Provo Council may get new look
Four of the seven council seats are up for grabs. Since all four incumbents are running for re-election, everything could remain the same. If one or two incumbents lose their seats, everything could change.
With so much on the line, one of the major questions is whether Provoans are paying any attention. Voter turnout for the Sept. 11 primary was 7.8 percent.
That's a meager 3,081 of the city's 39,575 registered voters.
The biggest of the four races, in terms of money and votes because it is the only citywide seat up for election, involves Steve Turley, the council's lightning rod for four years, and retired fire chief Coy Porter. Turley was the lone member of the council to vote against iProvo in 2004. The controversial fiber-optic telecommunications network has 10,000 subscribers in the city but has failed to break even.
Turley has often been the sole dissenter in 6-1 votes or part of a voting bloc that lost 4-3 or 5-2, especially during his first two years in office. Mayor Lewis Billings in 2005 said the divisiveness reduced the council's effectiveness and was caused by "extreme voices."
The race looms large because the majority of the current council wants to continue to spend money on downtown housing, which Turley has attacked, and maintain some of the strictest regulations on development and zoning in Utah County, which Turley has questioned.
Turley has touted his role as the man who went against the crowd and who voted no on iProvo and other initiatives, quoting Gen. George Patton in campaign material: "If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking."
Porter is running as a consensus-builder with 30 years of experience in the city. The lifelong Provo resident is well-liked by council incumbents, has managed multimillion-dollar budgets and touts himself as an independent, thoughtful leader who would provide "less talk and more results" and who "represents your interests, for a change."
Turley, meanwhile, has faced withering attacks from former council member Dave Knecht and some Porter supporters who have complained that Turley is a developer beholden to developers who pay for much of his campaign.
Turley said early in the campaign he would raise $40,000 to $50,000, figures that would double the record for money spent on a Provo Council campaign. Turley has since scaled down his estimates for his war chest, but he is still expected to raise several times more than Porter, and his money already has purchased a mountain of campaign signs.
Recent comments
Too bad Above-average Joe wasn't there to correct the typo in question…
Connor Madsen | Oct. 30, 2007 at 11:14 p.m.
It concerns me when the trivial matters take center stage when an…
Renae Golding | Oct. 30, 2007 at 9:25 p.m.
Sherrie will be a great council member. She is informed about the…
Jeri Allphin | Oct. 30, 2007 at 9:07 p.m.
