to fund roads and transit with a 0.25% sales tax increment) predictably failed by a large margin in Utah County. It appears to have passed in several counties where it was on the ballot, but failed in nearly every county (excepting Weber County) which is served by UTA — counties where 40% of the proceeds would go to UTA.

Many American Forkers watched the Orem City Council race with interest, because Debby Lauret, who led the American Fork Chamber of Commerce for several years, was making her second bid for city council. This time she won, finishing second in a field of six candidates for three seats. Congratulations, Debby!

Thank You!

All the candidates deserve our thanks. Serving on the city council is a lot of work with few rewards, and campaigning, though a shorter gig, is no picnic. Let’s also thank Councilman Clark Taylor, whose term will soon end, and who did not seek reelection. Few people ever see most of the heavy lifting a city councilor does, but I’ve seen some of his.

I think the voters deserve thanks too. Someone will whine about the turnout, because someone always does, but more than 2,000 American Forkers went to the polls. I’m inclined to thank voters for cutting through the rhetoric — some of it quite deceptive — and choosing three excellent, reasonable, highly qualified leaders. Believe it or not, good sense brings its own economies.

Thanks to Kelly Smith and her American Fork PTA Council, the American Fork Chamber of Commerce, American Fork Hospital, the American Fork Youth City Council, residents John Mulholland and Brian Rawlings, and everyone else who worked to inform the voters.

Thanks to you too, our readers here, and to the many people to passed around the information they found here, by social media, e-mail, in print, and by word of mouth.

Eleven days before the election, Rod Martin texted me. He wanted to talk about doing something more to help inform the voters. Ten days before the election, we met after a meet-the-candidates event and decided that he would get some signs made to point to some web content. The web content would be my job. The domain afelection.info was available, so we decided to put it here. By Wednesday, six days before the election, some of the content was ready (thanks to WordPress) and the signs were printed.

Between then and Election Day (inclusive), we had 1,168 visits to the site by 816 unique users, almost all in American Fork. 3,058 page views tell us that many visits were to multiple pages, and an average session duration of about four minutes tells us people were reading. Above all, these numbers tell us that voters care about the facts, which is a very happy thing.

Both Rod and I have been surprised at the number of American Fork voters who have gone out of their way to thank us — many of them in person — for doing our very small part this year. Our favorite recurring themes were expressions of satisfaction that someone was putting out accurate numbers in context and clearly explained, against some of the other numbers that were flying around; and this welcome refrain: “I read every page.”

We also thank you for urging us to keep the domain and the site and do this again in two years, for the next municipal election, and for the welcome offers of help in doing so next time.

We may post some content before the next election cycle, if we think there are things the voters should know but aren’t hearing about what’s happening at the City. We’d welcome help with that too.

In any case, we’ll do our best to be a reliable source of information in context, and to explain complicated things clearly. As we have already done, we’ll supply some general, nonpartisan information and some analysis and commentary which will likely be . . . less nonpartisan.

If we see a spade, we’ll call it a spade, even if other folks — presumably nice folks — are convinced they see a rake or a hoe or a rainbow. We’ll never manage fully to detoxify our local politics, but we think good data helps good people make good decisions. Slowing down the spin and adding context and perspective are good things.

So keep your sign or return it to Rod at World Class Auto, and we’ll use it again.

Meanwhile, may we respectfully suggest that it’s time to start recruiting fine candidates for the 2017 election, and time for possible fine candidates to start preparing seriously, if they’re not already?

Best wishes to all. Well done. And thanks again.

Did American Fork Road Cut Its Road Budget by $450,000 This Year?

10/31/2015 / David Rodeback

There is widespread agreement that American Fork’s roads are crumbling, and that rebuilding them should be a high priority in the City budget. Beyond this the rhetoric diverges.

Facts

For most of the campaign, one candidate and the local PAC which supports him – and whose flier he’s been distributing – have been telling people that, in the face of this great need, and despite having $10 million in cash for which they have no specific plans, city leaders cut the road budget by $450,000 from Fiscal Year 2015 to Fiscal Year 2016.

That supposed $10 million surplus is a tale we’ll consider soon. Today, we’re looking at the road budget. Here’s what official documents from the City say.

FY 2015: $3,051,000

FY 2016: $6,296,200

In other words, there is no $450,000 decrease. There is no decrease at all. There is more than a $3.2 million increase. The road budget more than doubled.

Even without a $2.55 million grant to fund the 900 West project, the road budget would have increased by $697,200 – that is, about 23 percent.

In fairness to candidate Allen Simpson, I note that after he spoke of this imaginary cut at a meet-the-candidates event ten days ago, one of the incumbents took him aside and gave him (and also explained) the real data. He didn’t make the same mistake a few days later, at last Saturday’s event.

On the other hand, the PAC whose flier he’s distributing doesn’t back down from its numbers, even when they’re provably false. They’re just using the City’s numbers, they say. If they’re wrong, it’s the City’s fault.

I’m using the City’s numbers too. Here are links to two documents the City provided me last week. This summary is clear and sufficient for today’s point. This spreadsheet has more detail.

Perspective

Two years ago, the same PAC told voters that the City had no plan for the proposed bond funds, when there was a very detailed, carefully prioritized, very public plan.

They supported a candidate who said that it would be better to drive on gravel streets than to borrow one dime to rebuild roads.

They supported another candidate who threw all sorts of crazy numbers and accusations around, and who would not be moved even when City financial experts took great pains to explain things to him. He also claimed to have studied the City budget and found $3 million in obvious cuts that could be made right away, but then he couldn’t identify them – during or in the months after his successful campaign.

Both of these candidates won in 2013. One of them grew into the job quite respectably. The other, well . . . Word on the street is that even AFCitizens is embarrassed by him now. It puts one in mind of an adage which seems appropriate to Halloween: People with knowledge know that Dr. Frankstein was not the monster; he was the man who created the monster. People with wisdom understand that Dr. Frankenstein was the monster.

Allen Simpson is not a monster. He comes to the campaign with a much better resume of volunteer service to the city than one of these candidates I mentioned, and with a willingness to learn that the other 2013 AFCitizens darling has not shown. But Mr. Simpson still the PAC’s favorite, and he’s still passing out their stuff.

Meanwhile, the voters are learning too. In 2013, awash in a small flood of bad data, they defeated the road bond proposal. Two years later, a lot of them are saying they wish they’d voted for it.

This story has several morals. Here are two.

If AFCitizens bets the political farm on a number, it’s probably wrong. (But there’s nothing you or I can do to persuade them of that, because they know that they are nice, honest people who are not wrong.)

And learn before you vote.

If you want to help counteract the misinformation some folks are spreading to sway voters, please tell your friends and neighbors, and post this infographic on social media.

American Fork Property Tax Rates Have Decreased 3 Years in a Row

10/30/2015 / David Rodeback

This infographic very nearly speaks for itself. But a few notes, if you please.

One candidate is out there saying that our property tax rates just keep going up, year after year. This is not the case.

It’s true that someone’s property taxes can go up even if the City’s property tax rate goes down — if the assessed value of the property increases, or if another taxing entity, such as the Alpine School District, increases its rate.

The calculation for primary (first) residences is: multiply the rate by the assessed value of the property, then discount 45 percent. That’s the annual tax on that property.

Here’s your extra credit for the day. Some candidates can’t explain this, but maybe that’s okay, because it’s a little messed up.

The City’s certified tax rate (CTR) is set according to state law. A given year’s rate is the answer to this question: Looking at the same set of properties that was taxed last year, what rate will bring in the same number of dollars (perversely, not adjusted for inflation) as last year, given current valuations?

If the City lowers that rate, it’s a tax cut. If they raise that rate, it’s a tax increase, with special requirements for public notice and such. This is true even if the “increase” produces a rate lower than last year’s, or vice versa. So we sometimes see “increases” in which this year’s rate is lower than last year’s, and we occasionally see “tax cuts” in which the resulting rate is higher than last year’s.

The Utah Legislature calls this “Truth in Taxation,” and yes, it can be Orwellian. The long-term effect in practice is to starve municipal governments of funds, because to raise the rate even slightly, just enough to keep revenues equal in real (inflation-adjusted) dollars — and even if the rate ends up lower than last year’s — is a “tax increase.” And we all know tax increases, real or imagined, are dicey politics for incumbents.

Based on what I’ve heard from the legislation’s authors, this slow strangulation was an intended consequence. It’s clever, and it’s destructive.

Speaking of politics, why do you suppose a challenger running for City office would misreport the facts, saying repeatedly that our property tax rates have increased, when they clearly haven’t?

Want to make a difference? Share this. Before Tuesday. Help others learn before they vote.

Here is a longer discussion of certified tax rates, on the off chance that you haven’t had enough already.