Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
- Central Utah saw a record election of 26 or 27 first-time mayors across their 49 municipalities.
- The R6 Regional Council supports these rural towns with limited staff by aiding in complex tasks.
- The new mayors will bring fresh energy, but face challenges in adapting to evolving responsibilities.
NEPHI — It's easy to find traditions in Utah's rural towns.
The towns with a single main street in places like Mona, Juab County; Hinckley, Millard County; Fayette, Sanpete County; or Joseph, Sevier County; where everyone waves as you drive by.
This year, though, something happened in those rural central Utah communities that no one in the region has ever seen before.
Out of 49 municipalities across six rural counties, 26 (maybe even 27, when all the votes are tallied) will have brand new mayors after this past Election Day.
For small towns with limited staff, it's a milestone that brings excitement, but also a big challenge.
Nephi Mayor Justin Seely understands that about as well as anyone.
Seely, who was reelected this year, still remembers what it felt like to take on the responsibilities of mayor after his first Election Day.
"You really don't understand what you're about to do," he said with a laugh. "I had served as the mayor pro tem. I've been on the council for a while, but still, there's a major learning curve behind that. And so, it's all figuring out what to do."
He said that learning curve hits fast.
"When you become mayor, you have to learn how to do and what to do and those kinds of things because things are always evolving and changing," said Seely.
It's not just the responsibilities, it's also keeping up with laws that change every year.
"There's no playbook," said Seely. "In fact, the playbook is constantly changing based upon the new laws that the legislators bring up, and then we have to enact them."
For rural mayors, many of whom have full-time jobs outside of public office, that's a heavy lift.
"Generally, you have a full-time job, and the mayor job is something that you do to give back to your community," said Seely.
R6 Regional Council and Community Advisor Program
That's where the R6 Regional Council comes in.
The council is made up of six counties: Juab, Millard, Piute, Sanpete, Sevier, and Wayne. It operates as one of Utah's seven Associations of Governments.
With state funding and a long list of responsibilities, the organization supports communities that often don't have the personnel or expertise to handle complex municipal tasks.
Executive director Travis Kyhl said the need for help in rural communities is huge.
"And we cover 49 small municipalities in our region. Well over 30 of those are less than 1,000 in population," said Kyhl.
With so few employees in rural cities and communities, sometimes only one part-timer, small towns can't always manage everything they're legally required to do.
That includes everything from budgeting and human resources to water projects and ordinance updates.
So, several years ago, the R6 launched something called the Community Advisor Program.
It's basically a team of full-time professionals who fill the gaps rural governments can't.
"Think of a city manager or a city administrator. In our 49 communities, only five or six have any form of a city manager or a city administrator," said Kyhl. "We have full-time staff, you know, call them planners, call them a jack-of-all-trades, they can do kind of almost all things that a city manager can do. And they do that for several small communities throughout the region."
Each adviser oversees about eight or nine communities.
And they're busy.
"Last year alone, they attended 469 community meetings," said Kyhl. "Those are usually in the evenings away from their families, but that's really what they have to do to get the work done."
Without that support, Kyhl said, some towns simply wouldn't be able to function.
"If we don't provide the service, they're easily forgotten," he said. "Infrastructure projects that are needed just don't get done. If there's not somebody there to make the application to UDOT for a road project or work on project management for a water project, those things just simply don't get done."
Kyhl also said this year marks the largest turnover of mayors the region has ever recorded.
"We'll end up with 26 or 27 new mayors out of 49," he said. "So just over 50% of our mayors are changing this year."
That much change means two things: losing longtime knowledge and gaining fresh energy.
"You hate to lose some of that institutional knowledge, but obviously new ideas and new thought processes is always exciting as well," he said. "Let's take what has worked in the past, apply the new ideas, and let's just be better tomorrow than we were yesterday."
For Seely, the support from the R6 advisers helps make that possible.
"You can accomplish a lot more when a lot of parties come together to make one common thing happen, right," he said.
And in towns where tradition is part of everyday life, a little extra help can make sure those communities continue moving forward, even as their leadership changes.
