start Paying attention

by Neil MacDonnell

Toquerville is an amazing place to live. It has that small town feel but is still close enough to the bigger cities to make it easy to get whatever you need. It has amazing beauty and friendly people, but city government needs participation and involvement from those of us who live here.

While the town of Toquerville was founded in 1858, the government of Toquerville is young. It was only incorporated in 2000. Most cities are funded primarily by sales tax revenue, but the only sales tax being generated in Toquerville is a handful of B&Bs and a few small businesses being run out of homes. They also make a little money brokering water, sewer, and trash services. This lack of revenue makes the city vulnerable to developers.

Small towns like Toquerville, devoid of a steady income from sales tax revenue, frequently turn to development to fix their income problem. It makes sense; if you don’t have any commercial activity, then build some. You make money from the permits for the development and the development creates steady sales tax income. The key is to properly manage the growth in a balanced way.

This has not happened in Toquerville as the focus has been residential development. Aside from a couple of commercial projects still in their early stages at Anderson Junction, all the growth in Toquerville since its incorporation as a city has been residential.

The biggest blunder the city has made was in 2007, when the city issued 3000 building permits all at once and attached them to undeveloped land owned by a consortium of developers. This was done at a time when there were less than 700 homes in Toquerville. That’s almost a 500 percent increase in the number of homes in town in one fell swoop. This was also a 500 percent increase in the number of residents that the city would eventually need to provide services for with a minimal increase in sales tax revenue.

How does this make the city vulnerable, you ask? It does so because the city barely has enough money to run itself. The city can’t afford to defend themselves from a lawsuit by well-funded developers. So when developers threaten litigation, the easy path is to give them what they want.

Then there’s the matter of potential corruption. Recently, a city official was found profiting from a developer.  Our elected city council receives minimal compensation so we must trust and depend on them to make selfless decisions that benefit all of us.

We don't want a city government that acts like a foster parent who spends all their time and attention trying to adopt more kids. What about our needs? We desperately need code enforcement and animal control.

Then there’s the current hot topic of nightly rentals. The city has placed a moratorium on nightly rental permits while they try to rewrite the code into something that works for all of us. At a recent council meeting the first attempt at a new nightly rental ordinance was authored by the folks at Firelight. The developers would like to see nightly rentals confined to a section of their new Firelight development.

This cooperative effort between developers and the city deserves our attention. Citizens get three minutes to speak ahead of the business agenda. Yet at many meetings, there will be representatives of Firelight sitting in the audience who are allowed to fully participate in policy discussions during the business agenda. 

For Toquerville residents it’s time to start paying attention. This is our city too.