SALT LAKE CITY – The Bear River Association of Governments (BRAG) has joined a partnership of more than a dozen state agencies seeking Utahns’ opinions about growth.
Those partners are inviting Utahns to join a conversation about the state’s future by completing an online survey aimed at guiding Utah’s growth.
The survey is the brainchild of Envision Utah, a non-profit group that brings business, government and community leaders together to talk about a holistic, balanced approach to future planning.
That “Guiding our Growth” survey can be found at https://envisionutah.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bvjFOpBz0SrnFIO?jfefe=new
Completing that survey will only take about four minutes, according to Ari Bruening, the chief executive officer of Envision Utah.
The survey, Bruening says, is intended to get as many Utahns as possible to share their ideas about how the state should manage growth and what they think should be done to address the challenges that worry them the most.
Envision Utah and its survey partners already know that Utahns are concerned about growth.
The results of an earlier survey this year revealed that 42 percent of respondents believe that growth threatens Utah’s way of life. That marks a 25-year high point in negative perceptions of the state’s future.
Nearly 13 percent of those respondents believed that growth will make Utah “a lot worse” and another 30 percent still expect things to be at least “a little worse.”
The “Guiding our Growth” survey was originally posted in November and Envision Utah plans to continue to gather statewide opinions with it until February of 2023.
Bruening said that the survey’s results will be shared with the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget in the hope that they can help to guide future policy decisions and infrastructure investments.
Growth here in Utah is inevitable, said Laura Hanson, a state planning coordinator for the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget.
In recent years, most of Utah’s growth has been natural increase, the result of Utahns’ having babies and growing families. In the year from July 2021 to July 2022, however, net in-migration as a result of Americans fleeing more expensive states to the East and West accounted for 62 percent of state’s new residents.
The introduction to the “Guiding our Growth” survey acknowledges that type of growth brings benefits like a broad tax base and more diversity.
But that same growth also brings challenges, like less affordable housing, strained water supplies and increased traffic congestion.
In addition to Envision Utah, BRAG and the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget, other partners in the “Guiding our Growth” survey include the Wasatch Front Regional Council, the Utah Land Use Institute, the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute at the University of Utah; Utah League of Cities and Towns, the Mountainland Association of Governments, Workforce Services, the Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments, the Uintah Basin Association of Governments, the five County Association of Governments and the Six County Association of Governments.