Candidate Question – Roads

cedarvalleysentinel.com sent a survey to each of the City Council and Mayor Candidates for the 2017 election. The questions included ones about roads, education, city issues, city strengths, as well as a few to get to know the candidates on a more personal level. Over the next few weeks, those answers will be published on cedarvalleysentinel.com. If you have missed any, want to catch up, or just review them again, you can do so by visiting the Cedar Valley Sentinel (formerly i84005) Election Center at http://cedarvalleysentinel.com/elections/. Feel free to share these articles on social media. Lets get the word out and increase voter participation in this election cycle. Eagle Mountain is a great city, and it can be made even greater by our elected officials, but they need input from the residents. Question: With the new High School and the development in City Center, what do you feel would be the best way to alleviate the road problems facing Eagle Mountain? Jan Preece – City Council Candidate (preecejan@gmail.com)

Roads are and will always be a big issue in any city, Eagle Mountain not excluded. First off, roads are expensive to build and expensive to maintain, so this issue cannot be taken lightly. We need to make sure to hold the developers accountable for the roads they are responsible to put in. This has been a problem more in the past more than at this time. The problem I am seeing with adequate roads now stems mostly from developers waiting until the end of a project before they complete the secondary access road into and out of neighborhoods. I feel as a city we need to address this issue upfront and possibly change when we require the developer to put these secondary access roads in, or if it is the city that is responsible we need to do so in a timelier manner. We have a new high school going in on Pony Express in City Center. The Alpine School District did a traffic study and it was found that the road was adequate to handle the traffic if a four way stop was put in by the high school and possible Bobby Wren being a traffic circle. I was at that City Council meeting and got up and expressed my views about that, which were that we needed to learn a lesson from the traffic issues confronting Saratoga Springs in front of Westlake High School and the Middle School and be proactive in this matter. Fortunately the city is working on expanding the lanes on Pony Express, while also adding a second street that will connect with Eagle Mountain Boulevard. That being said I worry about the second access being through a residential area and how much traffic it will put on that street, what are the potential risks to the people who live on this street? We are not only talking employee traffic, we are talking about student drivers and large buses. Even with the expansion of Pony Express and a secondary route into the school I am also concerned about the two way street which is Eagle Mountain Boulevard and the traffic that will be on that. These are my concerns. I have a couple of ideas, the possibility of building a more direct access road from Eagle Mountain Boulevard to the school, which is costly and therefore I would like to avoid this or making it so any buses coming in on Eagle Mountain Boulevard have to use Pony Express to enter the school to help alleviate traffic through the neighborhood. I also recognize that Pony Express is not as busy in City Center as Saratoga Springs and that the neighborhood access will be sufficient.

Jared Gray – City Council Candidate (grayjar@gmail.com)

Well this is a multi part question to me, and it can’t be given Justice in only a few sentences. Our existing roads need better infrastructure, and we need better access to destination locations in this city. Maybe a bypass or collectors. Much more on this topic, and I built roads for a living, so my knowledge is extensive on this topic.

Melissa Clark – City Council Candidate (melissa4EM@gmail.com)

It comes down to safety, the great snow storm of 2008 had kids stranded in school gyms overnight because parents could not get to them and many adults spent the night walking around Smiths because the roads home were all shut down, and the roads that were open could not handle the traffic. There was also the evacuation and state of emergency in 2012 due to wild fires, because the number of roads and specifically lanes were limited, there were an increase of accidents and again more traffic than the current roads could handle. Let’s not let the territory battle over roads keep any of us from getting home safely, so we have to work together with our state and county leaders to make reasoned decisions to improve the development of roads. Roads are how most of EM’s residents get to work and if we are spending an extra hour in traffic trying to get to work and school, that is an hour we don’t get to spend with family or doing the things we love. Family time is sacred and should be protected and ensuring adequate roads and transportation into and out of Eagle Mountain can protect that time and that requires creative thinking and looking into future issues that may arise before they become costly problems.

Tyler Shimakonis – City Council Candidate (tyler4em@gmail.com)

The issues of roads is something that Eagle Mountain as a city has had to deal with for a long time as growth outpaces current roads. We need to continue to plan. As a city we know we are going to grow and planning for that growth is where improvements start, we need more access. We need more roads that connect, create new roads to alleviate some of the main congestion, and we need to work to improve and expand already existing roads and better the infrastructure. We will need to bring all parties to the table. We are fortunate enough that some of the needed work has begun with the planned expansion of Pony Express & Mid Valley Intersection Improvements as well as Sage Park Continuation. We already know The sage park continuation will improve congestion around the new high school by providing two points of ingress/egress from the high school, onto Pony Express Parkway and Eagle Mountain blvd allowing direct access to Wride Hwy (SR-73) and will serve to alleviate traffic from areas of City Center south of the high school. This is an important step that will need to continue with conversation with the surrounding developers to improve and negotiate agreements for the area.

Matt Visser – City Council Candidate (Givemeyours1st@gmail.com)

Roads are a huge concern for all of us in EM whether it’s limited access to neighborhoods, too few lanes to accommodate the high traffic times, or something as simple as maintenance. While I believe that we’re trying to correct the problem, I believe more can be done. Developers need to be held to contracts or we should renegotiate for the best long term interests of the city. SITLA seems to hold a lot of control and, I believe there are ways we can develop the way the city feels is best and not let SITLA decide for us.

Jonathan Vale – Mayor Candidate (jokersstyle@hotmail.com)

Roads will be a big issue during this election cycle. With the new High School and the development in City Center, what do you feel would be the best way to alleviate the road problems facing Eagle Mountain? As with any problem, there are multiple ways to solve a problem. That is why it is important that as Mayor, I would consider not only my solution, but the solutions of the City Council, the Residents of Eagle Mountain, and others as well. My idea on how to alleviate the road problems for the new High School would be to have multiple ways for traffic to flow. The main exit corridor, to me, is going to be Pony Express Parkway. Since this has only one way both directions, traffic would soon come to a bottleneck when school is let out or when any event at the school would occur. To alleviate this, the answer would be to expand the road to two lanes in both directions.

Drew Curley – City Council Candidate (drew@drewcurley.com)

The best way to alleviate road problems facing Eagle Mountain is twofold. First, when we construct new roads and make repairs, they need to be done in such as a manner as would provide longevity. When you already have traffic flow issues, ill-planned construction along with more frequent or longer lasting repairs have devastating effects. This will require higher investment in our road infrastructure. Second, we need more arterial roads. We need a road to connect Cory Wride Hwy (or at least EM Blvd) directly to Pony Express Pkwy near Cory Wride Memorial Park. This will not only help school traffic, but also ease driving to what is scheduled to be a destination park.

Debbie Hooge – Full Time Mayor Candidate (debbie4mayor@gmail.com)

Good question and, yes, it is a big problem, especially for people in The Ranches where neighborhood collectors are beginning to act like freeways to accommodate through traffic.The answers are not simple, nor are they cheap. I believe the smartest is a third North/South collector on the West of the new high school, past the airport and up to SR73. Eagle Mountain Blvd was designed to be the major collector on the west side of town. While it is a fast road, some residents seem reluctant to use it and prefer going through The Ranches. Another option is to slow travel on Pony Express and Ranches Pkwy, such that it is not a fast solution. Then build a collector from west of the high school over to Eagle Mountain Blvd. This would probably not be a popular solution, but I believe it would be the quickest and cheapest.

Donna Burnham – City Council Candidate (dburnham@gmail.com)

With the new high school and continued development in City Center, we have a serious transportation problem. I would like to propose both short-term and long term-solutions to the problem. First, we need to add a long center turning lane on Pony Express so that those turning left into or out of the school will hold up thru traffic as little as possible. Then I propose we build a secondary access road to the school from Eagle Mountain Boulevard. In the long term, we need to widen Pony Express all the way to City Hall. SITLA has fought the expansion of the road from the beginning, but even with other road options in our long-term plan, this road needs to be widened to help meet the city’s transportation demands.

Stephanie Gricius – Part Time Mayor Candidate (stephanie@votestephanie.org)

It’s obvious that as the city grows we are going to need more roads, and roads cost money. Right now the city is working on a comprehensive road maintenance plan. This will prolong the life of our existing roads. My number one budget priority for this fiscal year is roads, as was the majority of the council’s, and you’ll see this reflected in the upcoming budget.