Jewel Allen: Tangled necklaces and growing communities

As I got ready for a Planning Commission and City Council work meeting recently in my hometown of Grantsville, I wanted to wear a certain necklace. I took it off the hook, only to find it tangled with another chain. Impatiently, I tugged on the strands but instead of loosening them, I made the situation worse.

I wore a different necklace, left the snarled ones on my bathroom counter, and went to my meeting.

That work meeting was yet another link in the chain of steps leading up to a revised general plan for Grantsville. Like my snarled necklaces, this process has not always been easy.

The idea for this plan revision germinated in 2016, my first year as a councilwoman, when I found out about a Wasatch Front Regional Council transportation and land use grant that we could apply for. Revitalizing our Main Street seemed like a good idea at that time. We asked for $20,000 but didn’t get it.

The following year, I studied what other cities had applied for and received. This time, we aimed for a bigger grant: $60,000 for a revision of our master plan, which dates back to 2001. It seemed counter-intuitive to ask for more money but, to our surprise, we got it. As WFRC suggested, it is advisable to apply for an amount that can provide some financial flexibility in meeting a city’s planning goals.

At first, there was some internal pushback. Why should we listen to an outside consultant who will only tell us what to do instead of us charting our own destiny?

It was at the height of heated town halls. Would meetings with the public really be productive, or simply open the door to chaos? Shouldn’t we just tweak the old document and call it good? In fact, a citizen even volunteered to survey residents; couldn’t we go that simpler route?

Ultimately, it was decided that we could go the consultant route, for all the apprehensions. We learned humility in huge doses, as we needed to work as a team aiming for the same end result: a plan which will guide our city leaders as we deal with the pressures of growth.

The public engagement was exciting in spite of its hiccups. We all had something to learn about meeting public expectations and leading effective presentations. But they were tough conversations we needed to have with complete transparency.

At the joint work meeting, we got through the entire document as well as several land use maps. With this latest revision, we are closer to a document that both Planning Commission and the City Council can hopefully get behind, reflecting the will and mandate of citizens who have elected us to represent them and the city’s best interests. There will most likely be another chance for the public to weigh in because the document, especially the land use maps, have undergone changes.

This general plan and the tools it gives us couldn’t come soon enough. Citizens have identified growth as one of their top concerns.

After the meeting, I told my husband about my necklace chains and he offered to fix them. He sat there slowly teasing each knot, deliberate and methodical, eventually untangling them. I thought again of the general plan process, grateful that slowly but surely, we’re getting there.

We couldn’t get there without our citizens, stakeholders, city staff and elected officials working together patiently to untangle each strand and being willing to work through different perspectives.

Jewel Allen is a member of the Grantsville City Council.