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This story is jointly published by nonprofits Amplify Utah and The Salt Lake Tribune, in collaboration with Salt Lake Community College, to elevate diverse perspectives in local media through student journalism.

They meet with alfalfa farmers, lobby lawmakers and talk easily about the impact of the Great Salt Lake on the economy — all while thinking about what they want to do after high school.

They are members of the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake — teens from across the Salt Lake Valley who are focused on education, collaboration and legislation regarding the capital city’s namesake body of water, said Liam Mountain LaMalfa, the group’s founder.

“Our greatest accomplishment … is bringing to the forefront the notion that the youth care about Great Salt Lake,” said LaMalfa, 18. “The [lake] is directly tied to our future — our future quality of life in the state.”

A three-pronged approach

The coalition launched last summer, after the First Unitarian Church’s Environmental Ministry – a group of like-minded adults – started talking to the teens about how they might want to get involved in saving the lake. Lisa Mountain, LaMalfa’s mom, was part of that group.

“I very quickly thought that it would be really important to involve youth, west-side residents and youth of color,” she said.

Mountain said the high school group “resoundingly” decided to lobby the Utah Legislature. After taking several field trips to the lake and being featured in a July 2023 PBS Utah episode of “Utah Insight,” LaMalfa decided he wanted the group open to all high school and college-age youth in Utah.

That’s when the group became the Youth Coalition for Great Salt Lake.

The coalition has a three-pronged approach, said Mountain, who acts as an adviser for the group. The teens focus on informing and educating themselves, collaborating with other advocacy groups and lobbying for legislation on Capitol Hill.

She added the group takes initiative, and in less than a year, have toured Bear River Canal Company, participated in vigils at the Capitol and met with such lawmakers as Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, and such leaders as Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed.

“They inspire me constantly,” Mountain said. “They are motivated and dedicated and passionate about saving Great Salt Lake and about protecting their future in Utah and in the world.”

‘Dirt and crud’

In early March, at one of their biweekly meetings at First Unitarian Church near the University of Utah’s campus, five of the group’s 15 members shared what the coalition means to them — and why they believe saving the Great Salt Lake is important.

India Elliott, a senior at Granger High School, said she joined the group because she has always been interested in activism and is concerned about the shrinking lake’s future and its long-term environmental impact. She wants, she said, to be able to grow old in her home state.

“I noticed every winter, and even in the summer, when the air quality gets really bad, and I can barely see the mountains,” she said. “I’m literally looking through dirt and crud … and it makes me feel emotionally worse.”

The Great Salt Lake generates around 15 dust events a year, according to reporting by The Salt Lake Tribune. Spring and summer are becoming more unhealthy, and dust from the exposed lakebed could carry arsenic, copper and mercury.

Cloud Garcia-Ruiz, a senior at Salt Lake Center for Science Education, said they’ve always felt a deep connection to the environment, which led them to join the coalition.

“When I heard that the Great Salt Lake was in trouble, I thought, ‘Maybe this is like a chance to finally do something about it,’” Garcia-Ruiz said.

One of their favorite activities was a tree-planting event, they said, because restoring a part of nature that used to be there felt nice. The event last October with the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation allowed the teens to work with the tribe’s mission of stewardship of the land and environment, Mountain said.

For Elliott, attending the vigils for the lake – which took place every morning for all 45 days of this year’s legislative session – stood out as a highlight. Community members interested in saving the Great Salt Lake gathered on the steps of the Capitol every day. Members from the youth coalition joined every Tuesday at 8 a.m., along with Nan Seymour, a local poet who has spent the last three legislative sessions holding some sort of vigil for the lake.

“We sing, we dance,” Elliott said. “It’s lighthearted when you’re kind of, like, surrounded in doom and gloom.”

‘A cultural shift’

The Great Salt Lake generates nearly $2 billion for Utah’s economy annually, according to the state’s website. It contributes 5% to 10% to the lake effect snow, creating $1.2 billion for the ski industry.

“We’re looking at a serious economic downturn, which is a scary thought to think about the workforce being impacted by losing billions upon billions of dollars in economic growth — gone,” LaMalfa said.

Part of the coalition’s approach is educating others and informing themselves of the science behind the Great Salt Lake. Soon after the coalition’s founding, the group toured the Bear River Canal Company, which oversees 126 miles of the Bear River, the Great Salt Lake’s largest tributary.

Mountain said they also have met with alfalfa farmers and other stakeholders, such as Commissioner Steed, to get a variety of perspectives on the issue of the lake. Steed discussed with the group what youth could do to help save the lake, which includes a cultural shift, LaMalfa said.

“To really understand his perspective and cement the notion of cultural change is the thing we need,” he said.

Elliott made a slideshow about saving the lake, to educate classmates and friends and to present at events. In it, she argued shifting the culture means changing how people think about using water, and made suggestions such as removing non-functional turf grass, installing water-wise landscaping and metering water use.

Izzy Khachatryan, a junior at Skyline High School, said she knew she wanted to get other youth involved in the issue of the Great Salt Lake.

“Culture drives policy, and we need policy changes in order to get water back to the lake,” Khachatryan said. “In order to do that, we obviously need people to be aware of the issues and be committed to the issues and that starts with advocacy, which is what one of our group’s main focus is.”

Living with the consequences

While Utah lawmakers dubbed 2022 “the year of water,” the 2024 legislative session did not deliver the same vigor around issues related to the lake. The number of bills passed was deemed “average” by experts, who said lawmakers made enough “technical changes” like measuring, tracking and saving water to keep water policy moving in the right direction.

During the session, members of the youth coalition met with lawmakers — including Blouin, a Democrat representing parts of Salt Lake County, from Sugar House to the Jordan River Parkway — to discuss how they could be most impactful. Blouin, who has been working with the group since last summer, said engaging with the teens has been great.

“The legislators are not particularly representative of the population as a whole, definitely from an age perspective,” Blouin said. “Giving younger folks an opportunity to get up there and to feel like their voices are being heard even when it can be challenging … that’s important.”

Elliott said it was rewarding to experience lobby day on the hill — asking people to support bills or thanking them for their support.

“It was very empowering to talk to the important people and be heard,” Elliott said.

Utah is a young state, with the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau showing a median age of 31.3 years, with the country’s highest share of people under 18 at 29%.

Blouin said, “these are … young people who are going to have to live with the consequences of the actions that we take as legislators and the decisions we make as a state.”

Steed and two legislators — Rep. Angela Romero and Sen. Luz Escamilla, both Democrats from Salt Lake City – were scheduled to take part in a panel discussion at a symposium the coalition organized Saturday.

As for the future of the coalition, LaMalfa said he would like to bring chapters to high schools and the University of Utah. The group, he said, has made it clear the Great Salt Lake is their future.

“The more I talk to people, the more people seem to have a little bit of an understanding of Great Salt Lake,” he said. “That understanding seems to be getting steadily larger … [and] when every person in the state really knows about Great Salt Lake, it’ll be impossible to do anything but save her.”

Vanessa Hudson, a student at the University of Utah, wrote this story as part of a College of Humanities journalism course in partnership with the Great Salt Lake Collaborative and Amplify Utah. The collaborative is a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake – and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.

Melissa Wei-Tsing Inouye, a Harvard-trained scholar in global religion, did not start her academic career expecting to write about her own faith and the challenges of human existence.

But as the generous scholar delved into various religious traditions — including a Chinese Christian group, the True Jesus Church — she could see parallels to her upbringing in California as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

And since Inouye’s colon cancer diagnosis in 2017 at 37 — with four young children — spiritual questions became more urgent and personal to the marathon-running mom in colorful knit caps.

“In the past and currently, I’m on this two-week chemo cycle, which is like a mini-cycle of death and resurrection. I’ll do the chemo and feel myself getting more and more tired and sick for the first couple of days,” the Asian American Latter-day Saint writer said last year on The Salt Lake Tribune’s “Mormon Land” podcast. “And then, over the course of the next 12 days, I’ll get better and better and feel stronger and stronger. Then I’m ready to go for the next one.”

It’s not “actual resurrection,” she said, “but it teaches me that things have beginnings and ends, that you can take a lot, that change is constant.”

That cycle ended early Tuesday, her husband reported, when Inouye died in his arms while her brother held her hand.

She was 44.

As news of her death washed like a tidal wave over social media, friends from across the Mormon universe commented on the loss of the petite, sharply observant and deeply compassionate thinker most knew simply as “Melissa.”

She was “a once-in-a-generation mind and a once-in-a-generation human being,” a friend commented on social media. “A lodestar of intellectual generosity.”

Melissa, wrote another, “truly represented the very best that Mormonism has to offer.”

She was “someone I loved and respected so much, now dancing in the skies,” Utah Valley University President Astrid Tuminez said. “[I am] brokenhearted, but so grateful to have known this most unique, clear-eyed, loving soul.”

Inouye, a historian for the state’s predominant religion, maintained friendships across the spectrum of belief and practice, doubt and devotion, inside and outside of faith communities.

She “exemplified and inspired courage,” wrote Farina King, professor of Native American studies at the University of Oklahoma, “especially courage to be yourself and share your story, your voice.”

That voice, all agreed, will be sorely missed but will resonate in her writings for years to come.

In the bosom of a community

Inouye grew up in what she described as a “very idyllic and close-knit ward [congregation] in Costa Mesa, California. I just felt like nothing was ever wrong. Everyone was always awesome. I felt completely safe and loved.”

From there, the precocious student went to Harvard, where she earned a degree in East Asian studies.

She took 18 months off, though to serve a full-time Latter-day Saint mission in Taiwan, and married a former missionary, Joseph McMullin, who was her teacher at the Missionary Training Center and had also served in Taiwan. Together, they have four children.

Inouye graduated from the Ivy League school in 2003 and went on to complete a doctorate in 2011 in East Asian languages and civilization, writing her dissertation, “Miraculous Mundane: The True Jesus Church and Chinese Christianity in the 20th Century,” while living in Xiamen, China, and teaching at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

She taught in Hong Kong and was a senior lecturer in modern Chinese history at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. In 2019, her family moved to Utah, where she landed a job in the church’s history department.

Inouye helped create the Global Mormon Studies research network and was an advisory board member of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship.

Five years ago, Inouye published a series of essays, “Crossings: A Bald Asian American Latter-day Saint Woman Scholar’s Ventures Through Life, Death, Cancer, and Motherhood.”

All this research and travel gave Inouye an evolving appreciation for her Latter-day Saint community — beyond what she had experienced as a child.

“As an adult who had lived in different places, different countries, I noticed how in different places there are different aspects of the gospel that are emphasized,” she said on a “Mormon Land” podcast. “From that point of view, any group of Latter-day Saints in any place will be subject to the same pressures that are in society at large, susceptible to the same temptations and abuse of power, corruption, just like anyone else. But I don’t think this is a deal breaker. Indeed, I think it’s part of the genius of [church founder] Joseph Smith’s inspiration and organizational vision.”

Memorable metaphors

Laurie Maffly-Kipp, the new chair of Mormon studies at the University of Virginia, described Inouye as a master of metaphor.

Case in point: a 2012 piece she wrote for Religion News Service.

“If a person looks at faith like a string of Christmas lights, they demand that ‘light’ leap from one point to another along a single string of connections,” Inouye wrote. “If one junction along the string is flawed, then the whole string is dysfunctional. Or, if the whole string is functional, then every single junction must be perfect.”

But that simile, she said, is inadequate. One bad light — a troubling fact, person, policy or practice — need not darken a whole faith. At the same time, a glistening religion may yet have a bad bulb in the mix.

Sourdough bread, Inouye stated, is a more apt comparison.

“It begins with the starter, an unruly colony of wild yeasts and bacteria swimming together in starchy soup. There is nothing lovely or pure about sourdough starter. Its exuberance makes it sour on the verge of stinky, fermented bordering on decayed,” Inouye wrote. “Yet, when introduced into a properly balanced supply of flour, water and salt, the starter is a catalyst for building a complex, living community that results in heavenly bread.”

Religious organizations are “shaped by time and their environment,” she concluded, which can either lead them to corruption or to producing goodness. “Appreciating this goodness, and engaging productively with the complex processes that create it, is a project of intellect, not ignorance.”

A Zion society

Inouye’s final book, “Sacred Struggle: Seeking Christ on the Path of Most Resistance,” taught that a carefree, trouble-free world is not what humanity signed up for.

An easy earthly existence, under Mormon theology, was Satan’s plan, not God’s. Divine design, Inouye argued, calls instead for agency, personal growth, compassion and caring for others, and “living a life full of life” — the good and the bad, the ups and the downs, the hopes and the hopelessness — as God’s children learn to be more like their Heavenly Parents by following and finding Jesus.

That’s what makes the Latter-day Saint structure so effective, she said in her last Tribune interview.

“Such a beautiful thing about Mormonism is that it creates these really strong communities where people take liberties with each other because they assume a kinship, which one doesn’t normally assume in secular society,” Inouye said. “And because you just spend so much time with people — these mutual, entangling interactions that help you get to know people and support them in different ways.”

These sentiments echo notions she included in her essay for “A Book of Mormons; Latter-day Saints on a Modern-Day Zion.”

Life on Earth “is not a virtuoso operatic performance of angelic hosts, but a homely production in which a divine director is stuck with a troupe of second-string musicians and amateur actors who are always botching their lines,” Inouye said. “In the Mormon section of the orchestra pit, we stumble on, season after season: learning to play new instruments as needed, struggling to stay in tune, loyally attending rehearsal, folding and unfolding an endless array of chairs.”

Such building and rebuilding “is not merely a means to an end,” she concluded. “It is Zion itself.”

And now, as hundreds, maybe thousands, mourn Inouye’s death, there is one less sonorous instrument in the Mormon orchestra even as the faith’s symphony plays on.

Editor’s note • This article discusses suicide. If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for 24-hour support.

Weber County Sheriff’s Detective Dustin Stewart paced the stage at Roy High School auditorium Wednesday evening. Behind him, a presentation showed the warning signs of “sextortion,” a form of blackmail in which sexual information or images are used to extort money or favors.

Stewart pressed a button on his remote, advancing the presentation to the next slide. A recording of a 911 call played, and a woman’s screams pierced the auditorium.

The call was from the moments after Lauren Glass found her 15-year-old son had died by suicide. Officers discovered an extorter had threatened to circulate intimate images that the boy had shared but thought would stay private, Stewart said.

“I think it’s important that we hear that portion of that phone call,” Stewart said to about one hundred parents and community members. “Because it’s real life.”

Lauren and Brian Glass returned to the room shortly after the recording had stopped.

“My family’s goal in this process of sharing our son’s story is to help,” Brian Glass told the audience. “If we can get one family never to feel what we felt, never to have to go through this situation, ever, we’ve accomplished something out of this tragedy.”

Although the couple spoke from a distance to the auditorium crowd, the evening felt intimate as they shared their grief and listening parents held hands and cried with them.

Recently, there has been a significant rise in reported financial sextortion cases that involve teenage boys, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children reported on its website. In 2023, the center received 186,819 reports of “online enticement,” a category of criminal activity that includes sextortion.

The Glass’s story

On Jan. 7, the Glass’s son came in contact with an extorter posing as a teenage girl through a social discovery app called Wizz, according to screenshots of their text exchange shared by Stewart. The Salt Lake Tribune is not naming the boy, in part, because he was a minor.

The extorter immediately asked the boy if they could follow each other on Instagram, a tactic commonly used to gain access to a victim’s friends and family for leverage later on, the detective said.

The Glass’s son agreed. The extorter then suggested an exchange of photos, asking the boy to provide explicit images of himself, Stewart said. The boy did so during a video call on Snapchat, feeling that it was “safer” than other apps.

“Kids think that Snapchat is safe,” Stewart said. They think “stuff deletes. Stuff can’t be saved without you knowing, which is not the case.”

The extorter took screenshots from the video and compiled them into one image, which included the boy’s face, and texted it to him, Stewart said. “Listen to me, bro,” the text read, “Are you ready now to cooperate with me or I start sending it to everyone.” The extorter demanded $200 in exchange for not releasing the photo, Stewart said.

“My son was so devastated, not because of the money,” Brian Glass said. “It destroyed him, I just know it. I beg you, have the conversations with your kids. Let them know that it’s a mistake and it’s going to be OK if they do something like that.”

Extorters are often in other countries

The Weber County Sheriff’s Office receives at least one case every week involving the sextortion of a minor, Stewart said.

“There’s no sexual component for the extorter,” Stewart explained. “They’re only after one thing: they’re after money. They make that very clear. They don’t care what they get, as long as they get something of the kids’ that they can use against them for money.”

If they do get the money, the extortion “never ends,” Stewart said. If they don’t, extorters sometimes release photos, he said, but more often than not, they will just “move on.”

“They’re talking to a bunch of kids,” Stewart said. “They are doing this to make money for their family. They’re going to work, doing this, and then going home at the end of the day. It’s a job.”

Bringing criminals like these to justice is often difficult because the majority are located in developing nations, he said. Sometimes they can be extradited, and other times they can face charges in their own countries. Sometimes governments comply, sometimes they don’t, Stewart said.

Stewart said he can’t speak to the specifics of the Glass’s case because it is an open investigation, but said officers believe they have located the man responsible for the messages.

Signs to look out for

Lauren Glass described her son as kind, a basketball player and someone who always stood up for others. “He had struggles with himself where he had Tourette’s and ticks and ADHD,” she said. “There were plenty of times when he was bullied. But when it happened to other kids, he never stood for it. Ever.”

Lauren and Brian Glass said they hope that other parents will use their tragedy to educate themselves and foster open communication with their children. It’s important for children to have a trusted adult whom they feel safe confiding in about mistakes, the parents said.

Here are early warning signs that suggest someone is engaging in child sextortion, according to Stewart:

• Approaching a child on social media and immediately asking for “nudes,” or explicit images.
• Offering reciprocation (“I’ll show you, if you show me”).
• Intentionally moving their communications with the child from one online platform to another.
• Sending messages that appear to be written by someone who isn’t a native English speaker; grammar and word use is “off.”
• Pretending to work for a modeling agency to obtain sexual images of the child/

While the instinct upon learning a child has fallen victim to sextortion is to delete all messages and photos, Stewart said that doing so will impact law enforcement’s ability to stop the extorter. He suggested parents instead:

• Stop all communication immediately.
• Block the extorter but do not delete messages or photos.
• Report the extorter’s social media accounts on all platforms.
• Contact area law enforcement.
• Get help before deciding whether to pay money or comply with the extorter’s demands.

More information and resources about child sextortion can be found at: https://www.missingkids.org/theissues/sextortion

Nursing student Maria Thomson thought she would be OK going to class this one time without her service dog, Daisy.

Thomson couldn’t afford another absence on her record, she said. Besides, her doctor said she would be safe attending without Daisy, a sheepadoodle who helps alert Thomson when she starts feeling the symptoms of her condition, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS, which affects the autonomic nervous system.

It had been a rough few weeks for Thomson, then a student at the private, for-profit Joyce University of Nursing & Health Sciences in Draper. She was working to balance a demanding class load with flare-ups of her POTS symptoms.

Thomson asked to be excused early from an onsite class in February 2023 at St. Mark’s Hospital in Millcreek, and Joyce officials told her she would be marked absent, she said. Eventually, St. Mark’s gave her permission to leave, she said. Thomson learned later that the school counted her absent — and cited her for violating Joyce’s code of conduct, she said, because she contacted St. Mark’s officials about her POTS flare-up rather than going through Joyce’s protocols.

After seeking clarification about Daisy from Joyce officials — including sending a letter written by her lawyers — Thomson arrived at St. Mark’s on March 21, 2023, for another onsite class (called a “clinical”), without Daisy. When she got there, Thomson said, the head of clinicals for Joyce told her she was “a liability without Daisy,” and her instructor asked her to leave.

Two days later, Joyce’s legal team sent Thomson a letter, dismissing her from the school — and disrupting her dream of becoming a nurse.

Thomson — who said she was the school’s first student with a service dog — filed a federal lawsuit in June against Joyce, alleging the school did not give her proper accommodations for her disability under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

In the letter informing Thomson of her expulsion, Joyce’s lawyers wrote, “Joyce University is confident it has complied with its obligations under the ADA and any other pertinent standard.”

A representative from Joyce University declined to comment for this article, because of the ongoing court case.

It’s a case, said Emily Shuman, director of the Rocky Mountain ADA Center, that illustrates what many people with disabilities say is a recurring problem with enforcing the ADA.

“There’s a lot of ignorance of the law,” Shuman said. “Civil rights laws for people with disabilities are not something anyone typically thinks about until they have to.”

‘I want to be like this one day’

Because of her health problems, Thomson has spent a lot of time in the company of nurses — and watching them work made her want to become one.

Once Thomson was flown by air ambulance, and the nurses who helped her through it stuck in her memory. “Those nurses were the ones that I was, like, ‘You guys are so smart. … I want to be like this one day,’” she said. “I wanted to give back to the nursing community and those who have helped me.”

Thomson, a 26-year-old who lives in Salt Lake City, has been dealing with POTS for seven years, but encountering the symptoms for 12. POTS is triggered by standing up after lying down. “Anything that you don’t have to think about — like your heart rate, blood pressure, all that kind of stuff — is dysregulated,” she said.

There’s no cure yet for POTS. Thomson said she’s able to manage the condition with medication, her central line (which “provides IV fluid therapy” to help with her blood pressure and heart rate), and the assistance of Daisy — who helps alert her for POTS symptoms, like when her heart rate elevates.

“The big part with Daisy — which I feel like people kind of miss — is that Daisy is an alert system,” Thomson said. “She’s not a cure. She will just tell me when my symptoms are flaring before they get bad.”

With Daisy’s assistance, Thomson said, she thought she would be able to fulfill her dream and attend nursing school. In January 2022, she enrolled in Ameritech College (which later changed its name to Joyce University), because, she said, of the school’s “decent reputation,” high job placement rate, its nurse licensure exam and the quality of its equipment.

At first, Thomson said, the school granted her some accommodations — for example, giving her time-and-a-half to complete tests, so she could deal with the brain fog that accompanies POTS. Thomson and her advocate, Joey Ramp-Adams, worked with the school in advance to establish those accommodations.

“We knew it was going to be harder, but we thought we would be able to present research and help kind of guide them down that path,” Thomson said.

In June 2022, Thomson, Ramp-Adams and the school’s ADA coordinator met to discuss a publication from The Journal of Professional Nursing, about how to accommodate students with service dogs in clinical settings. After that, Thomson said, she met with lab instructors at the start of every semester to introduce them to Daisy and work out logistics.

When the school changed its name to Joyce, Thomson said, it replaced its ADA coordinator with an employee who didn’t have training in that field. “That’s kind of where my problems began,” she said, “just because there wasn’t that person there that understood and was able to help me navigate certain situations.”

In June 2022, Thomson missed a pharmacology class because her central line was infected. She had a four-hour lab and exam scheduled the next day, which she missed and had to make up later. In the days that followed, she said she had problems getting the absence excused.

“When I asked for medical absences, they were like, ‘We’re not going to grant that for you.” She also asked to have more time to complete her test, because she was hospitalized for a couple of days.

Both women recalled one virtual meeting where Thomson had wanted Ramp-Adams to advocate for her, and Joyce would not give Ramp-Adams access. Shortly after that, Thomson said, the school’s dean said they would not excuse all medical-related absences but would review them on a “case-by-case” basis.

In November 2022, Thomson’s doctor, Brad D. Richards, who specializes in POTS, wrote a letter to the school, explaining her need for accommodations — including time-and-a-half for testing, and double time for more complicated courses. Later that month, Thomson said, she was told that “extending the days for exams is not an ADA accommodation that Joyce University grants.”

Around the same time, Thomson and her peers were getting to start their “clinicals” — placements at different health care facilities for onsite education. Finding a facility where Thomson could bring Daisy, she said, was difficult.

Thomson said the school “waited till the last minute to get me placements. Everybody else in my cohort was allowed to register themselves. … I was always told because you’re an ADA student, we register you. I was told, ‘Our normal students register themselves.’”

Absences and expulsion

The cascade of issues that led to Thomson’s expulsion from Joyce happened in a stretch of just over a month.

The first incident was on Feb. 22, 2023, when Thomson started her clinical at St. Mark’s. The next day, Daisy had a partially ruptured eardrum. “She was having vestibular issues, too, so she couldn’t really stand up,” Thomson said.

Thomson’s doctor, Dr. Richards, said she could attend her clinical without Daisy, so she did. A few hours into the clinical, though, her POTS symptoms flared up. Eventually, she said, St. Mark’s gave her permission to leave.

In the weeks that followed, Thomson said she would be asked by the assistant director of human resources at St. Mark’s and the head of risk management invasive questions about her disability, in front of her peers. She also received a notice that she violated the school’s code of conduct when Thomson contacted someone at St. Mark’s to schedule a meeting to talk about her POTS incident.

On March 14, Thomson went in again without Daisy, who was sick. She said she went in because she didn’t have another excused absence. When she arrived, she was told she already had used two absences — meaning the school had counted the absence from her February POTS flare-up.

Two days later, on March 16, Thomson’s lawyers sent a letter to the school, saying that she had been “treated in a discriminatory manner by Joyce University.” The letter demanded the school change her accommodations to allow for her absences, and remove the code-of-conduct violations from her record.

Thomson attended her clinical on March 21, because she said she had not received clarification about whether she could attend without Daisy, and she feared being marked for another absence. The head of clinicals at Joyce, she said, told her she was “a liability without Daisy.” Her clinical instructor then asked Thomson to leave.

Two days later, March 23, Thomson said she received a letter from Joyce’s legal team, dismissing her from the school. The letter went on at length to respond to the letter from Thomson’s lawyers, and argued that Thomson understood that Daisy should be with her during her clinicals.

On March 25, Thomson wrote to the school, seeking to appeal her dismissal. “I believe a failure of communication led to the events for which I have been dismissed,” she wrote. “At no time after the [February] episode did Joyce tell me they thought it unsafe for me to work without Daisy. Nor did they clearly state that I could not attend clinicals without her.”

Thomson filed her lawsuit on June 19. She received notification on Sept. 11 that the appeal of her dismissal was denied.

What is the ADA law? How does it help?

Thomson is suing Joyce under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Title III is the part of the law that applies to private businesses, said Nate Crippes, a supervising attorney at the Disability Law Center of Utah. (The first section covers employment, the second part state and local government entities.)

“The vast majority of [private institutions] also probably take federal funding, because they have students who get loans and pay their tuition,” Crippes said. (Joyce, on its website, notes that it accepts loans through FAFSA.)

The ADA defines a service animal as a dog or a miniature horse, Crippes said. “It has to be trained to perform a task that helps with a disability,” he said. Service animals can only be asked to leave, he said, “if it is out of control.”

“The ADA has been around for 30-plus years, but there is still a lack of awareness about what it requires and how it works,” Crippes said.

Shuman, director of the Rocky Mountain ADA Center, said she can’t “see any reason” Joyce would be exempt from ADA provisions.

In academic settings, Shuman said, it’s up to individuals to contact the school or university, self-disclose their disability, and explain “things that they need put in place in order for them to have access to their education.”

But, it’s up to schools, she said, to work with the person with a disability, “and if necessary, make reasonable modifications to their policies, practices and procedures, in order to make sure that that person has the accommodations that they need.”The word “reasonable” is important. “They don’t have to do that if it causes a fundamental alteration to the operations of the organization, or if it causes some sort of undue financial or administrative burden,” Shuman said. “That’s always determined on a case-by-case basis.”

ADA law, Shuman said, is paradoxical because it’s meant to “level the playing field” for people with disabilities.

“It’s all about removing barriers for people with disabilities. The spirit of the law acknowledges that people with disabilities often have to work harder, just to have the same access to participate in everyday life as people without disabilities,” she said.

As ADA is practiced, though, people with disabilities constantly have to explain the law, Shuman said, and “take on the burden of educating everyone around them on their civil rights.”

Shuman said that 1-in-4 people in the United States has a disability, and 60% of people will acquire one as they age — so knowledge about the barriers the disability community faces is increasingly relevant to more people.

“People with disabilities have proven time and time again that they are totally capable of doing just about anything that people without disabilities can do, with the right accommodations and support in place,” Shuman said.

Can people with service dogs thrive in STEM settings?

Ramp-Adams, Thomson’s advocate, first connected with her in May 2020, and worked with her throughout her time at Joyce.

The two women have things in common, including an interest in the health care field — Ramp-Adams has a degree in biochemistry and neuroscience — and the fact that both rely on service dogs.

Ramp-Adams is founder and CEO of Empower Ability Consulting, a company that she said works with people, government agencies and academic institutions. “The reason I started the company was because of the obstacles I faced, so I have a very strong focus on people who are seeking a STEM education with service dogs,” she said.

Empower Ability Consulting has worked with the American Society for Microbiology, she said, helping the group write guidelines on how to accommodate service dog handlers in labs. The company has done similar work with the American Chemical Society, she said.

Working with those organizations, Ramp-Adams said, has shown her there’s a shift in making those industries more accessible and inclusive. Still, though, there are difficulties — and she called Thomson’s situation the “worst-case example” of what can happen.

STEM academics, Ramp-Adams said, are quite rigid by necessity — because of the safety protocols in labs. Often, she said, organizations like Joyce are hesitant to have an outside consultant like her come in, even if she’s an expert in her field.

Working with Joyce, Ramp-Adams said they found the school resistant in “trying to do any kind of reasonable accommodation or try and assist in any way.”

She added: “There was no empathy, no compassion. And beyond [that], they just trounced all her civil rights. Just a basic accommodation, like extended testing, they were not going to even budge on that.”

Ramp-Adams said she has never before encountered a case where, as Thomson claims, Joyce said Thomson could not attend classes or clinicals without her service dog.

Crippes called that “disability discrimination.” As an example, he said, “if a person who had a mobility impairment — say they utilize a walker or wheelchair occasionally, but didn’t need it at all times … I don’t think a business could be, like, ‘You can only come in here if you utilize the device you have.’ What they would be saying is: ‘You are required to meet our demands of how your disability works.’”

Advocating for herself

Ramp-Adams said it’s “absolutely” possible for people with service dogs to thrive in STEM settings, if they are allowed to advocate for themselves and their needs.

“A person knows how to manage their disability. If we listen to them, they can absolutely thrive in whatever they want to do,” she said. “We don’t know what a person with a disability has to bring to the table unless we let them sit there and unless we let them into the decision-making areas.”

Thomson said she’s never had the issues with getting accommodations that she had with Joyce.

“The big part about having accommodations,” Thomson said, “is that they’re there for you to use when you need them.”

As of early April 2024, a little over a year after Thomson was expelled, there has been little movement with her lawsuit.

“We pretty much asked if they wanted to settle again, they said no,” Thomson said. “We have been talking to them to see if I can fit for my LPN license. … So far, it looks like I might not qualify. I’m also requesting, like, transcripts and stuff from them, and they’re refusing.”

Thomson said she feels like she consistently tried to advocate for herself, but no one at Joyce was listening to her.

“I’ve had times where I’ve definitely had to go in and talk to and educate people, but the people I’ve talked to have always been willing to listen,” Thomson said. “Here, I just feel like they were just unwilling to listen.”

Immigration and the tussle over what states can and should do to respond are issues on voters’ minds ahead of the 2024 elections. The Salt Lake Tribune asked each of the candidates for governor what actions they would take as the Beehive State’s top executive and what they believe is the proper role for the state in a national issue.

Some of these answers have been edited for length, clarity and grammar.

Republican candidates

Gov. Spencer Cox

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

My immediate priority is to change the asylum system. We need to make it much harder to make an invalid claim and we need to process the claims much faster. The overwhelming majority of those crossing the southern border are now claiming asylum even though very few of those claims are ultimately successful. The dramatic increase in those asylum seekers arriving in Utah and across the nation is overwhelming our social services. On top of the asylum loophole, the influx of fentanyl, aided by a porous border and cartels that control border traffic, is killing thousands of people. I’ve communicated with my fellow governors consistently and forcefully to both President [Joe] Biden and Congress the nature of the crisis and that we need to secure the border and fix legal immigration. There is broad agreement on these two priorities and now it’s time to act.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

The U.S. Constitution is very clear that immigration is a federal issue, but states have had to step in because of the lack of action by Biden and Congress. We’re doing our part to strengthen border security by sending Utah National Guard members and state troopers to assist where needed. We’ve been working with sheriffs and law enforcement from across the state to force the federal government to take responsibility and deal with illegal immigrants who commit crimes. If the federal government won’t act, I’ll continue to push for strategies that protect states. On legal immigration, I would support the idea that Rep. Curtis proposed that would put states in the driver’s seat and not be so dependent on federal visa rules that were set long ago and don’t reflect our current economy.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

I am supportive of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and his leadership on this critical issue. They are at their wits’ end and frustrated by the federal government’s failures. I am hopeful that Republicans are able to take back the U.S. Senate in the upcoming election and push forward nationwide legislation to curb illegal immigration rather than forcing individual states to pursue piecemeal legislation that is unable to get to the root of the problem.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

I continue to support the principles of the Utah Compact. As we fix legal immigration, we absolutely must change the incentives that have led to false claims of asylum. The warping of the asylum process is overwhelming our states and hurting those who truly are escaping persecution in their home country and now have to wait years for their claims to be adjudicated. There is nothing in the Utah Compact that says we can’t protect our border.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

As with broader immigration reform, Congress must enact legislation to resolve these issues rather than leaving it to the whims of whoever currently occupies the White House. Failure to do so is a dereliction of their duties.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

Utah never has been and never will be a sanctuary state. I will never bend on that.

Carson Jorgensen

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

After three years of uncontrolled, lawless open borders under the Biden Administration, my normal views on immigration are moot. I am not anti-immigration. However, the orchestrated debacle we have endured these past three years is not immigration, it is invasion.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

As governor, I would deploy every legal means available — and seek to expand those means — to halt all illegal immigration and begin the process of removing illegal aliens from the state of Utah, preferably by deportation.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

I do support the Texas legislation. When the federal government fails to fulfill its lawful obligations — and especially when that failure is intentional — I believe it is within the purview of the states to take actions necessary to remedy that failure. What’s more, I believe Utah should have immediately taken an active and supportive role in assisting Texas by all legal means, including personnel on the ground. I believe the future of federalism is states working together to resolve the federal government’s failures, breaches of faith, and overreaches.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

While I support principles of compassion and respect, in the circumstances that now confront Utah and other states, I cannot currently support the Utah Compact. As such, I cannot support the guest worker or driving privilege provisions.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

As to DACA [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals], again because of the generational harms and willful disregard for the law on the part of this administration, I cannot support any path to citizenship for those in our country illegally.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

As governor, Utah would first assess the damage done by the Biden border invasion and report it publicly. Unlike the current executive, I would identify and track how many migrants have entered Utah illegally and report it publicly. Absent an option to deport, I would follow the lead of other states in transporting as many illegal aliens as possible to so-called “sanctuary states” that have openly declared their willingness to accept and support them.

Phil Lyman

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

When it comes to immigration, I believe in a tolerable administration of the law. If the federal government does not protect the nation’s boundaries from illegal immigration, then it is the duty of the states to protect themselves. I would start with detaining noncitizens who are arrested and would disregard the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement regulations for those who have violated Utah laws.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

The state has an obligation to the citizens of Utah. The proper role would be to insist that the federal government remove noncitizens who are here illegally.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Yes.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

I do not support the principles of the Compact. I do support legal immigration and legal guest workers in Utah. I voted in favor of the driver’s license for legal guest workers. Seeing how the census and the voting roles have failed to take the “legal” distinction into account, I would support repeal of the driver’s license provision.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

There is a path for these parents and children, but it means obtaining a legal working or living accommodation.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

County commissioners are elected to safeguard the health, safety, and welfare of their counties. Sheriffs are elected by county citizens and charged with the same duty. Our Sheriffs are the people’s most respected elected officials. They do amazing work. They arrest and detain criminals, but if those criminals happen to be noncitizens, ICE requires they be released after 72 hours unless given permission by ICE to hold them longer. This is a federal rule more honored in the breach than in the observance. The Governor should let judges know that he expects them to hold criminals regardless of federal rules. If a state does not nullify unconstitutional or untenable federal laws that are detrimental to the citizens of the state, then the state is not a state at all but a vassal subunit of the federal government.

Sylvia Miera-Fisk

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

Laws on legal immigration must be enforced and our constitution must be upheld. Citizens of the country and of the state of Utah are always to be protected and sustained. That answer goes for the next point brought up.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

No response.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Absolutely. Texas has a moral and legal duty to protect its citizens that honors and enforces the laws of this land and honors our constitution of the United States of America, always. Each state likewise has its individual needs in dealing with immigration. Legal immigration is a completely different issue than the crisis of illegal immigration facing our country today.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

Who and why was the Compact written and for what purpose? I know very little of this compact and those who support and signed it. I have no opinion until I can research it. Driver license and driving privileges have laws and rules in obtaining them, and instead of creating loopholes around laws, our legislature should be working on ways to enforce laws instead of ways around honoring them.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

The issue of the “Dreamers” is in the past. However, it revealed the need to reform the process of obtaining legal status and citizenship in similar situations. If there are still those in need of rectifying their status it needs to be resolved.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

Families, especially parents risking the safety of their families and possible separation by entering any country illegally, are solely the responsibility of those heads of family — i.e. the parents.

The United States of America is well within its rights to establish laws for citizenship and to enforce and honor our Constitution. As the daughter and granddaughter of immigrants who came to this country from Mexico legally, but more importantly as the descendant of the original citizens of this continent over 2,000 years ago, enforcing our laws is vital to the structure, safety and prosperity of the United States of America. By not doing so, we are at risk of losing our country, as happened upon establishing this new government from the original native Americans almost 250 years ago.

Come to this country, come to Utah, but come legally and honorably.

Scott Robbins

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

My priority with immigration is to the people of Utah — how immigration can benefit us. My other priority is to prevent and punish all future illegal immigration.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

President Biden and the Department of Homeland Security are supporting a full-on foreign invasion into our country. They are traitors to our people. Because of this, Utah must solve immigration for itself. We must put an end to illegal immigration. We must protect the lives of our families and people.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Definitely. We need a permanent, lasting solution to illegal immigration. I am tired of reading another girl was raped by an illegal immigrant, or another Utahn was killed by an illegal immigrant, or another Utahn died from a fentanyl overdose. Housing is unaffordable, and over 100,000 illegal immigrants in Utah contribute to that. We have unhoused white, Black, and Latino Utahns, yet we prioritize illegal immigrants over them? It’s time to set things straight and fix this problem once and for all.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

I think most of the principles were good principles. Though, the compact left off one very important detail — the treatment of Utahns by foreigners. They also need to treat us with dignity and respect. Our people’s well-being comes first. That should have been top priority on the compact.

Utah should be in control of its own immigration since the Biden administration is only interested in replacing us to steal more votes. Our first priority needs to be to employ Americans. Only after should we seek to use foreigners. I think we can help some of the illegal immigrants who have grown up here with certain privileges, but we need to enforce immigration and have a cut-off date for any and all privileges to prevent future illegal immigration.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

I recognize some illegal immigrants have family members who are citizens. I think we can help them stay with their family. But going forward, we need to end all privileges to prevent any future illegal immigration and stop rewarding behavior we don’t want. Every time we show compassion, we are taken advantage of and our people suffer as a result. It is time to give priority and compassion to the American people.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

My priority and allegiance are to the people of this great state. We deserve to live in neighborhoods where we and our children are safe, where we and our children have affordable housing and can grow up in peace and prosperity.

Democratic nominee

Brian King

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

We are a nation of immigrants. Our state has a long history of welcoming and embracing those who come to Utah looking to build a better life, especially because that’s how many of our pioneer ancestors ended up here. We must properly balance fair and enforceable border policies with compassion and community so that our country and our state can continue to be a place where decent, hard-working people of all backgrounds can thrive.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

The constitution is clear: immigration policy falls outside of the jurisdiction of the governor of Utah. The federal government has the responsibility of managing immigration and the border.

Unfortunately, partisanship and gridlock have blocked any real immigration reform for decades. As governor, I would strongly advocate for Congress to pass a bipartisan immigration reform package that would ensure safety and security, while also creating a realistic and attainable pathway to legal immigration and citizenship. The State of Utah also has an important role to play in supporting refugees and asylum-seekers who flee dangerous situations and come here in search of the American dream.

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

I do not support the recent Texas legislation, and, as governor, I would veto any similar legislation were it to pass here in Utah. It’s not only unconstitutional, but it’s just bad policy. It places the burden of enforcing federal immigration law on local law enforcement officers and judges who often lack the specialized training needed to do this work. Additionally, it adds more work for departments that often have limited resources to begin with.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

Yes, I strongly support the values and principles of the Utah Compact. It’s worth noting that the Utah Compact was reaffirmed in 2019 by many who originally signed it in 2011. Rather than continuing to be a culture war issue or a political football, immigration reform should be handled with the seriousness and deliberation it deserves. Any conversations about immigration should recognize our shared Utah values of community, respect, freedom, and opportunity. I also support any efforts in our state to ensure that immigrants who settle here can get gainful, meaningful work and build better lives for themselves and their families.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

I absolutely support a path to citizenship for “Dreamers.” This country is their home — they have families, careers, and businesses here. Our elected leaders should make it a priority to allow these hard-working folks to become American citizens and continue to contribute to the success of their communities.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

I believe that my view of immigration policy is in line with the majority of Utahns: I want to see Congress take real, bipartisan action to reform the immigration system, which has been used as a political prop for too long. Good immigration policies are not only in line with the basic principles of humanity, they are critically important for the economic growth of our country and state. I want to see a fair balance between security and fairness in our border policies. I also recognize that, as governor, my role would not be to create national immigration policy or fan the flames of culture wars, but rather to focus on how to best serve the needs of all Utahns.

Libertarian nominee

Rob Latham

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

Utahns may better enjoy the blessings of migration, along with improvements in boundary management technologies, by encouraging mutual aid societies and intentional communities to “underthrow” exploitative and regimented anti-migrant systems.

The State of Utah has already implemented practical measures at the margins, such as the Utah Pilot Sponsored Resident Immigrant Program, which resembles the invitation-sponsorship model advocated by libertarian economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Still, that program traps participants within Utah’s borders without a permission slip from the Department of Public Safety. “Papers, please?” A freed market in labor can develop superior and incorruptible solutions. A sign of humanity’s continued flourishing will be when humans become stateless.

And just as antebellum jurors helped nullify the predations of slave patrols, Utahns serving on juries can curb efforts at mass detention and deportation.

Q2. If you are governor, what would be the state’s proper role with respect to immigration?

Before statehood, Mormon pioneers fled the United States to an area within what was then the Mexican territory of Alta California — and is what we now call “Utah.” The State of Utah never had nor will ever have a proper role with respect to immigration, regardless of who claims to be its governor. I affirm every individual’s right to move about voluntarily and unmolested in a non-trespassory way. I oppose the transfer of funds extorted from taxpayers to immigrants for “welfare” or “resettlement payments.”

Q3. Do you support Texas legislation that would allow the state to detain and deport people in the country illegally? Would you support similar legislation in Utah?

Prudence counsels patience for a final decision on the ongoing judicial review of Texas’s Senate Bill 4 before considering similar legislation in Utah. Furthermore, the geographic separation between Utah and Texas disfavors making the federal government’s failure there a pressing need to wastefully expend funds extorted from taxpayers here.

Q4. In 2011, various groups signed the Utah Compact. Do you support the principles of the Compact? Do you support the guest worker legislation and driving privilege cards that were passed by the Utah Legislature?

The Utah Compact on Immigration contains laudable language about families, a free-market economy, and a free society. The Compact fails by relying on the same federal government that created the problem — and will be $36 trillion in debt by year’s end — to fix (along with socialized, perversely-incentivized, under-resourced, understaffed, and increasingly Potemkinized law enforcement agencies) what is broken and inhumane by design.

I do not support guest worker legislation because I do not support any legislation infringing on our right to work unrestricted. We all have a right to work peacefully and honestly. Similarly, I do not support driving privilege cards because driving should not be a privilege for anyone who has the permission of the owners of properties, such as thoroughfares, to operate a vehicle thereon. Neither driving privilege cards nor a driver license make one a safe driver, but they can restrict movement by operating as an internal passport. Profit-minded thoroughfare owners will only make their highways available to accredited drivers, and wise motorists will travel only on thoroughfares so regulated.

Q5. Do you believe there should be a path to citizenship or legal residency for the children of undocumented immigrants who were not born in but brought into the United States?

Pointing a ballot at a member of the political class will not change the channel, like some kind of electoral remote control, to a desired outcome. During a month-long study at an ashram, I learned about a swami who, believing that borders are only mental constructs to overcome, flew his “Peace Plane” over conflict zones in the early 1970s. Non-aggressive, direct actions will restore a world in which there are no passports, visas, or other papers required to cross borders before voting will.

Q6. What else should voters know about your views on immigration policy?

One of the key points of the Libertarian Party Radical Caucus, of which I have been a member, is “No Particular Order.” The point explains that “[t]he removal of one harmful government policy should never be held hostage for the removal of another, as this throws self-imposed barriers in the path of liberty and removes potential pressures for change. For example, saying that borders may be opened only after welfare is eliminated is unacceptable; the proper position is to push for both changes. Should we succeed in achieving open borders only to find that welfare burdens are increased, this should be used as an additional argument to abolish welfare.” I agree.

Unaffiliated candidate

Tom Tomeny

[Tomeny did not directly answer the questions. This is a portion of his reply.]

Q1. What are your priorities with respect to immigration?

The natural limit on immigration to both the U.S. and Utah is financial.

As we close the public purse, there can be less taxes and more freedom, which is proven to produce both prosperity and high growth. Fortunately, a system of less taxes and more freedom is something that exports well, and, as we set an example here in Utah for the U.S. and the rest of the world, other areas can and will emulate us and their populations will tend to stay where they are when they live under new regimes with more freedom, which produces more prosperity.

A governor’s job is to put forth a vision that is worthy of the people who are governed. My vision is of a frugal government that allows private individuals and institutions to voluntarily care for their neighbors, even newly arrived ones.

The “problem” of immigration has been created by the opening of the public purse. When we close the public purse, we open the door to immigrants who are self-reliant and can become wonderful citizens.

Editor’s Note: Gov Spencer Cox’s campaign provided their responses after the initial publication of this story. Those responses have been added above.

Hurricane • It may have included “empowering local voices” in its title, but the House Natural Resources Subcommittee’s field hearing chaired by Utah Congressman John Curtis on Monday was noticeable for who was excluded.

Not a single Democrat from the congressional committee attended the hearing at the outdoor Rock Bowl at Sand Hollow Resort. None of the environmental or conservation groups in attendance were invited to speak. Nor did the committee, which was following its “Washington, D.C., format,” take public comment.

Curtis, the lone committee member — Republican or Democrat — at the hearing, said every committee member was invited, but added the fact none of them attended was a matter of personal choice and said that they could still submit written testimony.

Environmental groups in attendance also were free to submit written comments to the committee. As for the public, Curtis noted, they could fill out comment cards or talk with him or other Republicans after the hearing.

In condemning what they called federal overreach and mismanagement of the state’s public lands, Curtis and fellow Utah Reps. Celeste Maloy and Blake Moore spoke with one voice. So did their five witnesses: Washington County Commissioner Adam Snow, Washington County Attorney Eric Clarke, Utah Department of Transportation Executive Director Carlos Braceras, Washington County Water Conservancy District general manager Zach Renstrom and local developer Darcy Stewart.

Federal overreach on North Corridor Highway

Speakers were especially united in condemning the Biden administration for its handling of the proposed four-lane North Corridor Highway, which would cut through 4.5 miles of prime Mojave Desert tortoise habitat in the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.

The right of way for the road was approved in January 2021 during the Trump administration, prompting a coalition of national and local environmental groups to sue the U.S. Department of Interior and the Bureau of Land Management for allegedly violating the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act, among other federal laws.

Citing issues with the initial environmental impact statement, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman put that approval on hold last November while federal agencies take another look at the proposed highway and conduct a supplemental environmental impact statement that would build upon the original.

In 2009, Congress enacted the Omnibus Public Land Management Act, which created the 45,000-acre Red Cliffs National Conservation Area in Washington County. The BLM was tasked to oversee the land and protect the area’s natural resources and desert tortoises.

Braceras said that the agreement authorized the construction of an east-west highway across the county and gave the BLM three years to create a travel management plan that included one or more alternatives to a northern corridor route. Witnesses said the BLM has failed to do either.

Maloy lauded Washington County for being a “poster child” for showing how to work with federal agencies in good faith to manage and maintain access to public lands. She blamed the BLM’s actions and the reversal on the North Corridor Highway on unelected bureaucrats. For his part, Commissioner Snow blamed shady backroom dealings between the Biden administration and “fringe environmental groups.”

Deep State trying to deep-six highway

“Pathetically, some fringe environmental groups weren’t happy with that cooperation and, unfortunately, it appears the deep state of unelected bureaucrats in D.C. will roll this back to score political points in an election year.” Snow said.

North Corridor Highway supporters argue the road is needed to ease traffic congestion in St. George. By the Dixie Metropolitan Planning Organization’s estimates, the highway would reduce traffic congestion in the area by up to 15%. Failure to build the highway, state and local officials have attested, will further tax the area’s transportation infrastructure and harm the economy.

Witnesses testified that failure to build the road also wouldn’t be great for tortoises. In 2021, Zone 6 was established on roughly 6,800-plus acres west of Bloomington and south of Sunbrook neighborhoods and added to the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve to offset the impact of the Northern Corridor. The land is separate from the rest of the reserve, which encompasses the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area.

Roughly half of the zone is BLM land, and the remainder is SITLA land. Clarke said Zone 6 protects between 500 and 1,000 of the endangered tortoises, compared to about 40 to 50 that would be impacted by building the North Corridor Highway. Moreover, he added, it adds 12 acres of habitat for every acre that would be impacted by the highway.

If the Biden administration blocks the highway, Clarke and others warn, it would open up 3,400 acres in Zone 6 to development.

“It is mind-blowing that people are willing to sacrifice so much habitat in order to prevent a congressionally authorized road,” Clarke said.

While discussion of the Northern Corridor dominated the hearing, it was one of a litany of complaints voiced by participants at the hearing. Curtis noted that roughly 90% of Washington County is owned by the federal government, which means residents are severely impacted by burdensome federal regulations and red tape.

Curtis said that impacts are especially severe with respect to affordable housing.

“If the federal government were to free up … less than one-tenth of 1% [of its land holdings] for residential development, housing would become newly affordable for 4.7 million Americans,” he said, citing a 2022 study by the U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee. “That would address 35% of Utah’s housing shortages.”

Curtis and Moore also took aim at the BLM’s new Public Lands Rule, which the agency implemented this month to restore balance on the nation’s public lands by protecting land health, establishing “restoration and mitigation leases” and clarifying protections for Areas of Critical Environmental Concern.

They argued the new rule would lock up grazing rights, limit mineral extraction and curtail recreational access to public lands. They further accused federal regulators of ignoring them and not giving them a voice in managing the state’s public lands.

Irony and hypocrisy

Unable to voice their opinion during the hearing, members of environmentalist and conservation groups had plenty to say after it concluded. They characterized the proceeding as a one-sided sham.

Conserve Southwest Utah Executive Director Holly Snow Canada noted the irony of participants complaining about not being heard by federal officials while excluding “local and indigenous” voices at the hearing. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance also took issue with how the hearing was conducted.

“Today’s partisan hearing was out of touch with local and national support for protecting public lands — especially the Red Cliffs National Conservation Area,” Travis Hammill, the Southern Utah Wilderness Association’s D.C. director, stated.

Conserve Southwest Utah officials said much of the testimony at the hearing was false. For example, they insist the 2009 Omnibus bill neither authorized a northern corridor road to be built nor required the BLM to designate a corridor in the Red Cliffs NCA. It only directs them to identify one or more alternatives to a northern transportation route in the county. In addition, they said, the 2021 Environmental Impact Statement found cheaper and more efficient alternatives to the North Corridor Highway.

Environmentalists further argued that half of Zone 6 is managed by the BLM and already protects desert tortoise and habitat as an area of critical concern and that SITLA can sell the remainder it owns to developers at any time. They dispute the contention that Zone 6 will lose its protections if the Northern Corridor is built.

“Holding the American public hostage by insisting they must allow a highway to be built through a congressionally mandated conservation area or else other tortoise habitat is on the chopping block, is [wrong],” said SUWA wild lands attorney Kya Marienfeld.

Equally ludicrous, Conserve Southwest Utah officials say, is Snow’s assertion that the “deep state” and “back-room deals with fringe environmentalist groups” are responsible for the BLM’s decisions concerning the Northern Corridor. They say the judge’s ruling and the supplemental environmental impact are the result of the mistakes federal agencies made in the original 2021 EIS.

Contrary to Clarke’s assertion that the highway would only impact 40 to 50 tortoises, environmentalists insist the road would negatively impact more than 350 adult tortoises in addition to juvenile tortoises. They maintain it also could spark more wildfires, which in 2020 devastated nearly 25% of tortoise habitat within Red Cliffs. Between 1999 and 2019, tortoise numbers in and surrounding the Red Cliffs NCA dropped 41%.

SUWA officials, in turn, blasted congressional officials’ criticism of the BLM’s public lands rule. “... The rule highlights what was always there: that conservation is an integral part of how the BLM tackles its work … Keeping conservation front and center is particularly important in places like Washington County and across Southwest Utah that are seeing both significant growth and the impacts of climate change such as prolonged drought and diminishing water supplies.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

All kinds of believers and nonbelievers have described brushes with death in which they briefly left their bodies to see and feel otherworldly elements. While most scientists say these “near-death experiences” are the product of neurons firing in particular ways under particular stress, many who are religious view them as objective encounters, occurring in space and time.

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints seem particularly intrigued by the way such experiences affirm their teachings of the afterlife and have rushed to buy the many books on the topic, including Betty Eadie’s 1992 bestseller, “Embraced by the Light,” and, more recently, John Pontius’ “Visions of Glory: One Man’s Astonishing Account of the Last Days.”

While Eadie’s book tapped into New Age Mormonism popular in the 1980s and ‘90s, “Visions of Glory” — and the writings of Chad Daybell, a Latter-day Saint writer in Idaho who has been accused of murder — seems to draw on apocalyptic and political speculations.

On this week’s show., historian Matthew Bowman, director of Mormon studies at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California and author of “The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill: Alien Encounters, Civil Rights, and the New Age in America,” discusses this genre and its implications in Latter-day Saint culture.

Listen to the podcast :

Athena Tongaonevai

School: Bountiful

Grade: Senior

Sport: Softball

When it comes to helping her pitcher, Bountiful catcher Athena Tongaonevai knows all the things that can help keep opponents’ bats at bay — like setting a good target, keeping the ball in front of her.

These are standard defensive measures to help a pitcher get a win. But Tongaonevai these days is thinking of offensive ways, too, and believes her current mindset is one reason she’s started off the season with eight home runs.

“What’s motivating me this year is that I know my pitcher is working really hard. Whenever we get back on offense, how am I backing up my pitcher?” she said. “How am I contributing to this win?”

The Redhawks have raced out to a 15-2 record, 8-0 in district, and pushed their winning streak to 11 straight with a recent victory over Viewmont.

Tongaonevai leads the team with a .538 batting average, with 26 RBIs to go with her homers.

Her home run total is already three more than she had all of last season.

“That one year has just totally made a difference, added to my experience,” said Tongaonevai, who added that getting one year older has benefited the whole team as well. “We’re doing well. We didn’t have very many seniors last year, so we didn’t have to go back to square one.”

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

During the height of the Pac-12 days, Utah and Washington waged war over California recruits. To the Utes staff, it felt like every time Huskies corners coaches Jimmy Lake or Keith Heyward got in front of a recruit, they’d steal a commitment.

“We battled for kid, after kid, after kid,” Utah cornerbacks coach Sharrieff Shah said.

Then, Shah had a breakthrough. He spotted a three-star corner named Sidney Jones out of West Covina, Calif. Shah got him on campus, sat him down in his office and Jones said, “Coach, I’m coming. I’m committing to Utah.”

Shah meticulously kept Jones away from Washington.

“I’m so fired up,” Shah recalled.

Then…

“He takes his trip to U-Dub, his official visit, and commits to U-Dub. Happens on the visit,” Shah said, shaking his head and laughing.

“I’m like Sidney, ‘What are you doing?’” Shah remembered almost pleading. “He goes, ‘Coach, I didn’t know I was going to love it.’ I’m like, ‘I did, that’s why I didn’t want you to go.’ ... Oh my, he about cut my heart out.”

Jones is now an NFL veteran — a second-round pick by the Philadelphia Eagles in 2017. The miss stuck with Shah. Not only because he loved Jones, but because any time an NFL player gets away, it lingers.

“I regret about six or seven kids that we didn’t go on [recruiting] that turned out to be NFL kids,” Utah running backs coach Quinton Ganther said. “It is a talent to evaluate talent.”

With the NFL draft this week, more scar tissue is about to be added for recruiters. These are the stories that already haunt Utah’s coaches.

Roman Wilson — Michigan, draft prospect

BYU wide receivers coach Fesi Sitake boarded a plane bound for Honolulu in 2018, thinking he was about to land a quarterback.

Jayden de Laura was a four-star prospect with offers from a few Power Five schools. He came from a football factory — the same high school as Marcus Mariota and Tua Tagovailoa. De Laura looked like an equally good prospect, winning a state title as a junior and the player of the year as a senior.

Behind him, there was an up-and-coming quarterback that BYU had its eyes on.

Sitake’s job was to put BYU in front on both recruiting paths.

But when he got there, he kept seeing a young receiver named Roman Wilson.

“When we saw Roman, we were like, ‘This guy can burn.’ He’s fast, we got on him,” Sitake said. “He was really skinny at the time. We got on with him early and had a great relationship.”

De Laura ended up going to Washington State. But Sitake was worried about Wilson. BYU invited him to campus. Before his junior season, Sitake offered him. It seemed like a risk. He didn’t have the stats to support it.

That changed quickly. By the end of his junior year, Oregon, Michigan and UCLA all came on board. BYU was out of the running and Sitake knew it.

“He started to blow up,” he said. “... You always think you are close to someone. I don’t know if Roman was truly considering BYU. I don’t know if Roman would have actually come. So my near-misses are more like, we were on them first. Developed a pretty good relationship.”

Wilson is now one of the best receiving prospects in this year’s draft. He won a national title at Michigan and logged 1,707 yards and 20 touchdowns as a Wolverine.

George Kittle — San Francisco 49ers

Weber State head coach Ron McBride had an ace in the hole, so to speak, when it came to Oklahoma recruiting.

If BYU’s problem was it couldn’t hang with the blue bloods, WSU’s issue was its cash-strapped recruiting operation. Weber didn’t have the resources to hop on planes and get recruits from all over the country.

But McBride hired one of his former players, Kamaal Ahmad, as a workaround. Ahmad was from Oklahoma and played for McBride at Kentucky. He had a knack for evaluating talent. So McBride would send him on a one-way ticket back to his home state and let him work for weeks at a time.

He’d drive his parents’ car. “He’d stay at his grandma’s house or stay at his dad’s house,” McBride said. “So we could recruit down there and it wouldn’t cost us a lot of money. ... Not having to pay for food, a car, lodging.”

For the first time, Weber State was getting recruits from outside the region with consistency.

In Oklahoma, Ahmad found George Kittle. He was playing in Norman, Okla. He had offers from Air Force and Navy. Weber got in on the action early.

But the staff quickly found out about Kittle’s connections to Iowa. His father won a Rose Bowl with the Hawkeyes and his mother was a Hall of Fame high school athlete. When Iowa eventually offered, Kittle signed and became one of the best tight ends of all time.

Still, the unique recruiting strategy of cutting costs helped. McBride did the same thing to recruit Hawaii.

“We hired the Kaufisis and different people that worked at the airlines. They can fly to Hawaii for free. And they could stay relatives there,” McBride said, chuckling.

They may have missed Kittle, but they punched above their weight class.

Trent McDuffie — Kansas City Chiefs

If the Sidney Jones’ recruiting war was a “stab in the neck” as Shah put it, the Trent McDuffie sweepstakes were even harder to swallow.

For a long time, the future Super Bowl champion was a Utah recruit. He was a slightly undersized out of St. John Bosco in California, but he was a dynamic kick returner with speed and strength.

Shah went out to California and met McDuffie’s father. The relationship grew so strong that McDuffie visited Utah on his own dime. Shah practically landed him.

“In my office, I had a great meeting with his dad. Loved this kid and he was saying, ‘Man, Coach, I could see myself at Utah,’” Shah remembered.

“He ended up going to Washington. And I’m like, ‘Wait what? How did that happen?”

Washington won another recruiting battle. Shah got another recruiting scar.

“You try not to get calloused over it and have the belief that, ‘Ah, it will be OK,” Shah said. “If this kid says he likes it, he really likes it. ... If he says he is committed, he really is. Maybe. I hope.

“But every recruiting class there’s somebody you love. You invest your time. And then it’s, ‘Coach, I just wanted to tell you …’”

Mykal Walker — Atlanta Falcons

Long after McBride left Weber and Jay Hill took over, WSU had another chance to land an NFL talent.

Then-running backs coach Quinton Ganther was in California scouting and saw an under-recruited inside linebacker.

Mykal Walker was coming out of Vacaville High School. He wasn’t ranked by 247Sports. But the measurables were there at 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds. Not to mention, Vacaville had molded NFL linebackers before. Zach Nash was drafted by the Cardinals in 2013.

Ganther came back to Ogden and pounded the table. Walker would come, he said, if they offered.

“We turned him down,” Ganther said. “It wasn’t my position, so I didn’t have the last say.”

Walker ended up going to Azusa Pacific. He recorded 40 tackles, a sack and an interception as a freshman. The next year he had 102 tackles and two picks. He transferred to Fresno State and was a fourth-rounder picked by the Falcons.

In Walker’s case, it was the staff that did Ganther in.

“A lot of times, guys want their guys. It’s just how it works,” he said.

Still ...

“That was a miss that kicks me in my a--,” Ganther lamented.

The Post District — a mixed-use development at the western edge of downtown Salt Lake City — is set to hold its grand opening on Thursday, May 2, and it’s already welcoming customers to the restaurant, brewery and coffee shop that have opened within its borders.

But a few restaurants and one bar are yet to come online.

Here is an update on the food and drink businesses that have already opened and are scheduled to open eventually in this high-end neighborhood, which is spread over nearly a full city block between 500 South and 600 South from 300 West to 400 West.

Urban Hill • 510 S. 300 West, Suite 100; 385-295-4200; Urban-Hill.com • This fine-dining restaurant, operated by the Park City proprietors of Hearth and Hill and Hill’s Kitchen, opened in 2022. Executive chef Nick Zocco was named as a regional finalist for 2024 in the esteemed James Beard awards earlier this month.

Level Crossing Brewing Company • 550 S. 300 West, Suite 100; 385-295-4090; LevelCrossingBrewing.com • The second location for this South Salt Lake-based brewery opened last summer.

Urban Sailor Coffee • 570 S. 300 West, Suite 100; UrbanSailorCoffee.com • Visit this outpost of the Sugar House-based specialty coffee shop in the leasing office for the Post District, and get a look at the motorcycle espresso bar that started it all.

Sunday’s Best • 550 S. 300 West, Suite 200; BrunchMeHard.com • The second location for the Sandy-based all-day brunch restaurant Sunday’s Best is still under construction, but is set to open sometime this year. In March, Sunday’s Best was approved by the Salt Lake City Planning Commission to put a bar called Sunday School on the second floor of the Post District location.

Mensho Ramen • 550 S. 300 West, Suite 101; Mensho.com • The first Utah location of this chain founded by Japanese ramen master Tomoharu Shono is under construction and is set to open sometime this year.

Dangerous Pretzel • 352 W. 600 South; DangerousPretzel.com • This eatery that will eventually serve soft pretzels and beer is under construction. A representative for the business said they hope to be open in the next two to three months and will announce an official opening date soon.

Cluck Truck • Instagram: @clucktruckutah • This Utah food truck specializing in fried chicken and fries has signed a lease to build their first physical location at the Post District.

Melancholy Wine & Cocktail Lounge • This new bar has signed a lease but other details are scarce. Signage is up on a building in the Post District.

Utah sportscasters are crowing about 41 brand new nights of professional hockey entertainment hosted by the Delta Center to add on top of the 41 existing nights of professional basketball entertainment based there. Yep, that’s exactly what we need to do to add to high school and college sports programming, recreational league sports programming and personal exercise and healthy living programming.

One can forgive single-minded sportscasters for not being able to even conceive why Smith Entertainment Group’s new fandom initiative may not be the social, educational and economic boon they say it will be for the “downtown core” or the citizenry at large. Sports is their job, their passion, their Golden Calf, the only thing they know much about.

But actual news anchors, church leaders, democracy-minded politicians, wise business leaders and academicians and economists might come to a different conclusion if they gave it more than a moment’s thought. Isn’t this just another way to transfer Utah working family income into the hands of a billionaire and draw folks away from the family food table to the restaurant table?

The project will require a huge amount of public tax dollars to be taken out of Utahns’ paychecks. It will take away from expenditure of discretionary time in adult continuing education, homework and school-based dance and drama nights for high schoolers, political organizing time for democracy, volunteer time for nonprofits, church social time and college education savings for youth.

Yep, that’s what we need to do in a time of crisis in our state and nation, bury our heads ever deeper in the sand.

Kimball Shinkoskey, Woods Cross

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Animal agriculture is an environmental disaster. The Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 14.5% of all harmful greenhouse gas emissions is due to raising animals for food — a greater share than the amount contributed by all of our personal automobiles put together. The Great Salt Lake is disappearing because water is being diverted to grow alfalfa, a thirsty crop being grown in the desert. Alfalfa is produced only for animal feed.

Wild spaces throughout the U.S. and beyond are depopulated of indigenous species, especially predators, to transform the landscape to accommodate grazing livestock. Large-scale deforestation, particularly in regions like the Amazon rainforest, is similarly driven by the expansion of pastureland and cultivation of feed crops like soybeans for livestock.

Animal agriculture also threatens the globe with another deadly pandemic, due to the misuse of antibiotics as a growth promoter and the extreme overcrowding that exists on modern cruel factory farms.

Given this, I was surprised and disappointed to see that The Salt Lake Tribune highlighted only meat-serving restaurants in its recent “Earth Day” restaurant feature. Salt Lake City is home to many other wonderful all-vegan establishments, owned and managed by people who are trying to feed our community the best food while causing the least harm. This includes two restaurants I own and manage, Buds and Monkeywrench, which are proudly and forever vegan due to our ethical commitment to both the planet and the animals. I hope The Tribune will consider a follow-up piece that highlights some of our amazing vegan establishments in Salt Lake City.

This could also provide readers with important information about how animal agriculture causes profound harm and practical tips on how we can all help be part of the solution by choosing to eat vegan.

Roxy Carlson, Salt Lake City

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What are we to make of Zach Wilson now?

Can we get back to you on that?

The former BYU quarterback receives his second chance, as of this week, in Denver. Or is it his third or fourth chance? Or given the messed-over state of offensive affairs with the New York Jets, is this now his first real chance to be an NFL quarterback?

I really don’t know and maybe nobody knows, although many observers seem pretty convinced that the former BYU star has been nothing short of a bust, a waste of a No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 draft. And the conditions of Wilson’s trade to the Broncos confirm that.

Denver acquired the services of Wilson, along with a seventh-round draft pick, in exchange for a sixth-round pick. That’s how low the former Cougar has fallen. No. 2 overall for No. 203 overall. Man, it’s been a tough three years for Wilson, a time during which he was handed the starter’s job in New York, a job that was eventually taken away as the offense nosedived and the team flopped. Has beens and no names replaced him. A future Hall of Famer replaced him, then got hurt, sending Wilson back into the fire, but thereafter, he struggled more — with injuries, with lousy game-planning and play-calling, with a sieve of an offensive line, with exposed entitlement, with embarrassment, with the kind of general play that gets an NFL quarterback downgraded, disrespected and sent into a bin of other sorry pro QBs whose run — no, whose crash and burn — is better forgotten than remembered.

Some want to defend Wilson, including a number of his former teammates, while others, including a number of his former teammates, are glad to be done with the baby-faced prince who would have been king, but … no, he wouldn’t.

Not on Broadway.

It’s easy to blame the Jets for their track record of picking once-prized college quarterbacks and then ruining them. It’s what the Jets do. And it’s part of what they did with Wilson. A new head coach, an inexperienced offensive coordinator who was clueless, offensive personnel sent out to surround him that were a young quarterback’s nightmare. And the win-loss record and Wilson’s stats and passer ratings, as well as his overall persona on the field, are classic exhibits of a quarterback who was overwhelmed and just plain shook.

He looked the opposite of what he was and did at BYU, during the season that placed him on a rocket to ride, a season during which the Cougars mostly torched subpar competition. But Wilson gave the appearance that year of a seasoned signal-caller whose comfort zone and confidence could not be diminished or doubted. He was the man.

In New York, he was just a boy. A lost boy pretending to be something he wasn’t. There were occasional glimpses of his former glory, moments where arm talent and off-script savvy shined through. There were other times that must have been difficult for BYU fans to watch, times when Wilson’s confidence was shot, his abilities buried back at LaVell Edwards Stadium. If he could ever smooth the ride, he might yet be the quarterback optimists thought he was destined to be.

Again, even in hindsight it’s hard to tell what specifically ate him alive. Was it the bright lights of the Big Apple and the pressure that comes along with them? Was it the Jets’ organizational ineptitude? Was it his inability to drop back like a normal QB, set his feet and spin spirals to receivers who would actually catch them, without having to run for his life because nobody on the Jets knew how to delay defensive pressure? Was it simply because Wilson can’t play?

Well. Let’s say it this way: Folks who coach and evaluate talent around the NFL for a living, as mentioned, were hardly scurrying about for a chance to trade for Wilson, once it was made public that the Jets were allowing him to seek a trade. Other quarterbacks were acquired long before the Broncos gave up the little they did for Wilson. Did we make note that the Jets will pay half of the quarterback’s salary over the next season?

All of which writes out a disaster of a story for Zach Wilson. Or … it sets up the perfect tale of redemption. If he shows strong in Denver, sports a hungry and humble attitude, reaches out to his teammates, studies the schemes, utilizes his brain and his arm, both working diligently and settling in, he might just have a chance, one more chance to climb through the ruins of reclamation to prove he belongs.

The Broncos are short on quarterbacks, something they’ve been ever since Peyton left the place, and now they have Jarrett Stidham. There’s been talk that they might draft a quarterback in the days ahead, but with the 12th overall pick, team officials have said they have too many other needs to … what’s this, waste a pick on a QB who can’t help them?

If Wilson reshapes himself from waste to warrior in Denver, it will be the kind of narrative nobody will want to forget. If he demonstrates more of the same, his name and game will be what nobody will remember, whether they want to or not.

This story is part of The Salt Lake Tribune’s ongoing commitment to identify solutions to Utah’s biggest challenges through the work of the Innovation Lab. [Subscribe to our newsletter here.]

Childhood poverty rates improved overall in Utah between 2021 and 2022, based on the most recent U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

But in a handful of Utah’s school districts, the number of kids living in households making less than the poverty threshold increased by double-digit percentages.

Two school districts — one with an estimated decrease in childhood poverty, and another with an estimated increase — said they use different data to track how many children are economically disadvantaged.

Those data are based on the federal poverty level, instead of the poverty threshold, and also often depend on people applying for such programs as free and reduced-price lunch.

Alpine School District added they don’t typically analyze what’s causing changes in income levels, but instead focus on providing “the very best educational experiences available.”

Poverty spiked in six districts, mostly in rural parts of Utah

The childhood poverty rate in Utah decreased by 0.3% between 2021 and 2022, according to data from the Census Bureau’s Small Area Income and Poverty Program.

That program uses poverty thresholds to provide estimates of income and poverty for the administration of federal programs and the allocation of federal funds to local jurisdictions.

Between 2021 and 2022, the number of children aged 5 to 17 living in households experiencing poverty also decreased by about 2%.

That wasn’t true for every district, though. The childhood poverty rate increased in 21 of 41 districts, though mostly by less than 5%.

Within the boundaries of six districts — Box Elder and Davis in northern Utah; North Sanpete, South Sanpete and Wayne in central Utah; and Washington County in St. George — the number of school-aged children living in poverty and the poverty rate both jumped at least 10%.

In three of those districts, it jumped more than 30%.

Other districts saw major improvement, including Grand County and Kane County in southern Utah; Morgan in the north; North Summit, east of the Wasatch Mountains; and Tintic in the central part of the state.

San Juan School District, in southeast Utah, still has the worst poverty rate at 27% but improved from 2021 to 2022.

Some school districts — such as Beaver School District, in southwest Utah, and Uintah School District, in the northeast part of the state — had fewer children living in poverty within their boundaries, but have an increased rate because fewer school-age kids live there.

Lunch program, homelessness data show different trends

Yet school districts track numbers differently.

They primarily collect data on families’ income through the National School Lunch Program application process, said Rich Stowell, spokesperson for Alpine School District.

That program uses the federal poverty level (FPL) as a base, with students qualifying for free lunch if household income is 130% of the FPL, and a reduced-priced lunch if it’s 185%.

The federal poverty level and poverty threshold can vary by hundreds of dollars or more a year.

For the 2022 poverty estimates, the official Census Bureau poverty threshold for a family of four with two related children under age 18 was $29,678, compared with $30,000 set by the 2023 federal poverty guidelines.

Census Bureau numbers also are based on where a child lives, not where they go to school.

That can lead to some widely varied data on childhood poverty.

For example, about 15,000 Alpine School District students were considered “economically disadvantaged” in 2021, and that increased to more than 17,000 in 2022 before coming back down to about 15,000 in 2023.

But Census Bureau estimates indicate about 5,276 school-age children within Alpine School District’s boundaries lived in poverty in 2021, and that number decreased to 4,673 in 2022.

Steven Dunham, spokesperson for Washington School District in St. George, nodded to a potential flaw in the data related to the lunch program.

The district’s rate of students on free and reduced-rate lunch decreased despite Census Bureau data indicating the rate of childhood poverty decreased.

Yet the lunch program is dependent on families applying. The decrease could reflect “the difficulty of getting parents to fill out the free and reduced form after two years of not having to,” Dunham said.

Dunham provided other data that indicates the number of Washington School District students experiencing homelessness is increasing.

The final-day count decreased from 617 in 2021 to 595 in 2022. It then increased to 762 last year, which is close to the increase in the Census Bureau’s poverty estimate.

The district’s unhoused county was at 884 as of late March.

Where to get help

While Census Bureau poverty thresholds help dictate how the federal government doles out money, families don’t have to make less than those levels to qualify for help.

Utah has several child nutrition programs, including free and reduced-rate lunch.

The Teen Center Project provides food and other essentials, like showers and laundry, and is working to expand statewide.

The federal government maintains a list of other programs in Utah that help with everything from child care to energy costs to nutrition.

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.

The Salt Lake City specialty coffee shop Urban Sailor Coffee is truly a family business — with five members of the same family working there.

Tyler Anderson and his son Archer co-founded the company. Archer’s older brother, Levi, is the head roaster, and their younger brothers, Canon and Burton, are baristas at the cafe’s locations at, respectively, 1327 E. 2100 South (across the street from Sugar House Park) and 570 S. 300 West (in the Post District).

Starting a coffee shop had been on Tyler Anderson’s mind as far back as about 2007, he said, when he created a Pinterest board full of ideas for a future cafe. And he’s had a passion for coffee even longer, as someone who would frequent coffee shops in his travels, he said.

But Tyler didn’t seriously consider starting a coffee shop until the pandemic, when Archer was furloughed from his job and moved back in with his dad. The two brainstormed ideas and came up with the plan to start a coffee business.

They wanted something mobile that could travel to events. Tyler had seen an espresso machine on a sidecar motorcycle in Portland, Oregon, and that inspired father and son to do something similar.

They bought a sidecar motorcycle and built it out, adding walnut countertops and a small handwashing sink, as required by the health department. The sidecar was filled with all of the pumps and water tanks they needed to make the mobile espresso setup work. Archer would ride the motorcycle to different locations, followed by a support vehicle, which would carry the espresso machine, grinder and other equipment.

“We launched it in May of 2021 with our first event, and it was pretty quickly a success,” Tyler Anderson said. “We got asked to do a whole bunch of other events that spring and summer.”

In 2021, Archer often rode the motorcycle coffee bar to Liberty Heights Fresh, where a lot of people discovered Urban Sailor Coffee, he said. The next year, they would frequent the Downtown Farmers Market. They even put the motorcycle on a trailer and towed it to serve concertgoers at a music festival in Montana.

Now, Urban Sailor Coffee employs 10 people beyond the Anderson family, and half of them have been there for more than two years.

‘Canada’s greatest stuntman’

Last year, Urban Sailor Coffee got their name out there in a big way, thanks to two videos they posted on Instagram.

In 2022, Urban Sailor Coffee was invited to serve coffee from their motorcycle espresso bar in Moab. That’s where AMC’s motorcycle-centric TV show “Ride With Norman Reedus” was filming the premiere of its sixth season, with the host, Reedus (one of the stars of “The Walking Dead”), and fellow actor Keanu Reeves.

In the red-rock desert, Archer and Tyler Anderson had a surprise for Reeves. Along with their espresso machine, they brought a replica of the Canadian motorcycle-riding Duke Caboom toy, based on the character Reeves voiced in the movie “Toy Story 4.”

Reeves’ reaction to seeing the toy on the coffee cart is priceless: He excitedly picks up the toy and, after making Duke do a backflip, he turns to face the camera and says (in the character’s voice): “Canada’s greatest stuntman, Duke Caboom.”

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A friend got the whole exchange on video, as well as a moment where Reeves holds up his cup of coffee and says “Urban Sailor Coffee” before tapping it against Norman Reedus’ cup.

When the episode of “Ride With Norman Reedus” came out in 2023 and Urban Sailor Coffee was finally allowed to post the videos, both went viral. The video with the Duke Caboom toy got about 5.5 million plays and almost half a million likes on Instagram, Tyler Anderson said.

In the caption for the Reedus video — which has been played just under 2 million times and is still getting views — Urban Sailor Coffee wrote, “This has become the absolute highlight of the year for our humble coffee business!”

Visitors to Urban Sailor Coffee’s Sugar House location can see the Duke Caboom toy that Reeves played with — and later signed — on a shelf behind the register.

Creating a ‘gathering spot’

Urban Sailor Coffee’s Sugar House cafe, which has been open since December 2021, is an inviting haunt that’s perfect for enjoying some coffee and a treat on a rainy day.

In his neighborhood above Westminster University, Tyler Anderson said, “I just felt like there wasn’t what I was looking for in a coffee shop close to me,” so he and his son Archer created one.

Tyler Anderson said he purposefully chose a location without a drive-thru, even though so many coffee places have them.

“Whether it’s Dutch Bros or a Starbucks, they’ve kind of gotten away from some of their sit-down coffee shops and put up a lot more just drive-thru coffee shops, and just trying to pump through more drinks,” he said. “I really wanted to get back to more of a traditional sit-down coffee shop, where it was kind of a gathering spot for the neighborhood.”

The walls, painted dark green, contrast coolly against the warm leather couches and chairs, as well as the wood of the bar and tables. The south side of the cafe is made up of windows, so natural light streams in.

Anderson said he wanted the cafe to have a vibe that’s “moody” but “cozy,” with ceramic cups and good-tasting coffee. “It was like trying to create that experience where I could approach more of the connoisseurs of coffee that appreciate that kind of stuff,” while still being accessible, he said.

In mid-2022, Urban Sailor Coffee bought a roastery, and now they roast all their coffee out of the back of Mountain West Cider in Salt Lake City’s Marmalade neighborhood.

Roasting is where Levi Anderson gets to showcase his talents, Tyler Anderson said. “He’s a very analytical person. And he gets into all the roast profiles, and it’s very data driven,” Tyler said.

The two of them roast together, and as they work, Tyler tastes everything, fine-tuning the flavors. “We’ve landed on some blends that people really seem to love,” he said.

In addition to ordering Urban Sailor Coffee’s single-origin coffees and blends from UrbanSailorCoffee.com, customers can now also find their coffee at Liberty Heights Fresh.

Urban Sailor Coffee opened their second cafe in the Post District in 2023. Sharing space with the leasing office, the Post District location is where Urban Sailor Coffee’s motorcycle espresso bar is parked when it’s not being taken to events.

Tyler Anderson said the community that has formed around Urban Sailor Coffee is “not something I thought was going to be important to me, but it’s become more important to me than probably anything.”

In the beginning, it was all about the coffee, he said. But now, “my passion now is shifting to the fact that I’ve been able to do this with my four sons and spend a whole lot of quality time with them.”

Visitors have used motorized vehicles to experience the red rocks of Glen Canyon National Recreation Area since it was established. But that mobility has a cost, according to environmentalists, to the landscape itself.

Thanks to a recent settlement, the National Park Service must now revise its rules for off-road vehicles to restrict them within the protected area.

In 2021, the NPS published a rule expanding off-road vehicle use throughout the national recreation area. The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance (SUWA) and the National Parks Conservation Association, both environmental nonprofits, sued the agency over the rule.

The nonprofits argued that off-road vehicles caused water pollution, soil erosion, wildlife disturbances, habitat destruction and conflicts between motorized and nonmotorized recreators. The 2021 rule, according to the nonprofits, threatened to “degrade and permanently damage the wild lands within Glen Canyon.”

On April 10, the National Park Service reached a settlement with the nonprofits. The revised final rule will restrict motorized use on Lake Powell’s shorelines and prohibit off-road vehicle use in a portion of the Orange Cliffs Special Management Unit. The settlement does not impact recreation on Lake Powell.

“We hope that this new final rule will result in a better balance between off-road vehicle use and the opportunities to seek solace and primitive recreation,” said Hanna Larsen, a staff attorney for the SUWA. “Having a better balance of these different types of recreation better suits the purpose of the recreation area.”

Some off-road vehicle users find the settlement terms unfair. “Glen Canyon is a national recreation area,” said Ben Burr, executive director for the BlueRibbon Coalition, an off-roading and recreation advocacy nonprofit. “It should be managed for recreation.”

Glen Canyon National Recreation Area spans 1.25 million acres in northern Arizona and southeastern Utah. About 13% of that acreage is covered by Lake Powell, but as the reservoir shrinks due to climate change, more land emerges.

Environmentalists have voiced concerns that Lake Powell’s expanding shorelines would become play areas for off-road vehicles. The revised rule will respond by setting specific elevations at which shorelines are open or closed to motorized use.

The revised rule also will clarify that off-road vehicles can only be used to travel to a shoreline and back, like for putting watercraft in the lake, in shoreline areas. One exception is in the Lone Rock Beach Play Area, which is designated for off-road vehicle use.

The nonprofits also took issue with a provision in the 2021 rule that allowed off-road vehicles in the Orange Cliffs Special Management Unit, which borders Canyonlands National Park.

The settlement requires the NPS to prohibit off-road vehicle use on an 8-mile portion of the Poison Springs Loop within the Orange Cliffs.

“That’s a highly valuable route that is already used by all kinds of motorized users,” Burr said. “As long as they’re following the rules and there aren’t abundant instances of negative impacts, I think they should still be open for use. That’s what we’ll be advocating for.”

The NPS must publish the revised rule no later than Jan. 10, 2025. There will be a 60-day public comment period before the revised rule is finalized.

Some knew Melissa Inouye through her groundbreaking scholarship on the global history of Christianity. Some discovered her through her deeply personal books and sermons on finding God amid the hard stuff of life. Still others (“mostly people in their 70s and 80s,” she joked) learned of the historian for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from her regular appearances on the weekly program “Come Follow Up,” where she brightly offered deeply thought analysis heavy on analogy.

Inouye died Tuesday of cancer at age 44. Five days before, The Salt Lake Tribune spoke with her about hope, faith and one of her personal heroes, the late Latter-day Saint leader Chieko Okazaki. This conversation, which Inouye asked to be held until after her death, has been edited for length and clarity.

What is Mormonism? What is the core message?

Probably the weekly ward [congregational] meetings and activities, people getting together to spend time together in the context of their covenants to follow Christ.

Are there any parts or teachings that have become more important to you as you get closer to death?

You would think that some things, some teachings, would kind of come out and become more and more solid. But, actually, I think for me, it’s gotten me closer and closer to an understanding of what we don’t know. For example, the afterlife, the politics of sealings and the numbers that we use. Are we sure there’s only three places where people go? The politics of who can do what, who can be sealed, blah, blah, blah. I think many times, actually, the truth is we don’t really understand a lot about that.

I have a rock-solid testimony of the local Mormon ward. We’ve just gotten so much help and support from a variety of people with different capacities, and we have to come together to help.

I remember during the pandemic, especially the early pandemic, we had just been in our ward for a few months, so I didn’t know people that well. And I remember looking with resentment at the ward organist. She was up there without a mask, spewing COVID into the air. And I thought that she was probably someone I didn’t want to get to know.

Then I had a really bad weekend and during the course of it I started to sing to myself [the Latter-day Saint hymn that goes], “Now let us rejoice in the day of salvation. No longer as strangers on earth need we roam.” This was originally written by the Saints, and when they’re saying, “all that was promised, the Saints will be given,” they were saying that because so many things had been promised and they hadn’t seen them yet, but they sang “now let us rejoice” anyway.

So that was one of my songs I would sing to myself to cheer myself up on this really sad weekend. The next day it was a Sunday morning. And we walked in and the organist was playing, “Now Let Us Rejoice.”

It just made me feel a little seen by God. And then it turns out she became one of the absolute champions of my family during my illness. She was actually just here this morning. Such a beautiful thing about Mormonism is that it creates these really strong communities where people take liberties with each other because they assume a kinship, which one doesn’t normally assume in secular society. And because you just spend so much time with people — these mutual, entangling interactions that help you get to know people and support them in different ways.

What message would you like to leave with Latter-day Saints who are struggling?

Lots of people have come to me confused. They’re in the middle of a faith crisis, or faith transition, and they’re trying to reconcile what they’ve grown up thinking and what they see, and they perceive a disconnect. They want to keep on being the kinds of people they were taught to be and still stay in an institution that’s imperfect.

I never tell people they should leave or stay. That’s a pretty personal decision, but I think so often we overlook the things that actually make us really cool.

Say you went through a faith crisis and you lose trust in the institution and this long-standing pride you had in being part of Christ’s one true church. But that’s not what I would say is the most beautiful and life-giving thing about Mormonism. I would say it’s about the relationships we have with people who are different from us, relationships that are involuntary and sometimes even forced.

If you really believe that people are children of God and that there is a God who loves us, then, in some ways, being in a flawed, local Latter-day Saint institution is the best possible way to know God.

In so many ways in 21st-century life, we have isolated ourselves from our brothers and sisters, depending on our own individualistic and ideological preferences. I don’t think the point of life is to have individualism and ideology. I think the point of life is to do good, to serve and to learn how it feels to love and be loved on a scale that’s larger than yourself. And I have found that many times within a Latter-day Saint context. And I think that’s a really precious thing.

When people are struggling, it’s still hard because our experiences are so local. We could have a local leader who doesn’t understand where someone’s coming from, and that can really change things. But I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced Mormonism in many different places and contexts, and the common denominator I find is the beauty of those communities.

What is your wildest dream for Mormonism?

We have huge potential to change the world because of the financial resources, and, connected to that, the global logistical and administrative networks that we have. And, connected to that, the local, on-the-ground manpower and womenpower that we have.

We could do so much good if [the women’s organization] Relief Society, for example, were in charge of distributing our humanitarian aid and could coordinate those local projects in their areas. Or if, for example, to preserve some sort of complementarian difference but to make sure that women had significant power, if men were in charge of like the sacerdotal priesthood — you know, call the men for the ordinances type things — and women were in charge of the finances, then we would have a true kind of codependent relationship.

If you wanted money for the upcoming Young Men’s camp trip, you would go to the Relief Society president and she would check the books. And if you needed someone baptized, you would go to elders.

It would be a kind of mutual dependency that would engender respect. Right now that kind of balance does not exist in Mormonism because it’s a very patriarchal system — not only in its theology but also in its cultural and corporate practices. If you look at the 25 departments of the church, only the human resources head is female. In a culture like that, it’s just not possible to have normal, respectful relationships between men and women.

The Church History Department is so awesome because it has its own subculture created by people who have gone abroad and studied at other universities and who’ve learned about how other major systems can affect human relationships around the world — people who know that problems in the past are not so scary, know that history shakes out in a way that is often very contingent and isn’t inevitable. And you put all those things together and you get a department where I think the working relationships between men and women are very good.

In most of the other departments of the church, there’s a much more paternalistic culture of condescension, a culture of not listening to women. I have a colleague, whom I won’t name, who worked in the normal world before coming to the church. She has a Ph.D. and she’s just been shocked by how she’s been treated since coming to work for the church corporation.

A lot of it comes down to a kind of lazy fallback on an exclusivist excuse, which is, well, “We’re the one true church. We’re Jesus’ church. So we’re the best.” But I don’t think that’s how Jesus likes to have his participation and support of the church invoked, as a way to to stop un-Christlike and disrespectful behaviors.

And again, let me emphasize, this is not in my department. They’re really cool.

What could we do better as a faith community?

People have to work harder to preserve the words of dead Mormon women.

There’s this built-in preservation going on when you have male apostles who serve for life. If someone has been in the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and the First Presidency for like, 40 years, everyone knows that person’s name. They know their voice. They know what kinds of jokes they tell.

But the structure means that we don’t have that same intimacy, familiarity or longevity for female leaders. It’s not like women haven’t been saying impressive, helpful, spiritual things for years. It’s just that different women have been saying it. And so people forget.

[Former Relief Society counselor] Sharon Eubank, for example, is one of the most eloquent speakers we have with so much real-world experience with Christian discipleship. We have to make sure that her wisdom doesn’t just expire. So I make it a policy that in each one of my talks I give, I quote Sharon Eubank at least once, and I quote [former Relief Society counselor] Chieko Okazaki at least once.

If you read Chieko Okazaki’s books, they are so prescient. They are so relevant. She’s like a prophetess. She’s just a beautiful teacher and speaker. It’s such a shame that, because of the particular patriarchal administrative structures of our church, they are forgotten.

And then you have an ironic situation in which you have a church that insists in the political/cultural sphere that it’s important for children to have a father and a mother, how they are entitled to the different things a father and a mother bring. And yet essentially the church [members] are raised by men only in terms of spiritual nourishment and in reference to God. We have Heavenly Father-ized God when our own doctrine is that God is a Heavenly Father and a Heavenly Mother.

If we want our own rhetoric to hold up that children are entitled to the different kinds of parenting and teaching that different kinds of people bring, we need to find ways to preserve and perpetuate women’s voices and the respect for our Mother in Heaven.

Also, this is kind of silly, but after [the Latter-day Saint historian and scholar] Kate Holbrook died, I made up a formula. And that is: If someone dies at the ages of 60 and up, it’s OK to just go to their funeral and say what great people they are. If someone dies between the ages of 35 and 60, however, it’s not enough to just memorialize them. It’s everyone’s job to perpetuate those people’s work since they didn’t have time to finish it.

Which is very self-serving, of course, but I did come up with it when it was Kate and not me.

What do you feel like your most meaningful contribution has been to the faith community as a scholar, as a writer, as a person?

I’ve helped to push work on Mormon studies outside of North America.

In 2017, I founded the Global Mormon Studies research network. Before then, you would have all these Mormon History Association panels that were about Joseph Smith, Missouri wars and the Book of Mormon translation. These standard sort of American-y things. And then you would have one panel and it had, like, Saints in Thailand, Saints in Turkey, Saints in Taiwan — and were mashed together and there’s nothing really holding them together thematically except for the fact that they weren’t about the United States.

The Global Mormon Studies research network is trying to expand that. And if you look at the programs at places like MHA now, you’ll see much more international diversity. That was obviously not just like me single-handedly bringing scholars into being. There were already a lot more scholars recently who have language skills and background in regions and cultures who are able to apply that to the study of Mormonism.

And the second thing is that — as is really common in any old boy’s network, which the church tends to be because of its patriarchal structure, and also the related institutions — people tapped people they knew. There was no way for someone younger coming in to make themselves known. So you ended up with the same people over and over again.

One of the things the research had was a website where you could put up a profile and announce yourself and the work you were doing and what institution you were at. That was a much more egalitarian, inclusive approach to scholarship. So now if you’re organizing a conference on a certain topic or region, you can go to that database.

This May they’re going to be holding a Global Mormon Studies conference in Mexico. The one before that was in Coventry, England. And the one before that was in Bordeaux, France. And just because they have been in different places, they’ve brought in different people.

Mexico is going to be really cool because it’s going to break the hegemonic barrier of the English language. It’s going to have papers in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

I’m really proud of Michelle Graabek, who is the new head of the organization, and of the Church History Department’s outreach, which has been really enthusiastic in supporting the conference. It will be a really groundbreaking conference especially because it will involve a number of scholars from Mexico who wouldn’t be able to fly to the United States for a conference held all in English.

That’s an academic contribution, but it also crosses over as we’ve seen to the Church History Department. Now people are thinking about Mormon studies in ways that are more inclusive and more global to reflect what is actually happening as opposed to who tends to get seen and heard the most.

I’ve been working in the Church History Department on projects like global history, where we’re trying to elevate the voices of global Latter-day Saints. There’s the global church history competition, which is currently a pilot underway in four different areas. It’s also an attempt to bring attention to the work of local historians.

I went on a kind of a listening tour of the church history specialists in Europe and the Swiss church history specialist looked at me and said, “How would you Americans like it if we Swiss wrote up your history and just gave it to you?”

Ever since then, we’ve tried to find ways not only to have more local sources but also to collaborate with local historians so that they will feel empowered and connected to the larger organizations in writing their own histories.

Why is that important? What do we learn about Mormonism when those histories are written by the people themselves and include more local voices?

It’s like for years we’ve been writing books about birds that were only about penguins. But there’s a lot more to birds than penguins.

What gives you hope?

[Brigham Young University professor] George Handley gave this presentation where he showed us some of the many different beetles in the world. I was very impressed. The natural world is fragile in some ways, but has also proven itself to be so resilient in many other ways. Like when you go into the mountains and leave behind civilization and you sit on the rocks that have been sitting there for millions or, you know, hundreds of thousands of years. They’re just rocks. They’re really impressive, though. They were created by a Mother and Father creator-God, who also created humanity. It’s pretty impressive.

I am an active member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who has worn the garment for the past 15 years. I am also a millennial woman who recognizes and has experienced the diverse needs of womanhood, and I would like to see more opportunities for women’s voices to be heard and represented in the church.

As I have followed the conversation surrounding garments, I’ve tried to step back and analyze what is driving the deeply held, valid beliefs of multiple sides. One thought I keep coming back to is that we are dealing with a symbol, and symbols are by nature layered, unique and complex; just as unique and complex as the people who interpret them.

When we consider the temple garment, it’s important to consider the many layers of this symbol. There is a doctrinal definition of what the garment represents — the Atonement of Christ. There are also historical, social and individual layers of symbolism for the garment. It’s the convergence of these layers and weight given to them by each individual that ultimately creates the cumulative symbolic meaning for any one person.

The social symbolism of garments weighs heavily on millennials and younger members. This symbolism originated in part in our formative years when modesty was pushed via specific guidelines in the “For the Strength of Youth” pamphlets, with garments held up as the gold standard. During this crucial time, millennials experienced intense social scrutiny over clothing standards rigidly tied to our personal worth and testimonies. Many devout young women sadly also internalized the message, “My body is bad, and I have to cover it.” Modesty was such a focus during these developmental years, with garments so intricately wrapped up in the dialogue, that some symbolism of garments was defined before most of us even entered the temple to learn differently. Garments have accumulated several messages through the years, and as a result, today symbolize control, shame and social judgment to many. Millennials are not only trying to rewrite this traumatizing messaging, but based on sad personal experience, they also are averse to any philosophy that ties judging a person’s worth to their appearance.

In this April’s General Conference, Relief Society counselor J. Anette Dennis defined the doctrinal symbolism of the garment in the most specific and complete way I have ever heard described outside of the temple. But talking openly about this information is new, and while we are grateful to assimilate it, one cannot simply erase the complex connotations decades of institutional and social programming have attributed to the sacred garment. Many millennial women crave a nuanced approach to the garment that allows us bodily autonomy and a less hyper-critical, appearance-based culture. We want our testimonies to be defined by our hearts, not our hemlines.

Other challenges women face with the garment include the physical health-related challenges. These are almost too diverse to list here, ranging from urinary tract and yeast infections to period, pregnancy, afterbirth, nursing and menopause needs, to sensory, skin and allergy needs, and everything in between. It is almost asking too much of one article of clothing to comprehensively serve a being as complex and extraordinary as a woman. If we are to ask such a thing, we must do so respectfully and reasonably; each ask contributes to a woman’s personal relationship with the garment as a symbol.

A woman’s relationship with her body is personal, tender and always evolving. Yet, when we consider the courage and humility with which she meets life’s varied demands, it is hard to find a better living example of our temple covenants such as the laws of sacrifice, obedience and consecration, than a woman devoting her body and soul to the creation and well-being of others. Her many sacrifices and how they exemplify commitment to covenants throughout life should be considered respectfully when discussing how clothing, including the garment, meets her needs.

Symbols are a powerful and beautiful teaching tool. We must, however, use them wisely with full consideration of all of their aspects and levels. The garment is doctrinally meant to symbolize the Atonement of Christ, an infinite act applied uniquely to each individual. Drawing on this definition, the relationship between the garment and its wearer may also be as individual and complex as each child of God, and should in itself be treated with utmost respect.

As I have pondered on the full range of the symbolism of the garment, my appreciation for it has grown. I hope that we, as individuals and as a church, can continue to progress in our understanding and use of the powerful symbol of the sacred garment.

Annie Mangelson is a published writer and photographer with a degree in English teaching from Brigham Young University. She spends most of her time caring for her small family, and advocating for individuals with unique needs, including her daughter, Lydia, who was born with Down syndrome.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

Residents evacuated for hours while officials conducted detonations of old dynamite found in a Holladay home overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning.

Around 4:30 a.m., bomb techs blasted the explosives found in a home near 6200 South and 2300 East, which could be heard and seen from miles away.

“Early this morning our bomb techs were able to detonate both explosive packages that were found at the structure,” explained Assistant Chief Dustin Dern with the Unified Fire Department. “Nobody was hurt, that went as well as could be expected.”

After the second explosion, flames and smoke could be seen billowing into the air.

“There was a fire resulting from that explosion, we had crews staged and ready to respond and they’ve contained that fire and there’s no fire damage to surrounding structures,” Chief Dern said.

Read the full story at fox13now.org.

Editor’s note • This story is available to Salt Lake Tribune subscribers only. Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Despite pressure from some in the community, the Iron County School District will not resurrect the “Redmen” mascot deemed racist five years ago, and instead focus resources on improving the county’s schools.

Last month, the school board moved to put the question before voters later this year by including it on an election-year ballot. But the attorney for the district and the county said the school board doesn’t have the authority to do that, sending the board back to the drawing board.

A proposal was brought forward for the district to stage its own county-wide straw vote — including allowing students to vote — for whether to revert back to the “Redmen,” rather than the current mascot, the “Reds.”

But in a 4-3 vote Tuesday night, the board voted to keep the current “Reds” mascot.

“I just can’t, in good conscience, with everyone going against it, with the potential that even one child could be insulted, hurt, bullied by any means by reinstating this name, I can’t. I can’t do it,” said board member Megen Ralphs.

The decision seems to put to rest, at least for the time being, a disagreement that board members agreed had divided the community and pained those in the Native American community.

In 2019, a committee of students, staff and alumni formed to debate the issue voted 17-7 in favor of the change because of the racist underpinnings.

Since then, though, a new school board has been elected and the members say the decision has split the community and that restoring the mascot is the single issue they hear about from voters.

At a meeting last month, public opinion was relatively divided between those who supported restoring the mascot and those who viewed it as a racist slur.

On Tuesday, however, the audience was overwhelmingly in favor of maintaining the “Reds,” including members of the Cedar High student government who said they were proud of the current name and asked that the board not go back to the old mascot.

Tamra Borchardt-Slayton, the chairperson of the tribal council for the Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, sent a letter to the board saying it would be “abhorrent” to bring back the mascot and asked the board to “move forward instead of living in the past with the nostalgia of adults.”

But Iron County resident Andrea Nelson alleged that those behind the move to change the name “are funded and supported by the far-left ideology people of this country … supported by George Soros and other far-left ideological money.”

She said that it had been “debunked” that such names are harmful to anyone.

Many on the school board agreed and wanted residents of the county to be able to weigh in.

“This isn’t just going to die without having a vote of the public,” said school board member Jeff Corry, who campaigned on the issue. “Everyone knows how I feel. It’s a pretty prideful name, is what it is.”

But board member Stephanie Hill said that the district has bigger issues and resources should not be spent on a non-binding straw election. One teacher, she said, had told her that 47% of the students were considered homeless. Hill said that the constituents who had contacted her were overwhelmingly in support of going back to the “Redmen” mascot.

“I want to make this clear: My interest is not in a mascot or in a name,” Hill said. “My interest is in bridging the socioeconomic gap and finding ways to celebrate in those classrooms.”

De cara a las elecciones en México el Cónsul del mencionado país en Utah, Eduardo Baca, ofreció información a Telemundo Utah acerca de las solicitudes de voto en el exterior que fueron rechazadas por algunas irregularidades en el registro.

Baca precisó que todas las personas que tengan problemas con su inscripción pueden contactar al Instituto Nacional Electoral (INE) hasta el próximo 5 de mayo para solicitar aclaraciones.

Así mismo recordó que, aunque Utah no contará con el voto presencial, quienes deseen formar parte de estos importantes comicios podrán hacerlo a través de los 20 consulados que están disponibles en el resto de Los Estados Unidos.

Por su parte el INE también hizo un llamado a la comunidad mexicana que reside en Utah: “Si recibiste un correo sobre una posible inconsistencia en tu registro al Listado Nominal del Electorado en el Extranjero (LNERE), tienes hasta el 5 de mayo para solicitar aclaraciones, a través del sitio web: https://votoextranjero.ine.mx o llama gratis desde Estados Unidos al 1-866-986-8306.”

Nota del editor • Esta artículo se publica a través de una asociación para compartir contenido entre Telemundo Utah y The Salt Lake Tribune.

A federal jury has found Daggett County liable for abuses some former inmates say they suffered while incarcerated there.

After deliberating several days, the jury handed down a split verdict. It found that three former inmates — Steven Drollette, Joshua Asay and Joshua Olsen — had their constitutional rights against cruel and unusual punishment violated. The jury did not find the county liable for Dustin Porter. Altogether, the jury awarded them $352,300 for the harms.

“I think the jury has sent a strong message that violations of the Eighth Amendment are serious and that counties will be held accountable when they mistreat their prisoners,” said the plaintiff’s lawyer, John Mejia of the American Civil Liberties Union of Utah.

The inmates had accused their jailors of using a Taser on them as an “initiation” to their incarceration. One accused Deputy Joshua Cox of shocking inmates and promising them a case of soda should they withstand the shock for at least five seconds. The deputy was also accused of allowing a K-9 to bite two inmates.

The situation inside the jail became publicly known in 2017 when the Utah Department of Corrections abruptly pulled their inmates out of the Daggett County Jail. Then-Sheriff Jerry Jorgensen resigned as the Utah Attorney General’s Office brought criminal charges against him and several deputies employed at the jail. Most took plea deals, including Sheriff Jorgensen — though court records show his was later withdrawn after it was found a judge accepted the plea but it was technically not entered as a judgment. Prosecutors opted not to pursue further charges against Jorgensen and he retired.

Read more at fox13now.com.

The Salt Lake Tribune and Fox 13 News are content-sharing partners.

Several candidates running for Utah Governor in 2024 have amassed sizeable war chests ahead of this weekend’s Republican and Democratic State Nominating Conventions.

Incumbent Republican Spencer Cox’s campaign is sitting on nearly $1 million despite raising less than Democrat Brian King during the first months of the year. Republican challenger Phil Lyman also massively outraised Cox, but the source of those funds is raising some eyebrows among campaign finance watchdogs.

Lyman’s campaign raised more than $800,000 since January, more than five times the donations reported by Cox. Lyman’s gubernatorial bid is propped up financially by a massive loan from a former Texas Congressional candidate and BYU football player and hundreds of thousands of dollars from a newly-created company that may help hide donors to his campaign.

Lyman reported $300,000 in donations from Lehi-based Government Leadership Solutions, which was registered with the state of Utah on Jan. 10, the same day Utah’s candidate filing period closed. Three days later, it donated $100,000 to Lyman’s campaign and made another $200,000 donation in March. It is unclear what business Government Leadership Solutions conducts.

Government Leadership Solutions shares a Lehi address with Lyman Family Farm, which members of Lyman’s family own. According to business records filed with the State of Utah, Chris Webb is the sole listed officer for Government Leadership Solutions and the vice president of Lyman Family Farm. The same address is also home to Greenwave Finance. Joseph Hunt is the president of both Greenwave Finance and Lyman Family Farm. Webb’s LinkedIn profile lists him as the chief operating officer of Greenwave Financial. He previously was the vice president of Air Medical Resource Group, the company founded by Hunt’s father in the early 1980s.

Attempts by The Salt Lake Tribune to reach Webb and Hunt were unsuccessful. The phone number on Greenwave’s website led to a call center for customers and an operator could not provide a contact for Greenwave’s corporate leadership. No emails or phone numbers were included in corporate filings.

Lyman Family Farm has spent millions of dollars buying up Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration (SITLA) land at auction. Between 2014 and 2016, the company spent $6.4 million acquiring 5,214 acres, according to an analysis from the Center for Western Priorities.

SITLA manages millions of acres of land in Utah. These lands generate revenue for public education through energy development or auctioning parcels to the highest bidder. The governor appoints the SITLA Board of Trustees.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington [CREW], a watchdog group, said Government Leadership Solutions appears to be a so-called “dark money” conduit to funnel money from Lyman’s family to his campaign while hiding the source. Utah has very few restrictions on political donations.

“There are a number of reasons why donors would want to hide their identity. Maybe they want to avoid public scrutiny. Or maybe they’re government contractors who face campaign finance restrictions that would be caught if they gave directly,” Robert Maguire, research director for CREW said in an email to The Tribune. “But this particular instance raises a third question: Is the candidate trying to hide the fact that a substantial portion of their campaign is being funded with family money.”

Lyman initially claimed there was no connection between Government Leadership Solutions and his family, and said in a text message that, “The company is not connected to my family at all.”

After detailing the web of links discovered through corporate filings, Lyman said Hunt’s wife is a distant relative and that Webb is a friend who “likes my campaign.”

Lyman then seemed to say Government Leadership Solutions was established to hide the source of donations to his campaign because donors feared reprisals from allies of Cox.

“Most people don’t trust the government, so [they] try to have a little anonymity,” Lyman texted. “I would have a lot more [donations] coming in if it weren’t for people’s fear of being targeted by Cox and co.”

Lyman also reported a $420,000 loan from Johnny Slavens on the same day that Government Leadership Solutions was founded. Slavens grew up in Blanding and played football at BYU in the late 1990s. Slavens ran for Congress in Texas in 2016, losing the GOP primary to another Republican, Sam Johnson. In 2022, Slavens was hired as the boy’s basketball coach for San Juan High School.

Flirting with disaster, Lyman’s campaign missed the initial deadline for filing the required pre-convention disclosure. Utah law gives candidates a 24-hour grace period for submitting reports. Lyman’s was filed with the lieutenant governor’s office mere minutes before the grace period ran out on Tuesday night. Had he missed both deadlines, Lyman would have been disqualified from the race.

Cox didn’t raise much money during the first part of 2024 — but he didn’t need to.

The Republican incumbent is sitting on a mountain of campaign cash heading into Saturday’s Republican State Nominating Convention. Cox has raised just over $155,000 in 2024, with the largest contribution coming from a $25,000 donation from Nomi Health. The company donated $50,000 to Cox’s campaign in 2022.

Nomi was part of a group of politically well-connected firms, including DOMO and Qualtrics, that came together to create the TestUtah initiative to oversee COVID testing in the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The group used the program in Utah to secure millions of dollars in government contracts in Utah and other states. TestUtah was mired in scandal.

Nearly four out of every five dollars Cox has raised for his reelection campaign since January has come from corporations, industry groups or political action committees.

Cox’s largest individual donation was $10,416 from prominent Virginia-based political operative Phil Cox.

Cox has raised over $4.2 million since taking office in 2021. The campaign reported having just under $1 million in the bank.

Cox has spent heavily ramping up for his 2024 campaign. Last year, his team spent over $250,000 on advertising, while spending another $150,000 on ads ahead of this weekend’s convention. His campaign has also paid Election Hive, a political consulting firm headed, in part, by his cousin Jon Cox, more than $200,000 for campaign management and fundraising services.

Cox is the only Republican in the gubernatorial race to take the signature-gathering route to qualify for the primary election. Cox paid private company Gather $147,000 to collect the 28,000 signatures needed to guarantee a spot in the primary. His campaign also paid the company another $147,000 for signature gathering in late 2023.

Former Utah Republican Party Chairman Carson Jorgensen raised a fraction of what Cox and Lyman pulled in, reporting just $52,000 in campaign donations, including $4,000 of his own funds.

Democrat Brian King reported more than $170,000 in contributions since January and has just under $90,000 in the bank. He is unopposed for the Democratic nomination and will be on November’s ballot.

Republican Sylvia Miera-Fisk’s campaign is running in the red, with just $1,100 in donations and just over $10,000 in expenditures. Most of those campaign costs are listed as reimbursements to Fisk and her family members.

Another Republican running for governor, Scott Robbins, has self-financed his campaign so far, contributing just under $1,400.

Clarification, 2:10 p.m. • This story has been updated to clarify the type of land SITLA manages.

A proposal to split Utah’s largest school district into two smaller districts could head to ballots this November, though where exactly new district boundaries would fall is still being determined.

Officials from MGT, a Florida-based consulting firm MGT hired by the Alpine School District to perform a reconfiguration study, formally recommended a two-way split to school board members Tuesday evening. Ultimately, it’s up to the board to decide whether they’ll propose a ballot question.

“If the district does decide to go forward, a two-way split is preferential,” said Lance Richards, educational performance manager for MGT.

The recommendation comes after MGT spent weeks gathering resident feedback on five proposed scenarios that would divide the district into two or three parts. A sixth proposal to keep the district as-is was also presented to residents for feedback.

Of the six options, two involved a two-way split. MGT recommended that the board consider both of those options.

“There was not a lot of support for a three-way [split],” Richards said. “A three-way [split] in terms of splitting your resources and assets might be 10 times as hard in terms of complications.”

The two scenarios under consideration involve dividing Alpine into two separate districts — one to the east, and one to the west. The only difference between the options is whether Lehi would be placed in the east or west.

Alpine school board members now must determine which of the two scenarios they’d like to take to voters — if any.

The board could also forego MGT’s recommendation altogether, but any proposed change would hinge on voter approval. The board met for a study session Wednesday afternoon to continue discussion.

How residents feel

Splitting the Alpine School District has been a possibility for decades due to its rapid population growth — the district covers nearly half of Utah County, which encompasses 13 municipalities and 92 schools.

Despite several previous attempts to reconfigure the district, only one ever made it onto a ballot. The 2022 proposal would have created a new school district in Orem, which the Orem City Council first pitched in August of that year. It ultimately failed, with 73% of voters rejecting it.

Residents this time around overwhelmingly said they’d prefer to keep the district as one, according to in-person and online survey data collected by MGT. Around 11,000 residents and district staff participated.

Still, about 60% of respondents said they think the question of a split should go to a community-wide vote, Richards said. Staff, however, indicated they’d prefer the question not to go to ballots.

“By and large, to a ‘T’, everyone believes the district is doing a pretty good job of educating kids here,” Richards said. “Yet they still endorse a vote on reconfiguration in some form or fashion. "

When asked to weigh both two-way split options, 56% of all those surveyed favored the option with Lehi in the west. However, participants residing within the Lehi area showed a strong preference for the scenario where Lehi would be situated in the east.

An official vote on which option will be brought to ballots likely won’t happen until early May. The Utah County Commission would then need to approve the proposed ballot question, and the issue would need to undergo a 45-day public comment period, before it could be placed on the November ballot.

The line near a small Salt Lake City Airport hangar started growing more than an hour before Utah’s new NHL team was scheduled to land. Youth hockey players from all over the state wore their team jerseys and brought hockey sticks and signs, eager to catch a glimpse of the players and coaches who they’ll cheer for this fall.

Utah’s NHL team may not have a name yet. But it does have a home.

And on Wednesday, the former Arizona Coyotes players made their first stop in Salt Lake City. They patiently met with hundreds of young players and shook hands, signed caps, jerseys and shoes, and posed for photos.

“I’m excited because I’ll have a team from our state to root for,” said Allie Lowen, who plays hockey on a Salt Lake County rec team with mostly boys. “I’ll watch more hockey and I’ll get to watch more in-person hockey.”

Thousands of fans showed up for a free event at the Delta Center — a capacity crowd — on Wednesday afternoon. Before that, Lawson Crouse and Clayton Keller, along with coach André Tourigny and general manager Bill Armstrong, spoke warmly about the reception they received at the airport.

“Stepping off the plane was was unbelievable,” Keller said. “Just seeing the youth hockey programs, a lot of kids that know all of our names and things like that. We couldn’t be more excited.”

Logan • It’s been over four years since Utah State University settled with the Justice Department over the university’s mishandling of sexual assault cases on campus. However, oversight from federal officials of the Cache Valley-area university will remain longer than initially anticipated.

In an email to The Salt Lake Tribune and Utah Public Radio on Wednesday, a Utah State spokesperson confirmed the university is still working with the department beyond the dates outlined in the initial February 2020 settlement.

“USU’s agreement with the DOJ was extended in July 2020, due to the impacts of COVID and the release of significant amendments to the Title IX regulations,” said USU marketing and communications Associate Vice President Amanda DeRito in an email. “USU is currently working with the DOJ under this extension and anticipates an additional extension to ensure USU’s prevention and response programs are fully implemented in a durable and lasting way.”

DeRito said Thursday the university expects the extension will be through the next academic year, but a timeline has not yet been put in place.

Initially, the Justice Department planned to monitor the university through the 2022-2023 academic year, and “will not terminate until at least 60 days after the Department has received all reporting related to the 2022-2023 school year,” according to the initial settlement.

And then, during the first summer of the pandemic, university and federal officials agreed to extend the oversight — and on Utah State’s behalf.

“The Department recognizes that, despite the University’s good faith efforts, circumstances outside of its control may render USU unable to meet some of the deadlines set forth in the Settlement Agreement. As a result, USU has requested several time extensions,” the official wrote. “We appreciate the University’s continued communication about its progress toward meeting its obligations.”

That July 2020 extension also said USU would be required to submit a monitoring report as late as January 31, 2024, which stretched the timeline of the initial agreement by one semester.

DeRito said that since the 2020 agreements, Utah State has made significant strides to improve its Title IX office and shore up campus safety.

She pointed to a recent USU survey that found 98% of student respondents said they feel safe on campus. The survey also found 86% of student participants thought university staff respond fairly and appropriately to sexual misconduct allegations. That number is an improvement from when students were surveyed in 2017 — the same year the DOJ began investigating — when 52% of student respondents said they thought Utah State responded appropriately to sexual misconduct allegations.

“The university is proud of this work and remains committed to continued improvement both at a systemic level and a cultural level,” DeRito said in the email.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request to comment on Wednesday and declined to comment on Thursday.

Utah State has seen numerous lawsuits and scandals in recent years. The Justice Department report noted issues within USU’s piano department, sexual assaults taking place on campus and investigators quickly closing assault cases involving football players.

In 2021, after the DOJ issued its report and settled with the university, campus police chief Earl Morris resigned after a recording was released that featured him making derogatory comments toward survivors of sexual assault. The university called the comments, “reprehensible and unacceptable.”

Update, 3:50 p.m. • This story has been updated with a new statement from Utah State about the timeline of the extension.

The Utah Transit Authority needs to prioritize on-time service and better coordinate with local governments as it plans projects, a newly released audit from the Utah Legislature recommends.

The review aimed to evaluate UTA’s efficiency after changes prompted by its last audit in 2014, which found the agency gave away millions in sweetheart deals and dramatically increased salaries for top executives, among a slew of other problems.

The agency has seemed to improve since the state replaced its part-time, 16-member board with a full-time, three-member board in 2018, the audit states. But things are still in flux because of repeated turnover in key leadership positions over the years, so auditors were unable to “fully evaluate the effectiveness” of the new governance model.

“The audit validates a lot of effort over these last few years to remedy some kind of long-standing issues at UTA, and certainly issues that were identified from 10 years ago,” UTA board chair Carlton Christensen said. “I don’t think any of us were shocked about those recommendations; we know they are areas we needed to work on and, it’s always healthy to have an outside perspective.”

What UTA needs to change

To become a transit leader, UTA needs to increase the speed, performance and frequency of its service, the audit recommended. Utah’s population is growing, and increasing ridership will be critical to mitigate congestion in years to come, it states.

UTA’s ridership has yet to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, the audit noted, but its post-pandemic ridership is improving at a faster rate than that of two-thirds of transit agencies nationwide.

The agency also needs to cut down on routine delays to keep public transit an effective option, according to the audit. Between 2021 and 2023, such delays have more than doubled on FrontRunner, the audit reported.

UTA has only recently worked on plans to reduce these types of delays, the audit states, but it is making progress with the Utah Department of Transportation to reduce delays through traffic signal priority on critical routes like Redwood Road.

“Being able to know that transit services will consistently be on time and available is a primary factor in determining whether public transit services are a viable option for those in a transit agency’s service area,” the report states. “In fact, some studies have found that reliability is more important than total travel time in determining the success of a transit agency.”

How UTA could better plan

Auditors also want to see better data practices and formalized benchmarking from the agency so UTA can better review its own performance.

And the audit urged that UTA improve its coordination with local planning organizations so the agency can better align its long-range planning efforts with that of growing local municipalities.

UTA’s wide service area — which includes around seven counties and 80 municipalities — covers about 80% of the state, so integrating UTA service plans with local development plans can be a challenge. That’s why the audit also recommended that UTA improve guidelines for municipalities on how to create transit-supportive development.

“Legislative leadership who made up the audit management committee were quick to point out that there’s almost no way for us to continue to grow without a strong transit backbone in our our corridors,” Christensen said.

Seven months ago, Rudy Noorlander received what he describes as the most disgusting “French kiss” ever — from a 10-foot-tall grizzly bear.

Noorlander was attacked during a Sept. 8 excursion in Big Sky, Montana, confronted while helping a group of customers from his all-terrain vehicle business track a deer.

The massive grizzly sliced a large scratch down his chest, bit his arms and legs, and tore off his lower jaw, according to a GoFundMe campaign set up by his daughter KateLynn Davis to help with medical expenses.

In the wake of the attack, Noorlander was first rushed by medical helicopter to Bozeman, Montana, then flown to the University of Utah Hospital in Salt Lake City. There, he received four surgeries in five weeks — including what medical professionals call a “jaw in a day” reconstruction.

This week, Noorlander received his fifth surgery, reuniting with members of his care team who hadn’t seen him since the weeks after his September attack, according to a news release from the hospital.

In most cases, care teams aren’t updated on the status of their patients. But on Tuesday, staff in the emergency department, surgical intensive care unit and acute care were all able to see Noorlander’s progress for themselves.

“We see you at your worst; we don’t oftentimes get to see you like this,” said Dr. Toby Enniss, trauma medical director at University of Utah Health. “It means a lot to see as you get further along in your recovery and [your] quality of life is improving.”

Doctors recalled that despite the traumatic circumstances of Noorlander’s hospital stay, he was quite the jokester. Unable to speak, he used a dry-erase board to communicate with his care team — and most messages were just wisecracks.

On Tuesday, Noorlander joked around with his own voice, bringing laughter and pride to many of his former doctors and nurses in a T-shirt that read: “The legend has officially retired. If you want to talk you’ll be charged a consulting fee.”

Although he’s speaking again, Noorlander has only recently been able to transition to soft foods — like mashed potatoes at Texas Roadhouse, he told one nurse. But he is looking forward to getting new teeth in June that would allow him to “fully eat again,” according to his GoFundMe page.

“I’ll never forget him describing it as the worst French kiss that he ever had, and then telling me that this was all just a blessing in disguise,” said Nellie Webb, one of the first nurses who cared for Noorlander when he was transferred to the University of Utah hospital.

“I don’t know many people who can go through something so scary and so hard, and have that amazing and positive outlook,” Webb continued. “To actually know that someone is doing so well and is thriving is so special, because it gives us more purpose to showing up here and knowing that we’re doing something that matters.”

Noorlander grew emotional seeing his care team again. But he said his visit was to make sure they knew he appreciates everything they did for him in the weeks after his attack.

“It makes you feel good about yourself, and that you’re doing what you need to do and acting like you need to act,” Noorlander said. “I was just trying to be as positive as I could, and look to the bright side.”

The NFL draft is here, but Utah fans might need to wait a minute before they hear one of their own called.

BYU and Utah have several players projected to go off the board on Friday, but it’s unlikely the Beehive State will see any first-rounders.

Here is the full list of names to watch during the draft this week — including some Utah connections that might surprise you in the later rounds.

Top draft prospects

Kingsley Suamataia — BYU, offensive line

Suamataia is the best NFL prospect in the state this year. The Oregon transfer’s unique combination of size and athleticism earned him a second-round grade by most scouts.

At almost 6-foot-6 and 330 pounds, Suamataia can run a five-second, 40-yard dash. He can also dunk a basketball and grew up boxing with his family. That fluidity translates to the football field.

Offensive coordinator Aaron Roderick called Suamataia one of the best athletes he’s ever seen play the position. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Roderick remarked back in 2022.

The sophomore is still learning. He changed spots on the offensive line during his two years in Provo. He told The Salt Lake Tribune he can play every spot on the line, except maybe center. But with the skills there, Suamataia should comfortably fit into the second day of the draft.

Jonah Elliss — Utah, edge rusher

The Utes waited patiently for Elliss to develop in their system, and they were rewarded with a highly productive 2023.

Elliss racked up 12 sacks and 37 tackles last year. Playing for his father — defensive ends coach Luther Elliss — the junior capitalized on his size. He is 6-foot-2 but has the prototypical length for an NFL edge rusher.

Playing a premium position for NFL teams, Elliss could possibly see his name called on the second day. If not, he will be an early Saturday pick.

Cole Bishop — Utah, safety

It is not easy to crack Kyle Whittingham’s defense from day one at Utah. But that is what Bishop did.

He was a three-year starter and one of the best players in the Pac-12. An incredibly willing tackler, Bishop made Utah’s safety position the most active spot on the field. He led Utah in tackles in 2022 and finished his career with nearly 200.

Defensive coordinator Morgan Scalley felt comfortable interchanging Bishop from strong and free safety. He should go off the board on Friday.

The late-round prospects

Sione Vaki — Utah, safety and running back

Vaki was perhaps Utah’s best story last year. With his ability to play both ways, he became the Utes’ offensive savior and their playmaking safety.

At the next level, his best position is still likely on defense. Utah used him far more at safety than at running back. But at his Pro Day, he went through offensive drills with the receivers and tight ends.

Vaki’s strength and speed are NFL-ready. He also can play special teams. Dallas Cowboys special teams coach John Fassel worked him out as a punt returner when he came to Salt Lake.

Kedon Slovis — BYU, quarterback

Slovis’ expected resurgence at BYU was a letdown. The USC and Pitt transfer came in thinking Roderick’s scheme would showcase him as a passer who could thrive in the NFL game the way it did for Zach Wilson and Jaren Hall.

But it never worked out as BYU’s offensive line was in shambles and the running game was nowhere to be found. Slovis did his best to hang in the pocket and make plays. He ended up getting hurt and sitting out the final four games of the year.

Slovis was invited to the NFL Combine and could be a late-round pick. But it’s not a guarantee.

Slovis will latch on with a team somewhere if he doesn’t get picked. But the road is harder than he imagined a year ago.

Keaton Bills — Utah, offensive line

Utah’s reliable offensive lineman became a multi-year starter. In the last eight years, he’s gone through a a COVID year, a redshirt year and served a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints mission.

He appeared in 45 games and made 38 starts. Bills is older and won’t be at the top of the offensive line class. But he could eek into the later rounds.

Sataoa Laumea — Utah offensive line

Like Bills, Laumea was a pillar of Utah’s offensive line for years. He made 44 starts in 45 games. He is seen as a slightly better prospect than Bills and could go early Saturday.

Likely free agent signings

Devaughn Vele — Utah, wide receiver

Vele considered turning pro a year ago, but decided to come back to Utah for another season. It didn’t work out the way he’d envisioned with quarterback Cam Rising sitting out the entire campaign.

Vele ended up playing in a limited role without a fully capable quarterback. Last month, he said it might hurt his draft stock.

Still, Vele has a long frame (even if he’s thin). He knows getting drafted is likely a long shot. But he could get in camp somewhere. Like Vaki, he will be a special teams option.

Winston Reid — Weber State, linebacker

Reid became a tackling machine for Weber State over the last two years. He had over 200. Reid is older, a seven-year college veteran. But with that much production, he could find a camp.

Miles Battle — Utah, corner

Battle’s numbers took a dip at Utah last year. He came from Ole Miss looking to replace Clark Phillips III, but he didn’t have the interceptions or pass breakups that would raise his draft stock.

He said teams didn’t throw to him last year and he didn’t have opportunities for interceptions. But Battle showed top-end speed at his Pro Day.

Thomas Yassmin — Utah, tight end

Yassmin’s pass-catching ability should put him on teams’ radars. He had over 300 yards receiving in 2022.

Yassmin hasn’t played football for long. He started as a rugby player in Australia. His one year of production likely isn’t enough to get drafted. But he will get a look in camp.

The Utah connections

Rome Odunze — Washington, wide receiver

Odunze was born in Orem and has family in Provo. Although he went to high school in Las Vegas, at Bishop Gorman, he’d spent summers down the street from BYU. Former BYU tight ends coach Steve Clark was the main BYU recruiter on him and Fesi Sitake helped later.

“His grandmother lives here and is a member of the Church,” Sitake said. ”I had a relationship with him, just naturally as a receiver. But by the time I got involved, he kind of had already [made the decision].”

He went to Washington and is now a first-round pick.

Dallin Holker — Colorado State and BYU, tight end

Holker abruptly left BYU in 2022. He wasn’t happy with his role in the offense as a pass-catching option.

He went to Colorado State and had almost 800 yards in 2023. In his one season there, he was an All-Mountain West player. He could come off the board on Saturday.

Tejhaun Palmer — Snow College and UAB, wide receiver

Palmer had over 1,400 receiving yards at UAB. He was also one of the fastest players in college football. He started his career at Snow College.

Carlton Johnson Sr. — SUU, Fresno State

Johnson Sr. had almost 120 tackles this year for the Bulldogs — earning him a combine invite.

Johnson Sr. played at Southern Utah for three years. He played in 17 games and made five starts. He bounced to Riverside Community College, where current BYU quarterback Jake Retzlaff is from. He found a more permanent home in Fresno.

He could get drafted late on Saturday, or be an early free agent signing.

Tanner McGaughlin — SUU and Arizona, tight end

McGaughlin was an upper-tier tight end in the Pac-12 last year at Arizona. He made 12 starts and had his first season of over 500 yards receiving. He added four touchdowns.

McGaughlin transferred from Southern Utah. He only had 15 catches in four years. But his size at 6-foot-5 is enticing for NFL teams. He could be drafted on the third day.

The Mormon Land newsletter is The Salt Lake Tribune’s weekly highlight reel of news in and about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Join us on Patreon and receive the full newsletter, podcast transcripts and access to all of our religion content — for as little as $3 a month.

Buying garments

The temple garments worn by devout Latter-day Saints may not win any designer prizes, but at least they don’t carry designer prices.

For women, according to the church’s online store, bottoms and tops come in a variety of fabrics (cotton, chemise, nylon mesh and assorted blends), ranging in price from 65 cents (for discounted items) to $5.75 apiece.

The website shows men can buy bottoms (boxer or brief styles) and tops made from multiple materials for 70 cents (discounted) up to $6 an item.

At Macy’s online store, a three-pack of boxers or briefs can run guys anywhere from $11.70, thanks to a boatload of sales, to $64.50, and undershirts cost $19 to nearly $50 each.

As one can imagine, women can pick from cartloads of offerings at Macys.com for underwear, ranging from $6.50 to $45. Women wouldn’t necessarily don an extra covering under their outer tops, but prices for, say, a camisole, stretch from $12 to (gulp) $188.

So temple garments appear to be a modest fit for bodies and budgets. Of course, there is also that qualifying charge: 10% of your annual income in tithing.

Where the church is shrinking

We reviewed last week where the church grew fastest in 2023 (re: Africa, mostly). There are places, however, where the church’s rolls receded.

At the top of that list — or, perhaps more pointedly, the bottom — was the United Kingdom, which dwindled by 583 members, independent researcher Matt Martinich reported at ldschurchgrowth.blogspot.com, followed by war-rocked Ukraine (minus 291), Tonga (minus 196) and Japan (minus 155).

The templeless top 10

Martinich also noted the 10 countries with the most Latter-day Saints but without an existing or planned temple, led by Uganda, Malaysia, Togo, Jamaica and Guyana. The next five were the Marshall Islands, Benin, the Federated States of Micronesia, Zambia and Belize.

The latest ‘Mormon Land’ podcast: Near-death accounts

Explore how near-death experiences became apocalyptic and why they attract so many Latter-day Saints — in books ranging from “Embraced by the Light” to “Visions of Glory.”

Read historian Matthew Bowman’s column on the topic, and listen to him on the podcast.

Joseph Smith in court

Many members know Joseph Smith was dragged into court numerous times. But did you know he wasn’t always the defendant? Sometimes he was the plaintiff or a witness or even the judge.

And are you curious about what went down in the 1845 trial of his accused assassins? Do you wonder about the estate the faith’s founder left behind?

Well, you can read all about that and more in the latest online release from the massive Joseph Smith Papers project titled “Legal Records: Case Introductions.”

From The Tribune

• Latter-day Saint scholar Melissa Inouye, whose life and writings exemplified — and expounded on — life’s struggles, dies at 44. Read the story and relisten to our “Mormon Land” podcast with her from last fall.

• In an exclusive Tribune interview five days before she died, Inouye opened up about helping others navigate faith crises, an existing patriarchy in the Church Office Building and preserving women’s voices.

• Several tithing lawsuits filed in multiple states accusing the church of fraud and seeking class-action status have been transferred to a federal courtroom in Utah, just blocks from the faith’s world headquarters.

• Why does Latter-day Saint law professor Nathan Oman drive six hours to buy liquor he will never drink? The fascinating answer has little to do with the Word of Wisdom and a lot to do with interfaith friendship.

• It’s not just Latter-day Saint women who have a problem with wearing temple garments, research by Religion News Service columnist Jana Riess found out. Men do, too, along with younger members overall. For his part, Tribune columnist Gordon Monson maintains that wearing — or not wearing — garments is personal and should stay that way.

• See what Latter-day Saints think about whether their church will or should solemnize same-sex sealings in their temples.

• A VIP makes a surprise visit to rededicate a Utah pioneer marvel, the renovated Manti Temple.

• Sites are announced for the West Jordan and Lehi temples.

This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake — and what can be done to make a difference before it is too late. Read all of our stories at greatsaltlakenews.org.

Utah officials expect The Great Salt Lake to rise by another 12 to 18 inches or so amid spring runoff.

“This is both a hope and a guess that we may reach 4,195.5, maybe up to 4,196,” said Deputy Great Salt Lake Commissioner Tim Davis.

While that would continue what Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed described as a “great” and “remarkable” recovery for water levels, it still wouldn’t make the lake healthy.

But it would greatly improve the lake’s ecology.

On Tuesday, the lake level was 4,194.7 feet above sea level in the south arm as measured by the U.S. Geological Survey at Saltair Boat Harbor and 4,191.4 feet in the north arm as measured just northwest of Promontory Point.

While that’s above the highest elevation level at any point last year, it’s still below the minimum “healthy level” of 4,198 feet by at least a yard and some change. The Utah Department of Natural Resources set the healthy range of the lake between 4,198 and 4,205 feet above sea level, and Steed confirmed the state is still using that level.

There are challenges to reaching 4,198 feet, Steed said, because the lake spreads as it rises, leading to more evaporation and slower recovery.

“It’s not a one-to-one where you have the inputs and ... it goes up at the same level,” he said. “Unless we have a continued series of really great winters, we’re going to be in this for a long haul.”

The state has projected it will take more than 400,000 acre-feet of additional water per year to get the lake to healthy levels, Steed said. That’s the equivalent of about 130.3 billion gallons or 266,000 Olympic swimming pools.

The lake average hasn’t been at a healthy level in over two decades and hit its all-time low in fall 2022.

But, in some good news, it’s close to 4,195 feet — a level Steed said is categorized as “some adverse impacts” to the animals and plants that depend on the lake.

“We are in a much, much healthier space ecologically than we had been in the runoff up to this time,” Steed said.

Salinity levels are also good in the south arm, he said, making for a large brine shrimp harvest and expectations of a large brine fly population for migratory birds.

The lake is similar to where it was in 2019, he said. That’s good, but not great.

South arm levels have been artificially high because the state sealed a railroad causeway to help keep the lake viable.

Officials intend to keep that breach open this year, Steed said, to help the north arm recover.

They will approach whether to raise the breach year by year, he said, with some hard cutoffs like raising it if the south arm gets down to 4,190 feet.

Another piece of good news: Reservoirs along tributaries that feed the Great Salt Lake are “remarkably healthy,” Steed said. Between those water levels and the snowpack, he said, officials expect more releases of water into the lake.

Utah is “learning as we go” about how much water needs sent into the lake, Steed said.

Officials are having lots of conversations now with farmers, agriculture groups and municipal water districts to talk about water conversation, delivery and retention, Davis said.

“It’s going to take everyone working together to save water, get it to the lake and make sure it stays there,” he said.

Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.

In Utah, suicide is the leading cause of death for those between 10 and 24. We are among the states with the highest rates of youth mental health disorders, and we have the highest prevalence of youth with untreated mental health needs.

There’s also a stigma that impacts our youth’s ability to speak freely about mental health. In fact, more than half of Utah children aged 3 to 17 who have a mental or behavioral health condition don’t receive treatment, The Tribune reported recently.

Amid this crisis, young Utahns are finding creative ways to save lives through connection, community, conversation and more.

Several of these young leaders — some joined by a parent or trusted advisor — spoke with The Tribune about the work they do, why they do it and their advice for other young Utahns looking to get involved in mental health work. They also shared their story in their own words, via a format they all know well: social media. To protect their privacy, participants under 18 are identified only by their first names.

Beginning today, I’ll post two interviews a week for the next few weeks. I’ll update this page, but you can also find them here.

These stories feature real-life Utahns who speak candidly about the challenges and impacts of confronting their mental health, as well as their peers’. They also feature solutions. I encourage you to read and share them with young Utahns in your life who might feel self-conscious about their journey with mental health or who are looking to help their peers.

• Encircle offered him a community as a young, queer Utahn. Now he’s paying it forward.

This project fits into a larger goal of The Tribune to engage with and amplify younger Utahns’ voices. I’m grateful to The Solutions Journalism Network for its support and to the young leaders who bravely shared their stories.

@sltrib

Utah has a youth mental health crisis. Meet the young leaders dedicated to saving their peers’ lives and eliminating stigma. Shem Busenbark, 24, works at @encircletogether, a Utah-based program which offers mental health services and programs for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. He visited Encircle's Provo house as a high schooler and says he feels “really lucky” to now help other young Utahns find community and self-expression. Visit sltrib.com to read about his efforts — and other young Utahns' work — to improve mental health around the state. #utah #utahcheck #utahcounty #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #LGBTQ #lgbtqplus #lgbtqcommunity

♬ original sound - The Salt Lake Tribune

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

This is part of a series of interviews with young Utahns making a meaningful impact on their communities’ — and their own — mental health. Read more.

Editor’s note • This article discusses suicide. If you or people you know are at risk of self-harm, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline for 24-hour support.

Young LGBTQ+ adults are more than twice as likely to report persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness than their heterosexual peers, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention. Transgender youth face are twice as likely to experience depressive symptoms, seriously consider suicide, and attempt suicide compared to their LGBTQ+ peers.

Encircle, a Utah-based nonprofit organization which offers mental health services and programs for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults, reports providing more than 200,000 mental health services for Utahns since 2017.

For Shem Busenbark, the work is personal.

As a high schooler, he sought connection through the program. Now, at 24 years old, he says he’s “really lucky” to be able to help other young Utahns find community and self-expression as Encircle Provo’s assistant home director.

Busenbark recently spoke with The Tribune about how working with others to improve mental health outcomes can be both challenging and rewarding. This Q&A with him has been edited for length and clarity.

Sara Weber: What kind of services does Encircle provide, particularly as it relates to mental health?

Shem Busenbark: When guests think of Encircle, they think of a community, they think of a place where they can come and make new friends, where they can come to feel safe and start building connections.

I think our friendship circles are one of the strongest weapons that we have to fight some of the mental illnesses that our guests — well, everybody in Utah — are facing. But I think that all of our programs are really aimed at just connecting our guests and allowing them a safe space to connect with each other and to uplift each other.

@sltrib

Utah has a youth mental health crisis. Meet the young leaders dedicated to saving their peers’ lives and eliminating stigma. Shem Busenbark, 24, works at @encircletogether, a Utah-based program which offers mental health services and programs for LGBTQ+ youth and young adults. He visited Encircle's Provo house as a high schooler and says he feels “really lucky” to now help other young Utahns find community and self-expression. Visit sltrib.com to read about his efforts — and other young Utahns' work — to improve mental health around the state. #utah #utahcheck #utahcounty #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #LGBTQ #lgbtqplus #lgbtqcommunity

♬ original sound - The Salt Lake Tribune

How does that connection help guests with their mental health?

We see, statistically, that when queer youth have even one accepting person in their life, you know, the statistics for suicide and for depression and for anxiety, they lessen quite drastically.

It’s as simple as providing a place for them to make friendships and for them to continue to use the names that they like and to get to use the pronouns that they feel most comfortable using.

What challenges do you face in your day-to-day work?

Sometimes we’re looking at not safe home lives, sometimes we’re looking at [guests who are] just not safe in their own body, not feeling safe in their own brain. And it’s really just about connecting these guests with resources that are available to them. And, unfortunately, there isn’t a plethora of queer family resources in Utah. So we are really eager to find these little nuggets that will help our community and be able to provide that for them.

Can you tell me about the impacts you’ve seen of the work you do?

What’s toughest is when you see the house working, when you see these guests successfully building connections and you see them feeling supported. Ultimately, it doesn’t mean that they’re drifting from the house, it means that they are able to take these connections into the real world, that they’re able to take the safe space and start building others for themselves. And that can be heartbreaking. But for me, that also means that it kind of worked.

On top of that, nothing makes me happier than when we see our youth and our young adult guests get excited about getting involved with Encircle or with any organization that they’re excited about. I think that our guests have such a capacity to love and to uplift each other. What’s most rewarding for me is when we see guests connect and uplift each other, and hopefully be able to take that into their life and take that into their future.

What advice do you have for other young adults who are looking to help improve their peers’ mental health?

We have got to be the change that we want to see in the world. There are so many awesome people out here in the world. It’s just about finding the people who are going to help you move in the right direction and who are going to help you achieve the things that you want. I think that a lot of young people these days are really, really, really courageous and really, really strong.

The Salt Lake Tribune is committed to creating a space where Utahns can share ideas, perspectives and solutions that move our state forward. We rely on your insight to do this. Find out how to share your opinion here, and email us at voices@sltrib.com.

This article is excerpted from the Utah Eats newsletter, compiled by Kolbie Peterson, The Salt Lake Tribune’s food and drink reporter. To get the full newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday, become a subscriber by going to sltrib.com/newsletters.

Hello, Eaters!

Earlier this week, I wrote in The Salt Lake Tribune about five Utah restaurants that are working to incorporate sustainable practices into their operations. These changes toward sustainability can involve how a restaurant’s kitchen appliances use energy, where an eatery gets its ingredients, and even how many mass-produced dishes a restaurant purchases.

The main takeaway from my reporting was summed up by Milo Carrier, executive chef and owner of the Salt Lake City restaurant Arlo: “The way that we produce food and consume food in this country is extremely energy-intensive and wasteful.”

That’s no reason to give up and never eat out at a restaurant again, but it is something to be mindful of. The question becomes, “what ‘counts’ as sustainable?” The word will mean different things, depending on the restaurant.

Most restaurants that are trying to be sustainable will be particularly careful about which beef they serve and how much of it they serve. Arlo, for example, orders only about two cows per year, and all of the animals come from farms within 100 miles of Salt Lake City, Carrier said. Pago has such a vegetable-forward menu that it just serves less beef overall, and when it does, it’s sourced locally, said Scott Evans, founder and president of Pago Restaurant Group.

Some restaurant owners will go hyperlocal with sourcing their produce whenever they can, sometimes growing a portion of it themselves. Among the owners I spoke with, no one took this as far as Hell’s Backbone Grill, which has historically grown literal tons of produce on their farm near Boulder. Others make do with the space they have — for example, Sego Restaurant in Kanab converted a lot of the landscaping that surrounded the restaurant into a garden.

The reporting I did also showed me that restaurants will sometimes disagree on what “sustainable” means. Some use that word as something to strive for. Others, like Hell’s Backbone Grill, use that word as a “lens” through which they make every decision, said Blake Spalding, one of the founding chef-owners.

(One of our readers weighed in, with a letter to the editor asking why a story about “sustainable” restaurants — in a state with a thriving vegan community — focused on eateries that serve meat.)

The one thing they all could agree on is that they’re fighting for a better world.

Live deliciously,

Kolbie

Food News

• National Pretzel Day is Friday, and what better way to celebrate than by making (and then eating) your own soft pretzel? Every Thursday and Friday at 2 p.m., the Goldener Hirsch hotel in Park City offers a hands-on cooking class where attendees can learn how to twist and turn fresh dough into delicious salty pretzels. Afterward, chow down on your creation in the Antler Lounge. The class lasts two hours and costs $75 per person; beer pairings are available for an additional $45. Visit AubergeResorts.com for more information.

• Also on National Pretzel Day: Visitors to Wetzel’s Pretzels in the Walmart at 3180 S. 5600 West, West Valley City, can get a free soft pretzel from 3 p.m. to close on Friday.

Openings

• Tossd, a new fast-casual eatery from Heirloom Restaurant Group (Communal, Black Sheep Cafe) is holding its grand opening Thursday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at Center Street and Mill Road in Vineyard. This drive-thru concept serves healthy salad and bowl options, according to a news release.

Dish of the Week

The grilled jerk chicken from African-Caribbean fusion restaurant Kafe Mamai ($15, pictured above) isn’t the most photogenic dish, but there’s a ton of flavor packed into this homey food.

The chicken leg quarters (which you can get boneless, like I did) are marinated in a housemade jerk marinade and then topped with jerk sauce, and served with rice and beans with fried plantains on top. Reading the label on a bottle of the restaurant’s tomato-based jerk sauce (which you can buy), I learned that this bright, spicy and slightly sweet sauce gets its heat from red habanero pepper.

To go with my food, I ordered a Swahili chai ($5), which is black tea brewed with ginger, nutmeg and cardamom. The beverage was sweet, fragrant and warmly spiced.

Kafe Mamai, at 49 E. Gallivan Ave. in downtown Salt Lake City, got its start through the Spice Kitchen Incubator as a food truck in 2019. It opened its first restaurant last September, according to Spice Kitchen. But when my dining companion and I were there for lunch on a recent Saturday, it was empty except for a couple picking up a to-go order. Don’t forget about this gem in the Gallivan Center!

The Utah NHL team had a whirlwind of a first day in their home.

Players and their families, coaches and other staff members landed at Salt Lake City Airport at around 10:30 a.m. and received an uproarious reception from hundreds of youth hockey players. They went to their hotel for a while, then toured Zions Bank Basketball Campus and the Delta Center, where they’ll start play later this year as a new hockey franchise.

And when they saw the ice on the arena, the design of the seats and everything in between, it seemed like they were already imagining what it would be like to play there.

“It looks unbelievable,” right wing Clayton Keller said. “It’s kind of unique with the seats kind of being right on top of you. Everything that we’ve heard is the building is always super loud. They’ve had 250 straight sellouts for the Jazz. So that’s super exciting.”

General manager Bill Armstrong said a seed may have been planted for the players Wednesday as they got to see the Delta Center, and what facilities the Utah Jazz have at their disposal.

“They’re really excited,” Armstrong said. “They’re excited about the enthusiasm of the fans and everybody. ... The rink today got them excited.

“We want to rev it up in here,” Armstrong continued. “We want to become the loudest building in the NHL in here. That building up there gives us a chance. The way it’s built, how steep it is. You couldn’t design a better building for us.”

At a free, public Delta Center event, with a reported 12,400 fans attending, the Utah NHL team saw what it could actually be like to play in Salt Lake City.

Much like when they entered the airplane hanger to a hundreds of screaming kids, the players and their families, and staff members walked down a black carpet on the Delta Center ice and took in the atmosphere. Later, they each took a chair on stage and introduced themselves to the crowd.

But when they did, it wasn’t simply saying their name, position and home city. They also thanked the crowd for their energy and passion, and also had a little fun.

“How we doin’, guys? Let’s go!” forward Liam O’Brien yelled into the microphone. “My name is Liam O’Brien. You guys can call me Spicy Tuna.” His teammates erupted in laughter as the crowd got even louder. Moments later, center Jack McBain led the crowd in a “Spicy Tuna” chant.

In attendance at the event were Utah Jazz coach Will Hardy, Jordan Clarkson and Lauri Markkanen.

Earlier in the day, coach André Tourigny asked one of the kids at the airport to sign his hoodie. The emotions of the day were so powerful, it may have been one of the defining moments of his life.

“It will be my seventh year in the NHL,” Tourigny said. “I said to my wife, ‘I think it’s my best day in the NHL so far.’”

Tourigny said his first impression of the arena was “being sad to think I have to wait four or five months to get back.” The team is due back in Salt Lake City on Aug. 1 to prepare for its inaugural season.

“Now we want to write our own story and make it a wonderful story in Utah,” Tourigny said.

A semitruck crash on Interstate 80 spilled diesel fuel into Parleys Creek early Thursday, prompting Salt Lake County health officials to order that people and pets stay out of its waters until test results are complete.

The truck lost control at about 4 a.m. and jackknifed into a concrete barrier on I-80 near milepost 133, just south of Mountain Dell Reservoir, Utah Highway Patrol spokesperson Cameron Roden said.

It was hauling food, but Roden said the crash ruptured the vehicle’s fuel tanks and spilled about 150 gallons of diesel fuel near Parleys Creek, which is a protected watershed.

The site of the wreck was also downstream of Parleys Water Treatment Plant, which is why Salt Lake City’s drinking water supply was not impacted, Salt Lake City Public Utilities spokesperson Jessie Killinger said.

The agency is working with the Salt Lake County Health Department and Salt Lake City fire to mitigate environmental impacts to the creek and the Jordan River.

Water testing could take a week

It could take about a week until water sampling results are available from Parleys Creek, county health department officials said.

Until then, pets and people should stay out of the creek’s waters, which flow through Sugar House Park, Hidden Hollow Park and Tanner Park. Tanner Park features an expansive off-leash dog park.

Firefighters deployed water “booms” at all three parks Thursday to help absorb fuel from the creek.

Though about 150 gallons of diesel fuel spilled, it is unclear how much ended up in the creek. Much of the fuel remained on the roadway, county health officials said, and some was absorbed by “booms” that first responders placed on the interstate.

Still, fuel sheen could be seen on water at Tanner Park and Sugar House Park on Thursday afternoon, county health officials advised. Fuel odors were also noticeable at Hidden Hollow Park and near 900 East.

County health officials said forecast rain should help clear out any remaining diesel.

As of late Thursday morning, the I-80 crash site had been cleared and all lanes had since reopened.

A restaurant in Salt Lake City’s 9th and 9th neighborhood is now able to serve alcohol — but, due to a license scarcity, no bars received licenses during the Utah liquor commission’s monthly meeting Thursday.

Lola, a Mexican restaurant at 856 E. 900 South, received its liquor license, but none of the three bars on Thursday’s agenda got theirs. Tara Thue, chairperson of the Utah Department of Alcoholic Beverage Services’ (DABS) liquor commission, said the board would likely have one bar license available before their next meeting on May 30.

The meeting did provide a couple of updates, however.

Cade Meier, deputy director of the DABS, said the new state liquor store being built at Edison Street and 300 South in downtown Salt Lake City — to replace the liquor store at 205 W. 400 South — is on track to open in early summer.

“Everything is going well, we’re excited about the plans and the future for the new building and where it’s going to be,” Meier said.

Also, the owner of the Garage on Beck, which was burned in a fire in October, gave an update on how repairs at the bar and music venue are coming along.

Robert McCarthy asked that the commission allow the Garage on Beck to remain closed until the end of May, and asked for an extended closure until the commission meeting on June 27, just in case.

McCarthy said repairs were delayed until Feb. 1 as the insurance company investigated. He said the fire “did do a little more damage than I thought.”

The interior suffered significant damage to wiring, furnaces, the hood system, the audio system, trusses and more, McCarthy said. This was the second fire to damage the Garage — the first happened in 2012, in a vacant lot between the bar and a refinery.

“I don’t know what happened in a past life with me,” McCarthy joked, “but hopefully my karma is all paid.”

The bar will be open “under all circumstances” by June 6, which is when national acts are scheduled to play there. Since the kitchen isn’t ready, McCarthy said food trucks will be onsite to provide food.

On Thursday, the commission also awarded full-service restaurant licenses to 12 applicants, including:

• The Club at Soldier Hollow, 1370 Soldier Hollow Lane, Midway (conditional).

• Wasatch Mountain Cafe, 975 Golf Course Drive, Midway (conditional).

• Bhansa Ghar, 250 W. 2100 South, Salt Lake City (conditional).

• La Fogata Mexican Grill, Taylorsville (conditional).

• Seoul Meat Co., 13273 S. Teal Ridge Way, Riverton (conditional).

• Tamarisk Restaurant, 1710 E. Main St., Green River.

• Crunch Fusion Sushi, 2856 S. 5600 West, West Valley City (conditional).

• Contento Cafe, 2280 S. West Temple, South Salt Lake, Salt Lake City (conditional).

• Wild Thyme Cafe at Trees Ranch, 2501 Zion Park Blvd., Springdale (conditional).

• Blind Rabbit Kitchen, 1080 E. 2100 South, Salt Lake City (projected opening May 1).

• Tip Top Club, Salt Lake City (conditional, projected opening Oct. 1).

• Taboo Pizza, 1895 Washington Blvd., Ogden (conditional, projected opening Oct. 1).

After awarding 13 full-service restaurant licenses (including Lola), the commission will have 24 full-service restaurant licenses available to give out.

Thursday’s meeting was held in Park City. Commissioners toured the Park City club store, a warehouse state liquor store that caters to businesses.

Republican gubernatorial hopeful Carson Jorgensen named Corrine Johnson, the co-founder of the conservative Utah Parents United group, as his running mate ahead of Saturday’s GOP State Convention.

“Her conservative credentials are unquestioned, as is her practical experience in politics and government,” Jorgensen said in a news release Thursday. “Corinne will be a tremendous asset in this campaign and our future administration.”

Jorgensen, the former state GOP chair, is one of four Republicans challenging incumbent Gov. Spencer Cox for the Republican nomination. He needs to get at least 40% of support from delegates at Saturday’s Republican State Nominating Convention to advance to the June 25 primary election. In his statement, Jorgensen said having Johnson on his ticket should thrill those Republican delegates he’s hoping to win over.

Johnson, in the same news release, said she was excited by the opportunity.

“I’ve been working closely with Carson to champion conservative values for years, and I’m excited to take a more active role,” Johnson said.

Since its formation during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Utah Parents United has become a powerful voice on education issues among Republican lawmakers. The organization loudly advocated for the private school voucher program, which allows parents to use public funds to pay for private school tuition or homeschooling. The program was approved by lawmakers in 2023.

Johnson’s group has also advocated for several right-wing issues. Earlier this year, she pushed for lawmakers to pass HB257, which restricts the bathrooms in public buildings that transgender people are allowed to use. In 2021, she urged followers to pressure lawmakers to take action against teaching Critical Race Theory in Utah schools, even though it is not part of the curriculum.

In addition to her work with UPU, Johnson is the senior policy advisor for Republican Salt Lake County Councilmember Dave Alvord. Last year, Alvord and Johnson were criticized for spending thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to attend the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) conference in Orlando, Florida. Johnson was the only council staffer to attend the conference.

Utah GOP rules require candidates for lieutenant governor to be ratified by delegates at the convention to be placed on the ballot. None of the other Republican challengers have named their running mates yet.