St. George • Despite the thunder and lightning that lit up the sky Monday evening, the mayoral debate between incumbent Mayor Michele Randall and challenger Jimmie Hughes at Utah Tech University was largely free of fireworks.
Longtime political opponents, the two renewed their rivalry that began in January 2021 when the City Council picked Randall over Hughes to replace Mayor Jon Pike, who stepped down to take a state job, and was amplified when she bested him in the general election that year.
Still, other than the occasional potshot leveled at each other, the candidates were respectful and agreed on most issues. Perhaps the sharpest exchange of the debate, which took place in the Eccles Fine Arts Center, was over Safe St. George, a failed 2022 property tax hike proposal that Randall supported to raise $90 million to hire more police and firefighters.
Rather than hike taxes, Hughes sided with the majority on the council and opted to bolster public safety funding by cutting the budget and through sales taxes. During Monday’s debate, Randall took issue with Hughes labeling Safe St. George as the “mayor’s property tax increase.”
“[T]hat property tax increase was brought to us by our budget team and city manager at the time,” she said. “So that was not my idea. That was theirs.”
Hughes countered that Randall had called the proposal an opportunity to catch up with public safety needs and was something she and city staff supported.
“So, you might want to take credit for all that’s good,” Hughes said. “You have to take credit for some that’s not so good as well.”
Randall noted the city’s reliance on sales tax to fund the city’s police and fire could backfire if there is an economic downturn.
“I would hate to see the market crash or anything like that,” she added, “because then we would have to go back to the drawing board.”
St. George last raised its property tax in 1987. If he were elected mayor, Hughes pledged, there would not be a property tax hike in the next four years.
More agreement than not
Beyond the occasional dig at each other, the two were largely in agreement.
Both candidates voiced enthusiastic support for the Northern Corridor Highway, saying the project is needed to reduce gridlock in the city. The Bureau of Land Management announced earlier this month that the proposals is back on the table after nixing the four-lane highway proposed to cut through the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area last December.
Ditto for Zone 6, a 6,800-acre parcel of land created in 2021 to protect the Mojave Desert tortoise and offset other negative impacts of the Northern Corridor Highway. If the controversial highway is not built, state and county officials are warning they will open about half of Zone 6, which includes the Bearclaw Poppy and Zen trails, to development.
Both Randall and Hughes lamented the loss of $87.6 million in federal funds, a casualty of President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” in July. The funding would have gone to at constructing underpasses at 400 East and 900 South, thus connecting neighborhoods now separated by Interstate 15. The two candidates touted their connections with federal officials in helping get that funding back.
Affordable housing
Asked about the Washington County Water Conservancy District’s latest iteration of its water shortage contingency plan, Randall said she liked its emphasis on letting cities decide how best to reduce water use during shortages. She further touted the city removing decorative turf at municipal parks, which she said has saved 96 million gallons of water, as well the ongoing effort to make smart water meters available to every household.
A vocal critic of the district’s Water Efficient Landscape Program, which has resulted in cities in the county replacing roughly three million square feet of grass with drought-friendly landscaping, Hughes also lauded the city’s conservation efforts — with a caveat.
“That doesn’t mean we want to rip out all the grass. That doesn’t mean we want no greenery,” he said. “We want the desert to blossom as the rose.”
Concerning affordable housing, PBS host and debate moderator Lauren Steinbrecher said the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute ranks St. George in the top 30 of the nation’s priciest housing markets and asked the candidates what steps they would take to foster more affordable housing development.
Randall acknowledged it is a problem, saying it used to be that St. George exported its young people due to a lack of jobs. Now, she added, the jobs are here, but they can’t find an affordable place to live. Even so, the mayor said the tricks the city can use to deal with the problem is largely confined to zoning and cutting red tape.
Hughes said St. George’s desirability is a factor.
“I’m a big believer in the free market,” he said. “And the problem we have is the demand. Everybody wants to live here. This is causing our housing prices to be some of the highest in the country.”
To boost the supply, the candidates pointed out that the City Council has allowed accessory dwelling units in residential areas and has approved some high-density housing projects. They both hedged, however, when asked about whether they favored loosening restrictions on short-term rentals.
Randall said short-term rentals are already allowed in the resort overlay area, but illegal ones in other areas pose a problem.
“A few years ago,” she said, “we had a neighborhood in Bloomington where there were two homes that were short-term rentals, and each of them advertised that they rented out for 40 people. So this neighborhood was inundated with busloads of people.”
Hughes said he supports using zoning to determine where short-term rentals are allowed, and said he might favor giving some leeway to owner-occupied properties with short-term rentals, which could help them better afford the homes.
Hughes and Randall also lauded the $29 million general obligation bond that voters approved in 2023, which is paving the way for new parks and trails and extensive improvements to existing recreation facilities.