Christen Thompson for Heber City Council

Campaign Q&A - Your Questions Answered

Thanks to Jade Holmes from the Wasatch County Politics Facebook Group for emailing out all these questions:

I have a flexible schedule as a software engineer and part time ski instructor. I will handle negative impacts with curiosity, positivity, kindness and integrity.


2. How many of the past meetings have you attended, whether already elected or just as an involved citizen? If you don’t attend in person, do you watch recordings, read minutes, or do anything else to stay informed?

I have attended several of the meetings this last year over zoom. I also like to read the meeting notes and find KPCW a good resource. You can hear me make several public comments about the new cell tower where I advocated no exemptions or changes and to keep the cap of 35 feet for a cell tower. I also have made public comments of a new annexation asking about where their requirement was for a bike lane among other public comments.


3. Can you give an example of a decision made by past city council members or mayors that you would have handled differently, what would you have done?

The city council has missed opportunities with the annexations. The annexations of Red Ledges, North Village, Harvest Village, Jordanelle Ridge, Highlands by UVU campus and others. Annexations give the city council an opportunity to shape what the properties in the annexations will become.

I feel the city leaders missed an opportunity to create zoning that matched our general plan, missed collecting appropriate impact fees and missed the chance to set ordinances in place that would protect and preserve open space, clean air, clean water and dark skies.

See Our general plan page 6 https://www.heberut.gov/DocumentCenter/View/369/Heber-City-General-Plan-PDF

“1. Heber City will honor and enhance existing neighborhoods and increase their walkability. 2. Heber City’s new neighborhoods will be walkable and blend a variety of housing options and shared open space amenities. New neighborhoods will be within walking distance of a center, where neighbors can gather. 3. Rural and mountain residential clusters will enable residents to live in neighborhoods where housing is focused in a smaller area, resulting in the majority of natural lands reserved for shared open space with recreational, equestrian or agricultural uses. 4. Heber will maintain its clean air and dark skies so the City is a healthy and beautiful place to live.”

The city council have set requirements to protect less than the majority and far less depending on the zone type: see page 48 of the north village overlay zone: https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/municipalcodeonline.com-new/heber/ADC/files/ordinance/1616688010_2020-42%20Revised%20NVOZ.pdf Ranging from only 10% to up to 45%

The city council has not created a requirement to preserve any native habitat in a development for example, developers have scraped the entire Highlands development by UVU destroying all the native habitat on the property. This affects our water supply and our native eco system.

The city council failed to expand our sensitive lands ordinance only protecting them with a 25 ft buffer: https://heber.municipalcodeonline.com/book?type=planzone#name=18.21.050.5.16_Sensitive_Lands

The city council has failed at protecting our view shed. They have not passed any ordinance protecting views of our valley.

The city council has failed at requiring promised trails and access. See amendment 2 with Red Ledges signed in 2013 requiring a complete loop around Red Ledges that has never been completed. They still have no trespassing signs up at the west corner access point and have not hired anyone to build the missing back country trail section and yet the city council still approves more annexations into Red Ledges and more building permits are being approved.

We could set ordinances and zones so that annexations could come into the city actually match our general plan.


4. How will you unite our divided community and work together with our citizens? What can you do to encourage, respect, and participate in community involvement, civil dialogue, and a broad range of communication? How much influence does the community’s opinion have on you, vs your own personal beliefs or goals? How and where will you reach out to keep citizens informed of what is happening and why? How will you work with other people that you may not get along with or see things differently?

If I am elected I will be working for you. On my website you can see my email and google voice number which forwards directly to my cell phone.

Please email, text or call me. I want to hear from you on what we can do to better our city.

I don’t have all the answers and look forward to working with others to come up with more ideas and answers. I will continue reaching out through the blog on my site, ThompsonForHeber.com, volunteering at dirt days when I can and making myself available.

Working with others that I disagree with requires listening, a willingness to learn compromise and sometimes just agreeing to disagree if we reach an impasse. I have found that treating each person with respect and dignity opens up more options and possible working together in the future to achieve common goals.


5. Do you have experience in development? If so, is this experience going to help you be a better candidate or will it interfere with your ability to be neutral and unbiased? Have you/will you recuse yourself for certain types of decisions, describe?

I do not have experience in development and no conflicts of interest there.


6. What is your opinion, or position, on annexing further to the east (ie, Highlands and SITLA property), or any other additional annexations going forward?

We should work with Wasatch County and follow Summit county’s example of buying the 910 ranch and creating 8,000 acres of public park and open space. Imagine how great that would be for our county and city!


7. How would you propose adjusting expenses, revenue, and the overall budget to honor the tax payer’s dollar while providing necessary services?

Zero based budgeting, lets start from first principles and identify places we can cut waste and save money for future generations.

Sometimes this involves spending more money today that will create an investment that will pay off years or generations later.


8. Many feel a bypass is a necessary solution to traffic, that Main should be a walking/shopping type of street with a historic feel. Others feel a bypass will divert revenue away from Main St business owners and ruin the neighborhoods the bypass will run through, and that truck traffic isn’t a relevant enough portion of the traffic for a bypass to be an improvement. What are your thoughts on traffic and the bypass, what role should the city have, knowing some of it is in UDOT’s hands?

A bypass diverting revenue from main street is not a concern I have. Diverting traffic off of main street will make it more desirable creating more revenue and more customers for businesses on main street.

That said, we don’t need 2 freeways going north in our valley and I would advocate for Alternative A.

I would also point out that building more roads and adding more lanes has time and again shown to create more traffic. We could move more people more efficiently by bringing back the trains that used to connect our cities. While we wait for more federal and state funding for that Summit and Wasatch counties should partner to provide even more regular and reliable bus service. We need an express route going from the Provo Airport to Heber, to Park City, to the SLC Airport.


9. How will you balance housing needs between single-family home affordable housing, high density apartments, and larger properties?

This is a nationwide problem that I don’t think Heber will be able to solve on its own. It is extremely hard for the most recent generation to get on the housing ladder. My grandpa bought a house and 2 acres on the salary of a janitor. His wife didn’t have to work.

We can nibble at the edges but I think we need to recognize this is a systematic issue that will require national changes. That said we do have affordable housing requirements for new developments and supply and demand determines cost.

Density belongs in the downtown area 150 w to 150e 1200 s to 900 north. We need a good walkable downtown and good public transportation so that we don’t increase sprawl which will then increase traffic. Cap the height of buildings below the tabernacle/city hall.

I think it is important to research and read about what has created the best cities in the world.

This article on Barcelona is super informative https://medium.com/@stevenwyee/urbanism-uncovered-barcelona-2d0dcd2c51b7 I liked this quote: “Densification is inevitable in a growing population. Left unchecked it is dangerous and thus needs to be planned for. Infrastructure like public transportation, waste management, and urban greenery are necessary to ensure the longevity of our cities.”

We have a growing population in Utah and we need to plan for it!

I talk more about this in a blog post on my website: https://thompsonforheber.com/blog/2025-07-19-heber-city-at-crossroads/

I think some of the ideas are interesting here as well: https://utahnewsdispatch.com/2024/06/20/utah-affordable-housing-market-crisis-solutions-report/

So, what can Heber do?

I would say we should make it easier for people to build ADUs at their primary residence and allow building up downtown while using open space bond money to preserve surrounding open space.

Build up to 4 stories in the downtown area and spend money to preserve what open space we can.

I think this meme is instructive: https://lucagattonicelli.substack.com/p/meet-the-island-homes-meme-creator Asking how would you like this island to be developed, showing an island with 100 homes, paving over the island vs 100 apartments preserving 96% of the island.

Unfortunately our county and city councils have decided to do both, urban sprawl, more and more roads and taller buildings.


10. What is your position on Airbnb regulations?

People who live at their primary residence should be allowed to air bnb part or all of their home. It is their property and should be allowed and is allowed for up to 6 months out of year under the current code.

The city currently only allows air bnb at the primary residence, seems fair to me. We don’t want our houses being bought up by corporations and we don’t want our neighborhoods be turned into short term rentals.


https://hebercityut.portal.civicclerk.com/event/215/files/agenda/982

The city council keeps giving and giving more and more. First the cap was 4 stories and 55 feet: https://www.kpcw.org/wasatch-county/2022-10-06/heber-city-sets-four-story-maximum-height-on-future-buildings

> “The maximum future height will be four stories, or 55 feet tall, but only if the developer meets requirements such as providing 10% affordable housing.”

Unless they hand out exceptions so they can have a 5 story building like this one.

Why set rules if you just change them when someone with enough money asks?

I think 4 stories would have been tall enough, and the height should have been capped at the height of the Heber City Hall. They got the developers to cover 25% of the cost of a light, what about a bus stop, and helping cover the cost of more transportation?

This article on KPCW shows a rendering of it https://www.kpcw.org/heber-city/2025-02-20/heber-leaders-discuss-traffic-flow-around-planned-main-street-condo-hotel

Scott Philipps informed me on July 31st that there was a approval of 5 story buildings from the council 10 years ago, which is why this building is approved for 5 stories.

The current cap is 3 stories, 4 if you include more affordable housing.

I want to thank Scott for taking the time to let me know and I apologize for not having that information before.


12. Are you familiar with 704NoMore.org? It is an organization that is working to restore the power to the towns/cities and residents from cell tower companies. What is your stance on cell phone towers?

I am not familiar with 704NoMore.org. I took a brief glance at the website.

I believe that local towns should have local control.

I spoke out at the recent city council meeting where the company was asking for an exception so they could build a 70 ft tower. We should not make height exceptions, keep it at 35 please.


13. How do you feel about C Street, Main Street Redevelopment, CRA, etc.?

I think it is a great idea, we need a pedestrian only path, we need to update the main street park. It can even become a great source of revenue for the city from skate rentals like Roger Brooks talks about has worked in other cities.

The question is how do we pay for it?

I think in this case it might be worth it to borrow the money now to create the space that will create more business and bring more revenue in to help pay it back.


Thanks again to Jade Holmes for gathering these questions and sending it out to all the candidates. I really appreciate it.

Feel free to call, text or email me. I want to hear from you. What do you think of these ideas. Which of my ideas do you think won’t work or would cause issues? What do you think would work better?

christen.thompson@gmail.com (435) 315-2551

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