Incumbent Daines highlights her first four years as Logan mayor as primary looms just ahead

Plaza presentation - Logan city

LOGAN — Something that has not happened in four years is a radio interview with candidate for mayor, Holly Daines.

The current Logan mayor is running for re-election and on KVNU’s For the People program last Thursday, she said it’s been a very busy four years.

“And we have accomplished a great deal in that amount of time, I’m really proud of that. We have done it with a balanced budget and with no tax increases. We’ve had funds in our Redevelopment Agency that are specifically for redevelopment projects, and we’ve used those wisely to really enhance our city. I think if people look at south Main (street) and the improvements we’ve made there with new curb and gutter and park strip and trees and decorative street lights,” she said.

Daines said also the Center Street project has been a great success, she thinks people really enjoy a place to gather downtown, to sit outside on the sidewalk and enjoy the beautiful flowers and walk along the new sidewalks.

She said it’s really become a place to be in downtown Logan and they hope to extend that with the Center Block plaza.

During her four years in office, Daines has made parks, trails and economic development big priorities.

“You know, I think we’ve done a great job and one thing we have done is really leveraged a lot of grant opportunities, particularly in our parks and trails we’ve been able to provide some matching funds but also get grants from the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation from state entities toward our Blue Trail (a multi-purpose trail along the Logan River).”

Daines said they are applying for a grant from the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) for active transportation to try and get a pedestrian underpass under south Main to connect the two new sections of trail at the Riverwoods north development and Gateway development.

Ballots for the mayoral primary should be arriving now for those registered for this primary and have to be postmarked by August 9th for the election date of August 10th.  Daines is being challenged by businessmen Dee Jones and R. Lowell Huber.

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4 Comments

  • Bob Cobb July 26, 2021 at 1:00 pm Reply

    Remember when Holly Daines gave up on animal control for cats and dogs because the animal shelter wouldn’t give them precisely the price that they wanted? Pepperidge farm remembers.

    Anyway, during the process of that battle, my friend was persistent in his questions about the city doing something normal for cats as well (rather than taking them across town, hurting them, or telling citizens to deal with their own problems), and Holly Daines went so far as to call his boss to complain about all the time my friend was wasting at work. I can understand not wanting to look bad in the public eye, but a more reasonable person would have probably answered the questions posed by my friend rather than immediately escalating a benign situation to an 11 by trying to get my friend in trouble. In what world is it normal for a mayor to spend the day tattling on her constituents that don’t like what she is doing?

    Well, even if we ignore that drastic overreach, I still think Holly Daines has not done anything to make Logan City better. I don’t understand the obsession with the downtown. The city has been told again and again that we don’t want or need a new library, but it looks like that’s happening. (Apparently fixing the library for a few hundred thousand is more expensive than building a new one for $10 million or more!) The situation on 1400 N and 600 W with the semi-finished intersection is so laughable it is silly. The administration of Logan City seem to think they are the bullies who get to push around every organization around them until they get their way. They fought with the Cache Humane Society for the cats, are STILL fighting with Union Pacific for the intersection, and they even managed to make Nibley mad by permitting a massive housing complex right on the Nibley/Logan border. Oh and now they are beefing with the downtown over their new fire building. How hard is it to get along?

    There has to be a better way. Dee Jones seems like he has the best ideas, but I’m open to the Municipool guy fixing Logan City as well!

    • LH July 26, 2021 at 9:04 pm Reply

      Yeah I almost wish I lived in Logan so I could vote for her opponent. She thinks a lot more highly of what she’s done than is due.

  • Walt Appel July 26, 2021 at 8:50 pm Reply

    Taking credit for a balanced budget when it’s required by State law? And taking credit for not raising taxes when that’d be the job of the Council? The City, via raising utility bills by not-a-little, actually did raise everyone’s taxes not so long ago. In what sounded like just a few percent over a number of years, the math works out (at least for me, using old-school math) to be approximately a 50% rise from where it started. As the multiplier effect kicks in, that’s gonna hurt most those who can afford it least. For over 20 years, there’s been no reason for the City to have a tax raising discussion due to the Council being able to raise utility rates on everyone at will. How many times have we seen the City say they need more for (pick utility here), then turn around and transfer more revenues to the General Fund? A lot. Used to be that the ‘City Fathers and Mothers’ boasted about how much less residents paid for services compared to what people in the County paid to (then) Utah Plunder and Loot, a profit-making corporation, thus leaving citizens with more money to spend in local businesses along with creating more sales tax revenue. For 30 or so years now, the City has just bypasses the middle-men of local people and businesses and stated that these ‘profits’ are best spent by those who know better.

    Yes, Center Street is lovely. Yes, a South Main crosswalk will be good, and ironing out 7th N and Main is excellent. I’d argue those are all items that anyone can plainly see a need for.

    Rumor has it that those who sold the Emporium to the city offered to give the money back in order to get the building back in order to re-fill it with businesses. And the City refused. So it seems the effort to create a ‘legacy’ of ‘Holly’s Folly’ is still on track. Sell the property back and let the private sector make it productive vs creating another money sink for which we’ll certainly need another utility increase to maintenance it with.

    • Bob Cobb July 27, 2021 at 10:42 am Reply

      You’re right that the city uses utility rates and general fund transfers to increase their budgets without raising property taxes. Why do they do this? I would imagine because “raising property taxes” isn’t palatable to homeowners, so if the city can obscure the necessary budget increases of the city into the utility rates, and then transfer that revenue to the general fund to fund the city’s budget, then the revenue of the city is spread out among all utility customers instead of the homeowners that continue to enjoy super low tax rates. Is this legally wrong? I don’t know. I’m not sure if the city is supposed to only break even on utility rates or not, but I do know it seems ethically wrong to avoid raising property taxes on the wealthy in favor of spreading more of the city’s budget onto people paying for essential utility services.

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