#EM2021 – Candidate Question – What is Rural Living

There are plenty of legal descriptions of rural. Some are based on population, some are based on proximity, and some are based on characteristics. When Eagle Mountain people talk to me about “rural living” they are talking about a place that is rural in character. They are talking about a place where people can still ride their horses or horse power and you see a horse in line at the drive thru of McDonalds. “Rural Living” is a place where you can raise chickens, and grow fruit trees and a garden. “Rural Living” means you can step just outside your neighborhood and access a trail to hike a mountain. “Rural Living” means your kids can just go outside and play on the grass or in dirt because you have space to do so. “Rural Living” means you can see stars at night. The people of Eagle Mountain may not meet all of the legal definitions of rural, but they are talking about a lifestyle and sense of community.

This candidate after several email attempts did not participate in this questionnaire.

“Rural by Choice” is my campaign slogan. What this means to me is that we care for and look after one another. It means that we work hard and live independently. It means we know each other and expect the best of one another. It is a life style that is based on horizontal, rural or suburban living not metropolitan vertical living. It embraces open space, wildlife, agrarian opportunities and dark skies to the degree possible. In short it represents a distinct alternate choice to living in a downtown urban or metropolitan environment. I believe we are and can continue to be an alternate choice to big city living.

Rural living is slow paced, stop signs instead of stop lights, streets that I can trust my young children to cross on their own. What creates that rural feeling is the open spaces, the parks, the wide trails. The ability for a family to run a farm if they have the right size and amount of land. I am an advocate for hitching posts at local stores, because we do not want that feeling to go away. The reality is we are not a rural city. If you look at the latest data we have over 35K residents (that is a very conservative estimate). We are growing and there is no way of getting around that. We can maintain the small town feel by being smart in our growth.

Developing and planning principles that encourage and embrace open space, agricultural uses and horizontal housing developments not vertical overdevelopment development

I can see how EM might feel more rural to someone relocating from a densely populated place, that perhaps had a bustling public transportation system, and an abundance of services on every city block. However, my definition of rural living more or less revolves around my own experience of growing up in four separate small towns across Utah, Idaho, and Wyoming, which averaged in population about 100 residents each. Rural, to me, means the smell of dairy farms; being surrounded by cultivated farmland; tractors seen almost as often as cars on the road; riding the bus for an hour to get to school; and a lot of ‘making do’ because there was no store to ‘run and grab something real quick.’ It was a meticulously-planned, hours-long ordeal to go into town and run errands, once every week or two. Now, I don’t mean to discount anyone who does think of Eagle Mountain as rural, because I do love the open skies and smalltown feel we are lucky to find out here; but I am also appreciative of the growing access to resources, jobs, and the variety of businesses that we are so fortunate to have in our community. I think it possible to maintain a sense of that ‘rural living’ for those who came here looking for it, by being deliberate and responsible about both our preservation and our growth, and fostering the small-town feel through providing oppotunities for our residents to establish meaningful connections to both the city and the incredible people in it.

To me, rural living means having a lot of open space in the city. It means having houses with bigger lot sizes, agricultural zones, and access to outdoor trails. It most certainly does not mean high-density housing! This rural living is a critical part of the essence of EM and needs to be preserved.

My grandparents lived on a large farm several miles outside of a small town. That is rural to me. Rural means outside the city, away from the amenities that cities provide. Our city, by my definition, cannot provide that. We are a city of about 48,0000 people with more coming every day. What we can provide, and what I think our residents mean, is a small town feeling, open spaces, wildlife corridors, trails, and events that bring us together. These things are a big part of who we are as a city.