435 Podcast: Southern Utah
Explore the heartbeat of Southern Utah with the 435 Podcast, your go-to source for all things local in Washington County. Stay ahead of the curve with our in-depth coverage, expert analysis, and captivating interviews. Whether you're a resident or visitor, our podcast is your key to unlocking the latest happenings and trends in St. George and the surrounding areas. Tune in now to stay informed and connected with our thriving community!
435 Podcast: Southern Utah
Who Really Controls Your Neighborhood?
Dive into the intricacies of Utah's 2025 legislative session with Washington City's Legislative Affairs Director Jordan Hess as he breaks down the bills that will reshape Southern Utah's communities. With over 582 bills passed during this session, Jordan helps navigate the complex political landscape while offering unique insights from his perspective working directly with lawmakers and municipalities.
Jordan Hess unpacks controversial legislation like the flag display restrictions in public buildings, enhanced enforcement capabilities against illegal short-term rentals, and new voter integrity measures requiring additional verification for mail-in ballots.
The discussion takes a particularly fascinating turn when examining the tension between state authority and local control. One failed bill would have created a "Beehive Development Agency" with power to expedite major economic projects with minimal local input—highlighting the ongoing struggle between expedient development and thoughtful local planning.
Housing affordability emerges as a critical theme throughout the episode, with Jordan explaining how new legislation prohibiting municipalities from requiring garages for affordable single-family homes could help create true "starter homes" again. The conversation explores whether government intervention can effectively address housing costs or if market forces will ultimately drive solutions.
Guest Jordan Hess, Legislative Affairs Director at Washington City,
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-hess-44b23527/
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[00:00:00] Intro.
[00:05:49] Jordan's Guatemalan Volcano Adventure.
[00:15:25] Washington City's Legislative Affairs Position.
[00:26:23] Utah Flag Bill and Culture War Legislation.
[00:35:13] Short-Term Rental Enforcement Changes.
[00:46:43] Parking Requirements and Housing Affordability.
[00:54:54] New Voting Laws and Election Integrity.
[01:02:11] The "Beehive Development Agency" Controversy.
[01:10:58] Market Solutions vs Government Intervention.
#podcast #waterconservation #affordablehousing #afforable #southernutah #435podcast #stgeorgeutah #utahpolitics #utahrealestate #utahrealestate #utahentrepreneur
But there's a reason why the government is supposed to act slowly, right, like we don't want to knee-jerk react a nuclear power plant. We don't want to decide that, hey, we're going to put a nuclear power plant in Warner Valley in two weeks, right, that should be a decision that should be made over a long period of time.
Speaker 2:From the Blue Form Media Studios. This is the 435 Podcast the pulse of Southern Utah. If you're looking for a nice cup of coffee and you're in downtown St George, fs Coffee Co that's where you're going to want to stop. It's right there on the corner of Tabernacle and Main Street in downtown St George. So if you've got a bicycle, ride it on down there and grab a drip coffee and tell them the 435 guys sent you. Write it on down there and grab a drip coffee and tell them the 435 guys sent you. Dude, you went to guatemala and you hiked a volcano last week, last week or you hiked a mountain next to a volcano were they both volcanoes.
Speaker 1:You're all over the world. You're all over, like, from florida to guatemala.
Speaker 2:You're all over. I've asked you it was harder to get you on this podcast than it was a governor. I had to try harder. I had to try harder to get you on this podcast than it was a governor I had to try harder I had to try harder to get you on this podcast the governor himself. That's how popular jordan is. You're busy guy, though not not necessarily popular, but you're just. You got a lot going on. You like staying busy? I do, yeah, so you you went to. Why guatemala?
Speaker 3:um last year I I went to cotopaxi in ecuador and not the store, not the clothing brand. The actual volcano.
Speaker 2:The actual.
Speaker 3:The national park Okay, and that volcano's about 16,000 feet. Sheesh and I got super ill Like altitude sickness Like three quarters of the way up. Dizzy threw up Ugh, and so I wanted to hike a volcano, um, but I found one that would kind of test my limits but be doable and so um akatanango volcano in in guatemala is about 13 200 feet.
Speaker 3:Okay, and it was a two-day hike. I hiked up to base camp on Saturday, watched the sunset, took some cool night photos and then got up at 3.45 am Sunday morning to finish the hike, to be at the summit for the sunrise. And it was tough. It was like there were people puking along the trail and none of us slept well at base camp. So physically drained, mentally drained, and I just kept telling myself okay, you can do it, Five more minutes, Five more. Okay, now, five more, five more. And then I found myself at the top for the sunrise and it was like the coolest view and the neighboring volcano was very active and so I actually got a shot of some lava coming out of the neighboring volcano.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. Yeah, there was a picture you took where they're like the cloud cover was like covering the town below and then, like the, the volcano was sitting above it. I'm like, dude, this is a sweet photo, it was fun it was just a solo trip.
Speaker 3:I it's interesting because international travel these days is so different because of what's happening in the us politically and uh. So it was a solo trip. But I I hired a guy at an expedition group and I was put with about a dozen other people two women from the netherlands, two dutch women, a couple from canada, an indian man who married a polish woman. Um, but the first question they I was the only american like in the in this group. First question what do you think of trump? I'm like I have to hike with these people for the next two days you're like, how should I answer this question?
Speaker 3:but I don't shy away from my political views, so I told him I was like I voted for him. No one should be surprised by what he's doing, because he's doing what he said he would do. He said he would close the border. He said he would, you know, like, shake things up internationally as far as foreign policy. He said he was going to impose tariffs. These are all things he said he would do, and he's actually doing them. And people voted for that. Yeah, the majority of the american people voted. Every swing state voted for that. And uh, the two the two dutch women didn't talk to me the whole two days, so funny.
Speaker 3:They were not happy about that which is interesting.
Speaker 2:I I saw, uh, there was like a I can't trust polls, but the poll was basically like identifying demographics like white uneducated men like no college degree, white college degree white women no degree and with a degree. It was crazy Like 56% have like a horrible negative opinion of basically everybody who's running the government right now. But then it's just such a weird polarization in these different sex and race categories and the polls also stated a separate poll was about how white Americans were the only ones that voted basically the same in 2016 as they did in 2024. But all of the minority groups all swapped their vote for Trump, which is really interesting to me for Kamala Harris being, you know, mixed race female. All these things it's wild.
Speaker 3:Especially those border counties, all those counties in Texas along the border. Trump swung those counties, some of them swung 70% to Republican this past year to republican.
Speaker 2:That's so crazy this past year. So so your, your role, you're, uh, you backpack the world and you travel the world, but you work for washington city. Is is basically a governmental liaison to the state, is that kind of the way to describe it?
Speaker 3:so legislative affairs director. Okay, um, some of my roles. Yeah, I'm a liaison. It hasn't always been your role, right, like no it's uh, you started with the city it's a new, it's actually a brand new position um, that's when you know you made it.
Speaker 2:When somebody just makes up a job for you like you're so good that they're like. You know we don't really have a job for you, but let's give you this title and we're gonna create a job for you, because we don't want you to go anywhere yeah, well, for the longest time, um, everyone just kind of defers to or deferred to St George to handle everything for Southern Utah.
Speaker 3:But our community is growing so much. Washington City especially continues to grow at an alarming pace.
Speaker 2:In a lot of different ways too. Growth doesn't just mean population. Growth means economically Yep, yep.
Speaker 3:Economically yep yep, and so they felt value in creating this position so that we would have a voice representing Washington City to the legislature, because it kind of operated as a suburb of St George.
Speaker 2:Basically it was just a suburb of St George and that from a financial perspective, but also from you know you have all these residents that all have opinions and if you just defer to whatever St George doing, that's not necessarily what your constituency wants. It's like 38,000 residents or something like that.
Speaker 1:Permanent residents. Does St George have a similar role? Yeah, sean Guzman. Oh, yeah, sean, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah yeah. Government affairs director Similar roles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, we've had sean on too yeah he's a good dude. Yeah, so you did that. What'd you do?
Speaker 3:before that I was at the chamber of commerce. Okay, I was vice president of of policy at the chamber and then spent the first seven years of my career in washington dc working on capitol hill.
Speaker 1:Did you know? Me and jordan interned at the state legislature at the same time. At college I did know that.
Speaker 2:I did know that yeah 2011.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you were with.
Speaker 1:Margaret Thatcher, margaret Thatcher.
Speaker 3:Margaret Thatcher Dayton. Margaret Thatcher Dayton. Margaret Thatcher's right, yeah, margaret Dayton, but she did call herself the Iron.
Speaker 2:Lady of Utah Told you oh man, that's why I thought, thatcher, that's a bold thing to like. Just take that and then use it yourself, cause you're trying to fill in the shoes of this woman.
Speaker 1:That's like she was the Senate president at the time the rules chair, rules chair, that's right.
Speaker 3:Cool, but she was the only Republican woman in the Senate until, I think, deidre Henderson came along.
Speaker 2:Ah, you could be iron. You could be iron if you're that way. Yeah, she, she, she backed it up.
Speaker 3:I don't know enough about like she was tough as nails. Yeah, tough as nails.
Speaker 2:Super tough.
Speaker 3:You couldn't get anything past her.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's good, that's good. We need more people like that in the world.
Speaker 1:And then, while we were there, the Becky.
Speaker 2:The house Lockhart.
Speaker 1:Lockhart yeah, she was Speaker. She was a speaker, yeah.
Speaker 2:That's crazy. So you guys have a long history, which is still surprising why it took so long to get you on the podcast. But, however, we will keep moving.
Speaker 1:I mean we reconnected, I think, like here, soon, yeah, soon after you were with the chamber.
Speaker 2:Soon after, yeah, um, yeah so, and then you ran for district two, the congressional seat and I thought you were gonna win.
Speaker 2:Did you get the best? You had the best speech in the debates. I honestly thought you were. I was like man, if I listen to all these people lined up, uh, celeste did a pretty good job in that debate, but I thought by far I was like dude jordan's got this like, but it's, it's a political thing, right, it's who you know and all these other things that go along. It was about 20 votes that made the difference. It's crazy in that race, isn't it so crazy? Yeah, so, um, now you're running for the state central committee for the republican party. Are you on it now already?
Speaker 3:No, I was on it because I was vice chairman of the Utah Republican party Right had to resign that position to run for CD two. Yeah, and in so resigning I also lost my seat on the sec. So I have not been on it for the last three years, but I'm running to get back on it. Um, for a number of reasons. Mostly, a lot of people lose sight of what the actual role of the sec is. Some like to think they're a legislative body, but they're not like. That is not the sec's role. We don't create legislation or policy right. We govern the party. Our goal is to get republicans elected.
Speaker 2:It's organ, it's an organizing like mechanism right it's an organizing body.
Speaker 2:So it's how do we get more republicans out to vote? How do we get more people engaged in the caucus system? Right, because it's not. The signature system is now outside really the secs, scc's scope right, exactly, and so, um, it's holding on to that, because I know the the the current trajectory is. We want to hold on to that caucus. I've gone back and forth on my opinions as to is it just broken because it has a signature gathering and the caucus, but at the same time, I think you did the best job describing it. It's like it's the combination of the two that actually helps really put forth the best candidates. Right, it's the combination of two actually kind of helps getting the best candidates, because if you don't have the money, you can still make it through the caucus. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:And I've always been a supporter and defender of the caucus system. I mean, we wouldn't have Mike Lee in DC without the caucus system, yeah, and I think that he's been a conservative champion for not only just the state of Utah but for the country as a whole.
Speaker 2:So if you're worried about in Utah this is something I was thinking about If you're in Utah you know it's a Republican dominated state governance. If there's a rhino right, the Republican in name only, the only way to flush out whether someone's just saying they're a Republican and actually being a Republican is having that caucus system, because if you put your name on a signature box and then run as a Republican, you're a Republican right, right, and nobody's going to know the difference. You know what I mean, and so that's where it's a touchy situation. I think it's. It makes it very difficult for the Republican party to operate. Um and as time goes on, the democratic party continues to build coalitions and gain seats and and all those things. Did they gain seats in this last election or no?
Speaker 3:they just hold here in Utah. Yeah, we held, we held Yep, so he didn't. They didn't lose any. They didn't, we won, so they didn't lose any. We picked up one in Weber, so it was a wash. Yeah. But the caucus system only works if delegates do their job. Yeah, if they have this preconceived idea of different candidates and they don't do their research and they don't ask the tough questions, that's where the system doesn't work. But if every delegate took their responsibility to vet all candidates and do the research that they've pledged they're going to do, it would be such a good system.
Speaker 2:And I think that's true. And I also think, after going through the caucus system for the first time I was elected vice chair that the caucus night it seemed like nobody really knew what was going on. That was sitting in the room to start, but even the organizer because we were a new precinct in Ivins, brand new precinct it was almost like, okay, who wants to do it? And then everybody raised their hands like all right, you're them Right. There wasn't like a whole lot of vetting for the delegates. Now, that's not true of every precinct. There's a lot of precincts. It's actually really competitive in order to get those seats. Um, but figuring out ways to um educate and pour um a little bit more structure, a little bit more, have a higher expectation level for that caucus night, I think there should be some focus in on that. I don't know how to do that, but that's kind of what the sec is kind of zone to do. Do you guys feel like there there should be some additional um improvements in the caucus system, like?
Speaker 3:yeah, there has to be to be an entire education campaign, especially because we see so many move-ins from out of state and they're not used to it.
Speaker 3:And a lot of them showed up and they're like oh, I thought I was just coming to like vote in a primary tonight. I didn't know we were doing all this other stuff electing delegates, and you know, and so we need to educate other stuff electing delegates, and you know, and so we need to educate. One thing that I think Lisa, the current chairman of our chairwoman of our local party, has done well is these caucus boot camps in high schools to teach graduating seniors what it means to go to caucus and elect delegates and that kind of representative style of government. We need to do that on a larger scale, because it's not just the high school kids we need to teach, but it's, it's almost like you're a migrant orientation.
Speaker 2:It's like if you're coming, here, from another state where there's like 792 citizens um, residents of precinct seven and ivans, like 792 voting, voting, uh, republicans and there was only like 70 that had lived here before 2020. Wow, isn't that crazy. Wow, so they had registered, like registered as a republican. Out of the 792, there was less than 100 of them had been republicans in utah before 2020. That's so crazy. How many showed up to caucus night? Like 15, no, no, there was probably like 30 in the room. Yeah, there's probably like 30, which I mean, even that I'm it's, it's good to see that kind of a turnout. At least the room was full, right, it didn't feel like there was nobody that showed up. Yeah, but you look at the percentage of what the percentage of somebody coming from out of the area, not knowing anything about
Speaker 2:the caucus, because no states do this right and most of them come from California or other parts of the West Coast. They don't know what the caucus is. So, yeah, that education. It's like how do we orient people coming from other states to the system that we do? But it all ends up turning into money. Right, but the money needs to go towards getting the candidates elected. So it's kind of like well, towards getting the candidates elected. So it's kind of like, well, we need the candidates elected. That's where we're going to allot the money in yeah, there we go all right, so let's get into the legislation.
Speaker 2:The legislative session for 2025's ended. Uh, we're recording this on the 20th, uh, first day of spring, spring equinox, my son's birthday today. Uh, the governor has till tomorrow to sign. That's the expiration to veto or sign any of the bills. He signed a lot of them. He hasn't signed all of them. I think in the state of Utah about 55 to 65% of the bills actually get enacted, which is on the higher end across the country. I was looking at a couple of states Minnesota has 0.37% of their bills get enacted.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Isn't that crazy. Are they a full-time legislature.
Speaker 1:Let's find out.
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:So out of 100 bills, call it four of them get enacted.
Speaker 2:Minnesota just passed 0.37% of the bills in 2024. Oh, this is 2024. And that's only 41 bills out of 10,947 that were introduced and carried over from the 2024 legislative, carried over into the 24 legislative session. On closing day of the session, democratic farmer labor party pushed through a 1400 page omnibus package without debate, much to the chagrin of the republican lawmakers. It's just crazy to me that we have that. It's cool because we have these little the democratic system, right, the Republican system that we have, the Republic system that we have. We have all these different ways of passing bills throughout. Every state's a little bit different. But what'd you find?
Speaker 1:So Alaska, california, hawaii, illinois, massachusetts, michigan, new York, ohio, Pennsylvania, wisconsin are all full-time legislatures, so Minnesota's not.
Speaker 2:But yeah, 10,000 bills. I think there was like a my job is hard.
Speaker 3:tracking 800 bills, I could not imagine tracking 10,000 bills.
Speaker 1:Isn't that crazy. I think there's a bunch of states that have like a three-month or six-month session, though, and that might be.
Speaker 2:But the fact that only 41 of the bills were enacted is insane to me. But that's not even uh. Illinois 0.5%, ohio 0.5%, missouri 0.9%, new York 0.9%. It's just, that's just crazy. And then Arkansas pass they enact 98% and Utah's third on the list, colorado was second. Uh, utah last, in 2024, had 62% of their their bills. But historically it's like between 55 and 62% of the bills are enacted. Um, so we have 500, what was it? 500 plus bills that were passed, 582 bills passed and we're going to cover really the ones that cover Southern Utah, at least from my perspective that I found uh, that really impacts Southern Utah. There's lots of different bills. There's been some really some bangers that have gotten a lot of attention, well, and there's some that are so small like SB two.
Speaker 1:30 defines Utah a, utah being spelled U T A H N, not U T A H A N, and it's like, do we really need a law defining that? It's almost just kind of like a formality you know what is that for?
Speaker 2:like what do you, what can you when you see these bills come up like this? What is that?
Speaker 1:well it says here. Dan mckay said the move was more for national news outlets, which you know. I guess all publicity is good publicity, right, I don't know it's ridiculous, but like that's an actual law now, right, yeah, it's I think it's officially part of, like the utah style guide now oh, yeah, that we're spelled.
Speaker 3:We spell it this way it's a style guide.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, this is like when I was making fun of celeste for her, like like many named like bills that she passed, I was giving her crap about. I was like the, the, you know, patriot act it's like. Well, it has nothing to do with what the bill says, you're just it's just gaslighting on what it actually is it's gimmicky the rebrand of the flag. It just gets everybody all fired up about nothing right the utah flag man.
Speaker 1:People get fired up about that that's still a.
Speaker 2:That's still a litmus test I know, man, there's still, there's a, there's a uh a business that I'm not gonna name here. They fly the, the old utah flag, and they're just gonna fly it.
Speaker 1:They're not gonna ever change the to the you know, at the end of the day there's really nothing wrong with it, but like I don't know.
Speaker 2:But then it goes back to the flags like this is another one of the bills that was plat that was passed this ban on on uh flag displays in public, in classroom, schools and government buildings. But isn't it specific for?
Speaker 3:like transgender type it allows it allows you to fly the American flag, the state flag, any military flag, and then like the flag of your city or town or your veterans POW flags, but anything other than that. So, yeah, it's not going to allow a rainbow flag, but it's also not going to allow someone to put up a Trump flag in their classroom, so it just kind of narrows which flags are allowed, which isn't the way that it's perceived in the news, right?
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and that's that. Thing is like we put up these laws that gain media attention and then obfuscate all the other stuff that's going on. Is that purposeful? Do you think that the lawmakers are purposefully doing that, or is it like I want to get my name on something, so this is what I'm going to do?
Speaker 3:I think there are different types of legislators. Some of them are focused on very narrow fiscal issues and some are focused on education. And then there are some that they just love these kind of culture, war, social issues, because that's what fires up the base, that's what, like you said, gives them some notoriety among the base, and they kind of become these hero figures of the party right. You see it at the national level too. You see some of the party right. You see it at the national level too. You see some of the bills that people like marjorie taylor green run right or lauren bobert, um it's. It gets them a lot of attention. But to some of these legislators, those are important issues. Um, I, I know trevor lee very well, the sponsor of the flag bill. He's very sincere and saying well, shouldn't the american flag encompass all of us?
Speaker 3:yeah liberty and justice for all. Why do we need separate flags for every little group, right, right and so?
Speaker 2:if the flag display restriction makes sense to me, especially in government buildings. You know public areas, you know what I mean it's like. If you want to, uh, privately display your um, your own beliefs, that's fine. That's fine, unless you live in an hoa, then you can't unless you live in an hoa, you can't fly yeah, you can't fly the american flag in some hoa's. You can't fly any flags yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you fly a flag in sun river man, they're gonna pull up to your driveway and rip that thing down yeah, so it.
Speaker 2:I mean it fires, fires people up, I think this one, if clearly it passed, do you think that the governor's gonna sign this one?
Speaker 3:yes, he has indicated that he will. He hasn't to my knowledge he hasn't yet, but he had indicated shortly after it passed that he intended to sign it now. He's gotten a lot of pressure since then yeah um, there are. There are mayors flying rainbow flags a lot of his offices.
Speaker 2:a lot of his base comes from the democratic and liberal party, a lot of it. And even when I had him on the podcast he he talks about um, not spending enough time building a coalition from the right and the right. He was trying to bring the left and the right together, which is kind of an interesting strategy. But if you're not going to win a caucus and you're going to put it beyond signatures, it kind of makes sense. He's like well, I'm going to be a governor for all, I'm going to try to blend from the left and the right. You know, let's say, 30%, 27% to 30% of the population of Utah is left-leaning. So he's going to really try to get that coalition together. But he said he hasn't done a good enough job building the bridge from the right and the right, which I haven't seen any progress on so far. I mean, it's still early in this four-year term, but this could be one where, if you don't sign this, one could just continue to drive that wedge, you know, within that party well, one.
Speaker 3:One of the bills that was probably a hard bill to sign which he did, and I give him full credit for this was the union bill that prohibits collective bargaining for public unit unions. Um, he had firefighters and teachers and police and all these different unions pressuring him not to sign it, and he signed it. He signed it because it was the right thing to do, and now we've seen that they've launched a referendum, they're collecting signatures to overturn this law, and so it'll be interesting to see if they're successful in getting it.
Speaker 2:The referendum's tough. In Utah it is, it's not easy to do here?
Speaker 3:It's not, and the most recent example of them succeeding was on the food tax right, where they wanted to tax groceries and they got enough signatures and rather than the legislature having that on the ballot and getting shot down, they just repealed it in a special session on their own so they wouldn't have to go to the ballot, yeah, and that's.
Speaker 2:And that's the other thing too is that even if, like in california, you do a referendum, the legislator can't, the legislative uh body can't amend that later on. Right, let's say it passes the no, no, no elected official can change that, and that's that's a crazy thing in california is that if they make a mistake on that referendum, you're stuck with that. There's no mechanism other than another referendum to get it to go away, and that can take 8, 10, 12, 15 years for the consequences to kind of pan out, which they've had multiple times where, like, oh man, we probably shouldn't have done that and now they're stuck with it. Where in Utah, they could pass a referendum and then the legislature in the next session could come in and change it again. Right, they could pass a referendum and then the legislature in the next session could come in and change it again. Right, and so it's.
Speaker 2:The referendum is is a it's a political freedom of speech thing. It's like we want to make this known, that this is important to us, and then it might change some legislators like uh minds. But yeah, that's a tough one because I can, I can see some value in collective bargaining, um, for the individual laborer but, at the same time, does that. Is it going to hurt the system, right? Is it a? Is it something that ends up degrading the system?
Speaker 2:as a whole slippery slope, it's a slippery slope, and these are public unions so they're utilizing taxpayer dollars to then negotiate their public salaries, right right, so yeah, and there has to be a line there, I think, when it comes to public sector so a couple of the other bills um, another, another big one.
Speaker 2:We talked about the flag one first. I didn't really want to dig into that one too much, but the municipal and county zoning amendments. This is, uh, hp 256 by our own neil walter. Um, this allows this is a bill that didn't pass because it was something similar. They tried to get this passed a couple of years ago right, and basically, if you're a short-term rental individual and you're illegally outside of the city ordinances or outside the ordinance of the HOA or anywhere, the city couldn't really prosecute. It was a huge hurdle, jeff, you have an example of this. Cities couldn't really prosecute there. It was a huge hurdle, jeff, you have an example of this. But this allows the the state to enforce their zoning laws specifically with short-term rentals in mind.
Speaker 3:Right, yeah, so prior to this, so back in 2017, they passed a bill that included what's called the not well language. It prohibited a city or municipality from using an online listing to prove that someone was operating illegally. So, like if I posted on Airbnb or VRBO, the city could not search or use that online listing.
Speaker 2:This bill Because advertising isn't proof of legal like that.
Speaker 3:you've done anything illegal Just because you're advertising it doesn't mean you've done anything wrong, and this bill now allows the cities to use those websites To at least start collecting the information.
Speaker 2:and then they still need an additional. It doesn't ban it on the listings, but it does say that they can request that Airbnb take that listing off right. Yes, they can then send it in saying, hey, this short-term rental is violating city zoning and that they need to remove it right.
Speaker 1:The first thing I thought of was somebody at each city is going to be tasked with doing that.
Speaker 2:They're going to get more work and they're going to be the ones to have to call airbnb and say, hey, we got five more listings here well, somebody's already doing it, because somebody's calling and saying, hey, I'm pretty sure my neighbor's airbnb and they're sorry, we can't do anything about it. So there's that person's still doing it, they just actually now they're now.
Speaker 1:I just thought it was funny. Like you know, in business it's always, like you know, your boss comes and tells you hey, I'm gonna give you more money or give you more work, but I'm not gonna pay any more money, right so no, it's, it's like it's a step in the right direction, especially on the affordable housing front, because some estimates show there are thousands, couple thousand, illegally operating in was County alone.
Speaker 3:If they can't come into compliance because they're not in the correct overnight zone or they can't get a business license etc. Those properties then enter the long-term housing market and that frees up a lot of inventory.
Speaker 2:Especially statewide, like Summit County, washington County, our area in particular. It's important. I don't know if it's going to have a huge meaningful impact on supply, but it's definitely going to eliminate future violations of this in the future. And it's a quality of life issue. Nobody who has a VRBO next door, who's had, you know, a bus full of you know softball players or soccer players you know, move into their neighborhood for a weekend. They don't like it. It's a quality of life issue. They bought that house specifically. Most people are like I want to make sure this is not in a short-term rental, or the other question is is this in a short-term rental area? Right? And so I think it's going to help a little bit. I don't know if it's super meaningful, but to Neil's credit, this is something especially in Santa Clara Ivins, his district 74, that people care about this a lot.
Speaker 1:So credit to Neil for listening to the people. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And there might be to your point too, jordan entering the long-term market. There might be some that are currently operating as illegal. You know, quote unquote illegal nightly rentals where the owner is like, oh, I'm not going to mess with this, I'm just going to sell the house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's definitely going to be an initial impact on supply. Which people if you don't know? Supply is at a 10 year high. I went back to the data. It's been 10 years since we had over 1,700 homes active.
Speaker 2:Yeah, real estate plug. It's been over a decade since we had over 1,700 homes listed on the MLS. We're pushing into a buyer's market, so there's going to be continued downward pressure on pricing. We're approaching a buyer's market, so these little tweaks like this legislation here, it's going to improve the affordability in Washington County for sure. Parking requirements Parking requirements.
Speaker 1:I mean, it kind of goes on the same way.
Speaker 2:I'm curious to see what's Washington City's view on this. Municipal prohibits municipalities from requiring garages or specific parking minimums for affordable owner-occupied single-family homes aiming to cut construction costs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it allows. The bill also bars municipalities from requiring a garage for dwellings that are single-family, owner-occupied affordable housing.
Speaker 3:So you don't, you can build carports now, and we're totally supportive of that, especially our mayor. He's kind of been pounding the pulpit on this issue for a couple of years now where he said why can't we go back to the days where we built homes with carports, these starter homes, when it was a true starter home? Right Today, our starter home, I think, has gotten a little bigger, more expensive, a little higher grade. Oh yeah, he often references the house that he grew up in with a carport and six people in a three-bedroom, one-bath home, right.
Speaker 1:That was my house growing up Carport, 1,200 square feet. We had two bathrooms.
Speaker 2:Well, and if you look down the road, let's say this isn't an issue, let's say this doesn't get passed right, and we continue to build garages. We're still going to pack people into those homes, they're still. The parking is still going to be an issue because supply isn't getting relieved Right. And so the further and further we go without making some of these policy changes, we still end up in a situation where you have two, three families living in a three bed, two bath house. Right, I've seen it in southern california. Like, whether you pass this or you don't, you still get the this result of like, well, we want to, we don't want people parking on the street. Well, they're gonna eventually park on the street. Just because you made them have a garage doesn't mean you're gonna keep them from parking on the street.
Speaker 1:Part of that, too, is um. I would love to see some data on folks that use that park in their garage every day or every night, I think. I think a lot of people use their garages for storage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I use my garage. I park in my driveway, but I use my garage as the gym and all kinds of stuff. Right, my boy's playing it. It's an extra living room.
Speaker 3:Well, and down here, everyone has a side-by-side or a boat in their garage right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, so this one makes sense. I think this is actually going to be really good for redevelopment because you have a lot of these smaller homes. Ivan, specifically you're required to have a two car garage. It's in the city code, which not every city has this code. In Southern Utah, st George doesn't have a garage requirement. But the other part of this is specific parking minimums for affordable owner occupied single family homes.
Speaker 2:This gives a new design for developers to create in in smaller land parcels, like I think of the one downtown that we were working on. That was kind of in in a weird puzzle, cause there's, he only owned like three quarters of the block, right, not the whole thing. But it allows for better designs of higher density and redevelopment areas where, where we need the density, we need the density to happen in older areas that have commercial, that have schools, that have fire, that have all the infrastructure already there. And so you get an old home in downtown St George or downtown Washington and you're like, hey, we need to make this a little bit more dense. Now, if there's no parking minimum, you're like I can add actually another room instead of that garage, and now we increase that density naturally. So I think this is a really good one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're probably aware that we're about to release a RFQ for our downtown.
Speaker 1:I was going to ask you about that. I talked to.
Speaker 3:Rusty Rusty Hughes, uh, two weeks ago on on the podcast about six acres of city owned property right in our, the heart of our downtown, at main street and telegraph. And one of the things we were talking about just last night with the mayor and some council members was, you know, decreasing parking requirements and decreasing setback requirements and increasing some density, because we want it to be a place where people can gather, we want it to be a place that pencils and in order for it to pencil it will have a housing component, right so. But we want it to be commercial mixed use, with some retail, some dining, some housing gathering places for community festivals, et cetera. But we're going to have to look at like what does parking look like, what does setbacks look like, what does the density look like? And we're excited we're going to release it. I think April 2nd is when we'll officially release the RFQ. It'll be open for, I think, four or five months.
Speaker 2:I think I like these ideas. I like these, especially like what St George has done with the boulevard. They've gone one direction over a few decades and then they change, they go to another direction and then they're kind of shifting. More density, more of this, this same idea.
Speaker 2:One of the things I think, uh, city, local cities, especially in smaller towns, is that we, we put too much emphasis on the car where the, the demographic coming up, that's, that's moving up, right, whether it's the, the Gen Z or Gen Alpha, I think you're going to see that, the reliance on a car, if we look at self-driving, uh, the reduction of cars on the on the road, we're going to see less and less cars on the road. So, if we put all this infrastructure in and with parking in mind and we don't shift, our mind is like no, culturally, we ride bikes here, right, it's sunny, you know, 290 days out of the year, or whatever, it is right. So it's like, how do we put less emphasis on that traffic? Because it's so touchy though, because you go to Green Springs and you're like, I'm sick of the traffic. We were complaining about traffic just yesterday, just laughing about it.
Speaker 2:But I think, forward thinking and saying okay in the next generations to come, as we develop this, this is what we get get. Are we going to put a lot of focus on the cars or say, as a city, we don't want cars around here, like, get on your bike, walk down here. We've set it up specifically so we can be walkable and kind of? I hope they kind of keep come from that perspective rather than the old idea of, like, we need a carriage to be able to make a u-turn in the middle of the street, right wide streets. You know what I mean. So it'll be interesting to see how it's tough as a city council to make those decisions because the voting population doesn't want it.
Speaker 3:Speaking of cars, when, when you look at what projects the legislature funds right through their appropriations process, not many people, I think, caught that they. They appropriated millions of dollars for this air taxi. Yeah, I saw that. Oh, I saw that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah that was in the traffic. Uh, that was like buried a little bit in that because it was an omnibus.
Speaker 2:They call it omnibus the like the bill of bills or yeah, sp195, so it was uh, I can't remember what it was exactly called, but it was transportation bill, right. And in that I saw that air taxi thing. I was like, oh, that's really interesting. And specifically for air ambulances, oh, I didn't realize that was that was in. There was air ambulances. Because if we think of, okay, well, what's in that next generation, I mean thinking of uh, kayenta, right the distance, like because I'm on 91, so I hear. Whenever I hear sirens, I'm like I'm gonna say a quick prayer because somebody's not not well in Kayenta right now. Right, yeah, but it's 30 minutes as fast as you can go to get to the hospital.
Speaker 2:So having an air taxi to run out and pick somebody up, man, that's totally a game changer.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, tech Ridge has been talking about some of that stuff incorporating that to the airport and some of that stuff.
Speaker 2:And we have all these plateaus in southern Utah too to to where we're like perfect landing, it's perfect, it's perfect. All the electric, uh, vertical takeoff and landing stuff. I hope. I hope the cities can get a little bit forward. Thinking is dude.
Speaker 1:I could put one on, uh, behind my house on top of the bluff, just boom right over to work, isn't it city land?
Speaker 2:uh city land actually is it city land better? Yeah, better get the bluff just elevator down. Yeah easy, easy cheap stairs, you have to use it. The only catch is you have to walk up the stairs to get to the helifad I'm not interested anymore, never mind, not after doing the dragon tail classic. We race the dragon tail. I want everybody, just so everybody knows, I beat jeff up the dragon tail, my legs shut down stair prop.
Speaker 1:There's 333 stairs. It was probably stair 300.
Speaker 2:It done legs gassed, gassed man, okay, we're gonna keep running uh parking requirements. That was a good one. Um, uh housing, until uh housing. Attainability. Amendments to me. This one I I'm trying to like figure out. What does it exactly do? I'm not quite sure what's the bill number? This is uh 360.
Speaker 3:This is the big housing.
Speaker 2:This one was supposed to fit into the governor's. I'm gonna we're gonna build 36 100 or 36 000 homes by 2035, or something like that. What was it? Something like that 35,000 starter homes by 2030 is what his goal was. So do you know any more about that? He was giving grants to first-time homebuyers, things like that. I don't.
Speaker 3:I do know that it restructured some of the financing One of the bills that I paid a lot of attention to was 368. And that one changed some of the plan reviews at the city level so that they can get these plans approved quicker, so there aren't bottlenecks in the municipalities. Is that for residential? For residential? Yeah, for residential, yeah, residential. And then it also allows, if you build a house on lot 20 and you're building the exact same house on lot 28, you can approve both of those plans together rather than one at a time, to also speed things up. Interesting, yeah.
Speaker 2:Interesting. Yeah, it's almost like what if you don't know? I guess in the initial stages of planning you're going to kind of know what house the developer does, but if the sometimes the developer's like, well, this house, this house and this house will fit on that lot. So I wonder if they could go and preemptively be like, hey, all three of these can they be approved at the same time too? But yeah, speed that process up, that'd be helpful. Yeah, I mean it cut out some time, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, if you think about a bigger development, so say you've got, you know, a couple streets Like DR Horton or something, yeah or yeah like an S&S, you know. Like I think about those ones over by the river where they've got like three or four streets, probably maybe 80 homes, you know, and they've got eight, nine, ten different floor plans.
Speaker 2:And they know exactly which floor plan is going to go on which lot. Yeah, I mean, that would save a lot of time. Yeah, that's true for sure. Yeah, that's a good one that one will help us, um, because I mean developers, times, money we have. This is another thing. We have thousands of homes that are platted, zoned, approved, ready to go, that are not coming out of the ground, tens of thousands in our county. Yeah, just yeah, it's an insane number of homes that you think there's a lot of building going on right now. It could be more, but there's a lot of other reasons why they're not getting built.
Speaker 2:And so how to? I mean to all those that don't want growth, you can stop listening. It's, it's just going to happen, right, the private land is going to get developed, period. And the story. I can see there's argument Do we annex more land? Do we allow SITLA to build If it's privately owned land right now, ready for development? The water is already allotted. Getting in the way of it is such a it's almost like trying to yell at the wind, right, there's no stopping it. So how do we just get the best version of that development that we can? Is is the most important part, but being able to speed up the process allows allows the money to flow and and houses to get built, so I think it's going to be important. Do you want to say anything else on that one?
Speaker 3:No, just um what I the struggle that we have is just looking at each of these different pieces of legislation is are they usurping local authority, local control? Yeah, I think streamlining is a good thing, as long as it doesn't take a local community's ability away from being able to design the community that their people want.
Speaker 2:That's a great point. Yeah, well, I mean that argument can be made about the parking thing. Yep, right, is it usurping the local authority to make those decisions? It kind of is, and then locally too.
Speaker 1:like, what kind of a public safety impact does that have? Right, Like, if we're talking, you know, downtown parking and stuff like that, there's for sure some public safety elements to that and you know if the state's like, yeah, do whatever you want and and they don't know the specifics of a corner lot on washington right off a telegraph.
Speaker 2:I mean it's gonna be difficult, yeah, it's gonna have an impact, but progress is what it does. It just keeps moving. Um, there was a bill. I can't. I can't remember what you were at on time. There's a lot of like really stuff like the Utah name laws, fluoride ban in public water was passed. Oh, the voter, the voting. Yeah, let's talk about that one. So tell me a little bit about the new voting rules and how that was changed in this last session.
Speaker 3:Yeah, hb 300, representative Burton, and I think Senator McKell ran that bill. Yeah, hb 300, representative Burton, and I think Senator McKell ran that bill. It was meant to kind of ease concerns on voter security, voter fraud, election integrity. It would have originally required you to show an ID if you vote by mail and drop your ballot in a drop box. That would have required county clerks and cities to have people sitting physically at those drop boxes all hours of the day to check those IDs right.
Speaker 3:So the bill changed throughout the session. I think it was amended a number of times and what it came down to is you can still vote by mail I think it's opt in, though I don't think you just automatically receive a ballot. You can still return that ballot through the mail, but now you have to include some sort of identifier, like the last four of your social or the last five digits of your driver license, so that when the County clerk gets that ballot they can check not only your signature but this second identifier. The other thing that I think is a good thing Utah, I don't know why, but we're notoriously famous for having our election results come in super late. Sometimes we don't know the outcome of an election for a week or 10 days.
Speaker 3:This bill now changes If your ballot is not in the county clerk's hand by 8 pm on election day, it will not be counted. Interesting, because we're kind of tired of having to wait a week or 10 days to get those election results. What happens is people will drop it in the mailbox at the very last second. Those of us who live down here. Our mail often has to go to Las Vegas and then back to Utah to be processed. So you might vote on election day and get it in the mailbox, but the county clerk's not going to get it for three, four, five days. So this this bill changes that that if it's not in the possession of the county clerk on election day, it won't be counted.
Speaker 2:So that I'm surprised they still allow it to go into the like any postal services hands, like it's. It just seems to me like the two options are you physically drop it in front of a mailbox, a drop box, or you go into the booth and you vote because as soon as you send it to the postman you lose, control you lose no matter what, no scanning and all this other, you lose complete control over that ballot you just eliminate absentee voting I mean, or do you have like an?
Speaker 1:earlier deadline for absentee voting maybe, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I didn't even think about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like if you know you got someone on an LDS mission or you know and they want to vote or military right and they want to vote in their local.
Speaker 2:This is a good point, so am I? So I have to sign up for them to send me a ballot. I have to sign up to get the ballot, see, I think, yeah. I guess that makes sense, because you could be sending out ballots to people that don't exist anymore, and then there's just a ballot floating around there.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, there's a gap there. So that's the. So what you're saying is there's some kind of secondary validation, is basically. What's changed is that you're not going to just get a ballot in the mail. You got to go online register.
Speaker 1:Make sure you get it, to get it sent to you. Well, that reminds me. I have a point my um, I've got a family member who they were um. Him and his wife were staying with my mom while they were building a house and, uh, they got ballots to my mom's house and they moved into their new house like in the same time frame and they got ballots at their new house. It's weird, they got two ballots. Yeah, this was utah county, not crazy, it was crazy. Well, I have a friend that I that's gotta happen a lot.
Speaker 2:I mean, if it happens, I have a friend that won't.
Speaker 3:I will not name because, steve, there's some legal stuff involved here but he, uh, he's not a us citizen. Um, he married one. But he followed a link on instagram, one of those like make sure you register to vote links that you know they plaster those all over social media to get people to register. And he registered through that link and a ballot shows up at his house every election. Now what, he is not a us citizen and, uh, he doesn't ever cast the ballot because he knows that's illegal. And he doesn't ever cast the ballot because he knows that's illegal and he doesn't want to get deported.
Speaker 2:Right, but think of how many that do that. And then if I could do that and I just say my name is Tom Jones and I get another ballot and we do that at scale, you could swing whole elections that way. That's crazy and I don't think there's widespread.
Speaker 3:I do that's not happening widespread.
Speaker 1:I do.
Speaker 2:Could? That's crazy and I don't think there's widespread.
Speaker 2:That's happening widespread I do, but it could be hundreds of thousands. It's enough to sway some of these. If you go back in history, though, if you, if you go back all the way 1817, like from the beginning, from the inception, ballot manipulation, voting manipulation, has been a cornerstone in the election process, always, so it's like the fact that it's it would no longer be a problem anymore. That's just bs to me. That's just bs to me, as the there's two parties that control there's. There's they have an equal, they got this opportunity to where, at one time or another, they have the control of the ability, and then, anytime you talk to a politician when you talk to, specifically, a politician about voting, they shut it down. They don't want to talk about it at all, they don't want to, they're not even interested. Oh, nope, never read that. Nope, they don't even want to know about it, because I think it's controlled. I think it's controlled. I think there is widespread.
Speaker 3:Well, I I actually testified in committee in support of HB 300, the original version, where it would have required you to show an ID. And the reason I just stated very simply. And the reason I just stated very simply I have to show an ID. When I get on an airplane, when I purchase a gun, when I walk into Costco, I have to show them my membership ID Exactly. Why should I not have to show an ID when I vote?
Speaker 2:It's racist when I cast a vote. It's racist, Jordan. Well, that's the only thing they can come up with, which is so ridiculous to me and I thought it was a great idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, if you want to vote by dropbox, yeah. Show up to the dropbox with your driver license and have someone check it to make sure that you are who you are yeah, why can't they just scan it?
Speaker 2:right? Why can't you just walk up, scan it, drop it? There's camera on it, done it's.
Speaker 3:I don't even think you need a person to me, there's sense to me.
Speaker 2:There's technology that can help, but they don't really want to do it. That's my thought. They don't really want to do it because they want to control it. What else? What's one that didn't pass? Because I know we're running low on time.
Speaker 1:I was going to say if you've got a hard stop on time, just cut us off.
Speaker 3:I'm glad didn't pass because it would have included residential as a permitted use in commercial zones. Okay.
Speaker 2:See, I like this because I was like, why wouldn't they just do that?
Speaker 3:I was just talking to Jeff about this and most of your city services with sales tax, not property tax. Why would you then want residential development in a commercial zone when your city relies on commercial sales tax to operate?
Speaker 2:How often does residential, I guess? I guess I just answered my own question. It's a good point. I didn't think about that angle. You know this might sound crazy, but I hate real estate agents and after being with myself for the last 10 years, I know the good ones from the bad ones. If you're thinking about buying, selling or investing in real estate here in Southern Utah, we want you to interview us for the job. Go to realestate435.com and give us a call. We promise you're going to love us. We have very little commercial. We promise you're going to love us. We have very little commercial. What about a mixed, like the commercial allows for, if commercial and residential are pegged at the same time? Because when I look at especially Washington city, I've looked at a bunch of different pieces of property and it's like just commercial doesn't pencil because it's so expensive. But if you can, if you can sprinkle in, you know, like apartments or condominiums or something on it as well, all of a sudden now, now that the spreadsheet makes sense, right, right, right.
Speaker 3:And this bill was was getting at like the single family homes in commercial zoning.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it's like well, the the value of the land typically in commercial, is so expensive that I think only residential wouldn't pencil either, though Right, so I guess I can see how it can really restrict some municipality from being able to continue to gather taxes that that really drives all of city services, because residential costs the city money, it doesn't make them any money, and really the property tax. You could raise property taxes a ton, but it's still it's not going to make yeah, the new.
Speaker 3:The new winco that's going in at the top of main street in washington will generate about a million dollars a year in sales tax.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the Harmons in Santa Clara. It basically doubled the city's revenue, just one business.
Speaker 3:But imagine if they had put 20 homes where that Harmons is. It's true, the property tax would have not, even compared to the sales tax Right.
Speaker 2:It would have cost the city probably a couple hundred thousand dollars a year, easy Yep and infrastructure costs so that's where you know, like these little bills, it seems like can we tweak them a little bit to see if we can continue to add a little bit of both, but that's, that's a good one. I can see that perspective. I didn't really look at it from that angle.
Speaker 3:A bill that I did, that I loved, that did not pass. Didn't pass for the second year in a row is one that our local Joseph E Lisson ran. That would allow a municipality to institute a third of a percent of a sales tax that would specifically pay for fire and EMS. When you look at Santa Clara-Ivans and the Hurricane Valley District, their districts are so big. Santa Clara-Ivans, they're providing service clear up 18 and clear out to the Nevada border.
Speaker 3:On the other side, hurricane Valley is going from New Harmony clear to Hilldale and especially over there, like 90% of the calls that the Springdale Fire Department gets are tourism related tourists. The tourists aren't paying for that system because tourists aren't paying property tax. By instituting a tiny little additional sales tax, all of a sudden, all of our millions of tourists that come here every year and spend money in our stores and our hotels, they're now paying for that fire and EMS service. It passed the House, it passed the Senate, but it had been amended in the House. So I had to go back to the Senate for the Senate to concur with that amendment and it literally was the bill they were about to concur to when the clock struck midnight and the session ended.
Speaker 3:Oh, dang, it was the bill that they were working on.
Speaker 2:So it was more about timing. It was all timing, all timing, yep, all timing, yep. All these bills that they got to negotiate in such a short amount of time, do you think, is there? I've always been curious about this TRT. So the room and tourism tax, the tourism and room tax, covers the entire state. Do you see an environment where the coalition of the five cities, washington County, couldn't levy a similar tax to that?
Speaker 1:to go towards something like this, rather than have to rely on the state to do it is have something like a trt only just at the local level yeah, it's like, for example, instead of adding that to like a sales tax, where you know citizens will also pay for that, like you know people that live in the area, you add that percentage, or whatever the math works out to be, to trt specific to washington county, then you're ensuring that the the tourists are paying for all of it, maybe the rule the revenue isn't big enough.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe, well, a bill did pass, I think it was hp 456. I want to say something around that number that restructures some of the trt statewide and it actually creates a brand new fund for fire and ems okay, where these fire districts can apply for grant funding and that would come out of that specific trt because I was talking to adam snow about this this was probably last year about how the trt I I appreciate.
Speaker 2:I appreciate what the function is, but they're so limited on what you can spend that money on.
Speaker 1:It's really constrained, yeah.
Speaker 2:And half of it is on marketing for more tourism, which is supposed to benefit the hotels and the restaurants that are having to foot this bill because now their ticket price has to go up and pass it on In Washington County.
Speaker 1:that's a lot of money.
Speaker 2:It's a lot of money. I mean second to Park City, Using that in a few other creative ways to help mitigate local impacts.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like letting the county have a little bit more flexibility with it. I think they should be able to put it into infrastructure.
Speaker 2:That's what I told them.
Speaker 3:Tourists a year on our roads does a lot of damage to our roads.
Speaker 2:Because that's what I was. That was the main thing, because they were talking about the new like I'm having a hard time with words today the trams and stuff right, the trams. And like public transportation, because public transportation is always a cost. There's no public transportation in the entire world that makes money. It always ends up having to be subsidized at the government level, so it's like if we know that's the case, how can we just build the best type of public transportation and figure out ways to generate revenue to it, and that's where I thought the TRT should have money be going towards, especially when it's tourism public transportation.
Speaker 2:When I backpacked Europe, I used all the public transportation. Right, like that's what I used, and I think a lot of people that would come here they'd get off the road if the public transportation was even if it wasn't necessarily super affordable, but just available but it's just not even available, and so I was trying to think of creative ways to do that. But fire and EMS infrastructure that makes a whole lot of sense to have it. Do you think that's going to be enough, though, or do you still think that kind of a tax is something they're going to eventually really push again for, maybe on the next session.
Speaker 3:Well, think that they um, I think they'll continue pushing for and hurricane valley even said that if this were to pass and they could institute this small percentage of the sales tax, that they would then go in and lower property tax in exchange.
Speaker 1:Oh, so that the tourists are bearing more of that burden than the local residents who actually live here full-time yeah, do you know what the economic or like, were there any studies done on what kind of dollar amount that would generate?
Speaker 3:Oh, it would if St George or Washington were to implement even a third of a percent, it would be millions of dollars a year.
Speaker 1:Well, I ask because, like, coming out of I worked in, I worked in like the diesel industry and the commercial trucking industry for a long time a fire truck is like a million dollars. Oh yeah, one fire truck yep, so you know if it's like if we're going to generate a million and a half dollars a year, it's like yeah well, I think the city of st george there was like a fire suppression type system that they had to.
Speaker 2:I can't remember, don't, don't. Yeah, maybe I shouldn't bring it up because I don't remember. It was like $30 million, something like that over the course of 10 years that all of a sudden the fire department was like oh, now we need this system. We didn't even, it just goes into the slush fund of like rainy day type stuff. We got to figure out a way to fund this, because this new fire suppression system now costs significantly more money and those things cities can't control that, those things cities can't control, that right, they can't control that. And then you have to you feel like you have to raise property taxes because it's the only way to get revenue.
Speaker 1:And then everybody's up in arms and is pissed at the city council when, really, when really it's like one of the at least in my opinion, one of the core functions of a local government is, you know, police and fire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know public safety right, exactly so um criminalizing destruction of records.
Speaker 1:Are there any bit? I guess you've already mentioned yeah, and you know public safety Right, exactly so Criminalizing destruction of records. Are there any? I guess you've already mentioned a couple, but are there any like? Is there one or two bills that like were super important to you in your job, whether it's Washington City, or just maybe a personal like?
Speaker 3:here's why I you know, here's why I loved this bill or hated this bill like here's why I, you know, here's why I loved this bill or hated this bill. Um, I really appreciated the one we talked about that, neil walter. Um, one of the issues that we run into is we have an occupancy you know limit in washington city. If you're gonna, if you're going to advertise for more than 10 people, you have to have like special, like sprinkler system you know for say yeah fire suppression, et cetera.
Speaker 3:We have homes that we we give them a occupancy license up to 10 people, and then we see them advertising for 25, 30 people. Well, that, then, is a safety risk right, and prior to this bill being passed, there's really nothing that we could have done about that interesting sienna hills.
Speaker 2:Sienna hills like the, the short-term rentals that, all those ivory homes, all that stuff over there behind grapevine crossing. You know those initially when, when, uh, that that occupancy limit thing passed, there was a big push on, a bunch of sellers sold initially, but then they all ended up continuing on. They just sold to a new person and then they didn't care about the rule because it's like, oh, they're not being enforced. So then now back to the same issue. Right, you have all these houses that the liability is huge.
Speaker 1:Yeah, imagine the national story If there was a fire at one of these places and there's, you know, 24 people staying in one place and there's no fire suppression system and they can't get out of the house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Just there's just there's. There's a lot of bad things and there's so many other regulations on the commercial side of things that basically short-term rentals are mini boutique hotels and if the city can't enforce those, it's just crazy to me that that this, this, allows for some kind of enforcement mechanism. So we'll see. We'll see what what it does to the short-term rental market. It's taken a beating right now Everybody. If you're looking for short-term rentals in St George, I'd probably not buy right now.
Speaker 2:And if you've got a good deal on one, you probably want to hold on to it, unless it's in Washington City. Maybe you want to sell it Just kidding.
Speaker 3:Another thing that will impact our county is Walt Brooks ran a bill that would change the county classification levels. Currently we're a level two county, a class two county, which means we're treated the same way as.
Speaker 3:Utah County. We're very different. Population density, you name it, we're very way as Utah County. We're very different. Population density you name it, we're very different from Utah County. So his bill actually changed the classification system so we're now going to move back to be a third class county. So and what does that mean? That allows us to apply and receive more of, like the rural grant type programs, Because if you get outside of St George and Washington, we're a very rural county. I mean, even Hurricane feels rural right.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So, but at the same time we're treated like we're Utah County or Davis County, and the fact is we're not. And so he ran this bill just to change the threshold. I think currently anything above 200 000 people is is a second class. I think this changed that to like 230 000 people, so it gives us a couple extra years to to plan and prepare to become a second class county and so.
Speaker 2:So, like I guess, is there one specific thing. It's like that we don't get the uh, rural grants like, because we still get, like rural housing opportunities basically in every city outside of saint george. Saint george city is the only one that can't get utah housing and rural housing. You know loans, things like that, but what, what is there like a specific thing that, like this, is really handcuffing us?
Speaker 3:Well, there's a handful. One example is some. We were talking about fire and EMS. There are fire and EMS state grants available to municipalities and counties of the third through sixth class Got it.
Speaker 2:So that's one where we lose out because we're a second class, although we're barely we're still a very rural county, yeah, and we could use some of that state grant funding we don't have any help, like there's no, there's no one, there's no one to protect us exactly. We're surrounded by sixth class counties right, we are, we are and so, and we got arizona, nevada on the other side. So there's there's really no support that we get from anywhere else. So that makes sense. That's a good one. I didn't know about that one, anything else. What was that? Beehive one?
Speaker 3:Yeah, oh yeah, sb 337,.
Speaker 2:it came out, do you think they're going to run this one again probably.
Speaker 3:I think so.
Speaker 2:If the governor was supporting this one, it seems like they'll probably run this one again on your radar, everybody.
Speaker 3:Yeah, this bill would have allowed three major projects a year to fall under what they would have called the Beehive Development Agency.
Speaker 3:And what the state would do is create this new agency and kind of roll some of these existing economic development programs under this giant umbrella of the Beehive Agency and the state could look at three different projects that would have a long-term positive economic effect to the state of Utah. Now the governor the impetus behind it I don't disagree with Like we want to stay on top, we want our economy to stay strong, we want to be able to invest in projects that are good for the long-term economics. The problem is this would have allowed the state to come in and develop, design and build these projects without any local input whatsoever. Um, so as soon as the bill was released, all of the municipalities were up in arms over it, because we're like we don't want the state coming into Washington City and telling us you're going to build a 2000 acre development out in Warner Valley that we have no oversight of, no input, but yet we then have to provide the services and infrastructure for Isn't there like an annexation, like requirement though, like the city could be like?
Speaker 2:no, we're not going to we're, we're not gonna support any of that.
Speaker 3:so that wouldn't have applied to this interesting. The state could have done whatever they wanted, especially on the state lands, and there's a lot of sitla land out in warner valley we have the most valuable sitla land in the entire state in washington county, most valuable by long shot.
Speaker 3:So we were worried that, of course, one of those three projects a year are going to be in washington county, yeah, um. So the league of cities and towns came out in opposition. Um, the counties came out in opposition. So they worked through and they eventually got to a point where it would require some form of local consent, like there had to be local buy-in and, and I think it gave cities 45 days to decide whether or not they wanted to participate in this development project. But even with those slight changes, we just felt like it was too big, too fast, not enough time. It hadn't been really debated or thought through. They hadn't brought the cities and counties to the table to even even when they had a concept of a bill.
Speaker 2:So I do think it will come back, but I think they're going to work closer with local communities I think there's something to be said for not having to put your foot down on the gas all of the time. I was just going to say this so here's to that point.
Speaker 1:Uh, kurt cullimore, he was a sponsor sponsor, I believe of the bill, right, yep, he said Utah needs to enhance its ability to respond quickly and efficiently to significant economic development opportunities. It could be a wide variety of things. It could be potentially a nuclear power plant, it could be large manufacturing or it could be really grand scale mixed use developments. Now, I think you might have said this in the past, but there's a reason why the government is supposed to act slowly. Yeah, right, like we don't want to knee-jerk react a nuclear power plant. Right, right, we don't want to decide that, hey, we're going to put a nuclear power plant in Warner Valley in two weeks. Right, that should be a decision that should be made over a long period of time be made over a long period of time.
Speaker 2:Well, and I think the idea that government and economy going hand in hand with each other it is a 20th century idea, right? Is that like when we think about the framing of the constitution and the powers of the state? Obviously we want the state to react to economic opportunities and things like that, but forcing economic opportunities rather than being like okay, we have a really good economic base, how do we keep that just going and staying strong? Because there's 300,000 jobs for a telemarketing company in Utah County that in the next five years could be gone, and all of a sudden unemployment goes from 2% or whatever it is right now 2.7% to 3% right now to we're at 5% and 6%. And then we're still pushing these other economic growth stuff here. But you know, it doesn't always have to be take, seize every single economic opportunity and force it through government wise.
Speaker 1:Right, this is a bit of a general, generalized statement, but I think we've seen time and time again that the government forcing economic development usually doesn't work out well.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, so it's. I mean I can see how they want to develop SITLA, they want to develop land, they want to continue to build more homes. He's got this goal for building 35,000 homes I felt this way since the beginning is that the real estate market ebbs and flows and the correction on pricing we have to allow there to be a correction on housing. We have to allow pricing to come down, which sometimes means you know supply will come up and it'll come down at all different times in a lot of different, various economic situations, and there's nothing really the government can do to control that.
Speaker 2:So I said this I think it was a year ago. I was like how about we just wait and see? Let's just hold off on like forcing this housing affordability, because there's two things that the government can not really do anything about. You, increase minimum wage has, second and third, unintended consequences that don't ultimately help affordability and the interest rates. And those are the two, two main things that it's the median price of the home, the median wage and the interest rate. That's what affordability on housing is. And yes, we can build a ton of houses, but we could also build a ton of houses and then they all go vacant, and then now we have a serious crash right, and so it's forcing this because the constituents are upset about it. It's like sometimes there's just not a whole ton that we can do about it.
Speaker 3:How do we just navigate the environment as we have it, not force it through? Well, I think a good summary of everything that the legislature looks at is they like to point out one bad actor and then create a policy that affects everyone. Right, and I feel like we do a pretty good job of building homes in Southern Utah, I'll say washington city, like you've got dr horton out there that is building thousands of units and these are not like large-scale million dollar homes, right?
Speaker 3:this is where all of the young families are moving to um the new development that they're trying to to put in down at stooky farm. They've committed to 40 of those units being affordable housing units right and this wasn't forced by the government no, these, these were private market private, private and public combinations.
Speaker 2:It's like the city's doing their job and then the developer saying what do you need?
Speaker 3:let's do that thing well we talked about thousands of lots that have been entitled that aren't yet built. So you're right, it's like anytime government forces. Anything, I think is when we get on this slippery slope.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny too, because a lot of folks, mostly on social media, will complain about the big bad developers right, the money hungry big bad developers but those people are living in homes that were built by developers, yeah that's true.
Speaker 1:And in business, you don't do business to not make money. Yeah, right, so there's an element of profitability that comes into it, but just like you said, um it, it's. It's a free market solution or um problem solving vehicle in putting out what the market wants. Yeah, exactly, and what the consumer wants and what it needs.
Speaker 2:We were talking to Stacey Young at the Rise Summit when we did the podcast.
Speaker 1:Shout out to Stacey Young. What a great guy. He's brilliant, he's so brilliant.
Speaker 2:And he ran the data and over the last three years, the average price of the new construction was under 550 000. Right, it's not as low as, like you know, the governor's trying to get it like under 400 000, something ridiculous, where it's like, okay, labor and material costs, it's not possible, like you just can't make, you just can't get there. Right, we have to reframe our thought on what affordable, affordable actually is from a developer standpoint, without subsidy. But he was saying how the the market itself has already adjusted to saying we're building affordable houses Like this is this we know the market's here.
Speaker 2:The vast majority of the building in Washington County over the last three years has been way more affordable than it was the five, 10 years before. That Right, and so it's, but it's hard to see sometimes, cause you go to the parade of homes and there's 10,000 square foot homes and you know washington field's full of massive mcmansions, you know what I mean. So, but the vast majority of new construction has been on the more affordable side of things, and so, and that's the market reacting to what the demand is and what's what's needed and the city's city saying, hey, this is what we need, we need you really to do this.
Speaker 2:And the developers like we'll make it work, you know, because it's better. You know, I had one of builders tell me he's like, well, I could have come in with a bunch of huge houses and the city said no, but I came in with smaller houses and the city said yes, so it was better than not getting anything at all.
Speaker 1:So that's what I built right, and so that's.
Speaker 2:That's the private market solving a problem that the government doesn't have to get involved in. So that, what was that bill? That bill that didn't pass, uh, sp 337. Look it up if you are more interested and watch out more, because I'm sure that's not the last go around for that one, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, dude man we could probably keep going for another hour.
Speaker 2:I want to keep talking, but we could wrap it up. Everybody's going to be like all right, that's enough of the legislative stuff.
Speaker 3:We hope you guys got shout out to our legislators In my role. I communicate with them almost on a daily basis and you know a bunch of the other ones all across the state.
Speaker 3:They do answer our calls, they respond to our texts. They actually solicit feedback. Representative Jack had a bill that would have required a city to come up with a water security plan in case your water system got hacked right. Legitimate possibility, yeah, and it gave the city like a six-month timeline to come up with this all-inclusive security plan. And our water director said you know we're happy to do this, said you know we're happy to do this. If you want a plan to actually be effective and it needs to be well thought out we're probably going to need a bit longer than six months. So I called Representative Jack hey, is there any way that you could, you know, double that Like give the cities a year to come up with this plan? Yep, I'll call the drafting attorney right now and have them make that change. Those are the type of legislators that we have here in southern Utah. They listen to us, they're accessible and they're so invested in our community and I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1:And I would add too, just even going back to my legislative days back in the day, I think just Utah as a whole, man, it's just, it's a great, it's a great state, um, I think, for for the most part we're very fiscally um conservative, um, not that anything and everything can't always be improved, uh, but just Utah is awesome as a whole.
Speaker 3:Um yeah, it was really interesting. This year there was a very different feeling. The last couple years post-covid, they had so much money they didn't know what to do with it the state, but federal money's gone now from exactly yeah, so this year they were like we're not funding all these special projects. The money's tight. We're wearing our belts and our suspenders this year and we're getting underwear and socks for christmas yeah so they uh sometimes that's how it goes yeah, and I'm glad that we live in a state where we live within our means.
Speaker 3:I could not imagine being one of these states that they just spend, spend, spend and taxpayers owe a lot of debt.
Speaker 1:It's not the case here in utah, yeah yeah, and I think even even on the other side too. Um, I got to know some of the Democrats um and I I would submit that Utah Democrats aren't like California Democrats or New York.
Speaker 1:Democrats not even close there, you know, I think I think they all work pretty well together and I mean it's a pretty one sided state, so that probably has a little bit of an effect on how the Democrats work with the Republicans. But all in all, I think the legislature does a pretty good job. Yep yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, dude.
Speaker 3:Thanks. Thanks for coming on. We'll get you back here again one day. Sounds good.
Speaker 2:Okay, hope you enjoyed this episode, everybody. We'll see you out there. Thanks for listening in. If you enjoyed this episode, please like and subscribe. Make sure you're following us on all the social media websites. We love your support. We love the dialogue. We want to continue that going.
Speaker 1:Find us at realestate435.com. We'd love to help you find a house here in town or help you get wherever you're going.