As Election Day approaches, the mayoral race for the new Ogden Valley city, set to materialize next January, is intensifying.
Campaign signs have been defaced, backers of each hopeful — Shanna Francis and Janet Wampler — have taken to social media to praise those they back and criticize those they oppose alternately.
“Facebook has gotten really nasty and dirty, and it’s really sad. Like I said, you would think this was Chicago or Detroit or New York or L.A. It’s little Ogden Valley,” Francis said.
The would-be mayors of what will be one of Utah’s newest cities, meantime, say they’re staying above the fray. Aside from selecting the city’s first leader, voters will also elect five city council members to help run the new Weber County city in municipal voting that culminates next Tuesday, Nov. 4.
“I run, and I’ve been determined to run a clean campaign from the very beginning, and I believe that I’ve maintained that,” said Wampler. “I’ve been very clear with myself and my team and everybody that I have no interest in flinging mud or even talking about my opponent.”
Among other things, critics of Francis point to her leadership of the Ogden Valley News, the local newspaper, and maintain that she’s used it to promote her candidacy to lead the new city, yet to be named. Critics of Wampler point to what they believe to be her ties to a local developer.
The two candidates, for their part, keep a focus on their key messages.
Francis, who helped spearhead the effort leading to the vote last year to turn part of the Ogden Valley into a city, stresses the importance of keeping a check on development. Concern that Weber County commissioners have been too lenient with developers and that locals didn’t have enough say in development figured big in the push to incorporate a 63.3-square-mile swath of the Ogden Valley.
“We need to go into a different direction, where we have a level playing field for everyone and we’re not subsidizing development,” Francis said. The new city, to take shape in January, is a picturesque zone that encompasses the Eden, Liberty and Wolf Creek areas along with the Nordic Valley ski resort and an expanse east of Huntsville.
County commissioners, Francis charges, have permitted use of tax-increment financing in connection with development projects in the Ogden Valley that probably don’t need it. Under tax-increment financing, property tax revenue on new development that would otherwise go to the county, schools and other taxing entities is instead used for public infrastructure that typically serves a private investment project.
Such funding has historically been used to entice developers to invest in an area to combat blight and encourage growth, she said, and the Ogden Valley doesn’t need such inducements. Development interest, she says, is strong. Development “should just be natural, according to free-market principles, and if it can pay its own way, then great, let a developer come and put it in. Don’t ask the taxpayers to pay for it,” Francis said.
Wampler, for her part, says her focus is on making sure the new city can stand on its own as it takes shape starting next January. It’s one thing to be elected to lead an established city. Serving a city that’s just taking shape — making the necessary arrangements to make sure that snow is plowed, that bills are paid, that revenue is coming in — is something totally different.
“I’ve been working on that with a talented group of citizens for the last year-and-a-half,” she said, alluding to a transition team of a cross-section of Ogden Valley residents tasked with preparing for incorporation. “It is complicated. It is all-encompassing, so I put my name in because I was already aware of these things.”
Wampler previously worked in the corporate sector, giving her managerial and leadership experience necessary to help run a new city, she said. Beyond that, she doesn’t have the fraught relationship with Weber County commissioners that she says Francis has, in part due to Francis’ role in a lawsuit filed against Weber County over an Ogden Valley development project.
The new city may rely on contracts with Weber County to provide certain municipal services, Wampler said, and to successfully negotiate agreements, “you’re going to need someone who you know doesn’t have an animus relationship.”
‘Always been open and honest’
As for the criticism partisans of the candidates have launched, some point to what they believe to be Francis’ use of her newspaper to promote her candidacy, in part via the selection of what letters to the editor are published. She rejected the charge, saying she’s published letters that criticize her and that she retains the right not to publish letters that contain “blatant untruths” and defamatory and anonymous submissions.
The last two editions of the Ogden Valley News have contained 10 letters to the editor or commentary pieces supportive of Francis and five that back Wampler. Two additional letters have called into question Francis’ simultaneous roles as newspaper publisher and mayoral candidate. Both mayoral hopefuls have had ads in the newspaper.
Wampler has most notably been criticized for what some believe to be her cozy ties to a developer active in the Ogden Valley, in part because of a working relationship her father previously had with the man.
She counters, saying she’s never worked with him or had an investment with him and that her father’s investment relationship — which she’s publicly acknowledged — occurred 20 years ago. Moreover, as a member of the Ogden Valley Planning Commission, an advisory body to Weber County commissioners, she voted with the majority on Nov. 14, 2023, in recommending denial of a zoning change for a project the developer was involved with.
“It’s never been a gotcha moment. I’ve always been open and honest about it,” Wampler said.