Blog Posts - Jay Evensen

Should people be allowed to overturn city planning?

1/22/2019

The problem is complicated.

On the one hand, it’s getting expensive to live here, as if you needed to be reminded.

The Zillow Home Value Index says the median home price in the Salt Lake metro area rose by 11.1 percent over the past year to $352,300. Even though experts predict the market will soften a bit this year, the median price is expected to grow by another 4.2 percent.

You may expect the trend to continue.

State lawmakers should not mess with voter initiatives

1/16/2019

Only four months have passed since I posed the question, in this column, of whether lawmakers would have the guts to change an initiative passed by voters. That seems like such an innocent time, now.

Back then, the question centered on Proposition 2, the initiative to legalize medical marijuana. I supported efforts to change it, which the Legislature did in a December special session only weeks after voters passed it.

Long-term shutdown could hurt Utah's readiness for recession

1/15/2019

My oldest son, a tenured State Department employee now living in Washington after several years in embassies and consulates abroad, is furloughed.

I hesitate to mention that because he, his wife and their three children are doing fine, unlike some of the federal workers you may have seen on the news lately. They have enough savings to last a while.

Do you have a right to burn wood in the winter?

1/9/2019

Four years ago, about 500 people jammed into the 160-seat Cache County Courthouse to make a point: Don’t take away our right to burn wood in the winter.

That word, “right,” came up, as it did in other hearings around Northern Utah. So did the idea that government was overreaching, according to news reports at the time.

Gov. Gary Herbert had asked the state’s Air Quality Board to see how the public felt about banning wood burning completely between Nov. 1 and March 15 in seven Northern Utah counties susceptible to inversions.

Do Utah lawmakers have the yips about the economy?

1/8/2019

A pessimist won’t truly enjoy good times because he or she is sure bad times are just around the corner.
Or maybe that’s a realist. You decide.

Meanwhile, some of Utah’s political leaders seem to have the yips, to borrow a baseball term. That’s a nervous tension that drives you to distraction.

At a recent Utah Taxpayers Association conference, Senate Budget Chair Jerry Stevenson titled his presentation on the budget year that begins July 1, “Caution: Rough Road Ahead.”

Slowing population growth should concern us all

1/2/2019

1937 — that was the last time the nation’s population growth was as low as it is today.

You should be concerned about this.

If you know anything about history or if, like me, you are old enough to have had parents or grandparents tell you what things were like, you know that 1937 was the year the second wave of the Great Depression hit.

What will homeless services be like a year from now?

1/2/2019

What will the homeless do a year from now when it gets like this?

By “this,” I mean nighttime temperatures in the single digits or the teens, as my smartphone tells me will be the case at least part of this week.

Steadily rising global temperatures not withstanding, winters in northern Utah continue to feature spells of dangerously cold weather — the kind you’re not supposed to let dogs and cats out to experience before you go to bed, let alone humans.

Think the present is bad? You need the full picture

12/26/2018

People are incurably optimistic. That’s more than just an endearing trait; it becomes, over time, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

That’s good news as we sit on the precipice of another new year.

A century ago, the Salt Lake Telegram greeted 1919 with an optimistic editorial about the things that had changed because of a grim and deadly world war. Because of the united efforts of foreign born and ethnic citizens to help win the war, the editors said, the nation would enter a new era of equality.

Pope hits the right note: Christmas isn't about presents

12/20/2018

The Pope said something radical the other day. Christmas, he said, should not just be about presents and mass consumerism.

Maybe that doesn’t sounds so terribly radical. Your grandparents might have said something similar long ago. You might even hear such a thing in idle talk today. But look around. Judging by what the 21st century has to offer — with its gadgets, cheap fashions and virtual-reality thrills — it seems radical, indeed.

Utah leaders don't hate electric cars; it just seems that way

12/19/2018

Bad timing often speaks louder than good intentions.

Utah lawmakers saw an inequity in the gas tax. So far, so good. A lot of states have seen the same thing. It’s as obvious as a tomato stain on a white silk tie. Owners of electric and hybrid vehicles aren’t paying the tax.

So they decided to impose a yearly fee on the owners of those vehicles, allowing them to participate in the cost of maintaining the roads they are helping to wear out.

Oops. Now lawmakers look as savvy as someone trying to improve hygiene by placing a tax on soap.

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