Castle Country Radio took time to speak with Helper City’s Mayor Lenise Peterman to talk about the city’s Master Design Plan, Dark Skies and the Utah Wellbeing survey.

City officials partnered with Utah State University Logan’s Architecture Department last fall semester to develop a Master Design Plan for the town. “We recently uploaded it to our city website. However, you have to download it because it’s such a large .pdf, you can’t launch it from the website but it really has given life to next projects for this spring so we are excited to use that work and leverage it,” said Mayor Peterman. The first thing the city is going to take away from the plan is Wayfinding signage. This is currently being budgeted by a private donor and the monies will also allow for the development of new billboards for the city.

As far as the Dark Skies project, the city recently submitted their final application to be designated a Dark Sky Community and the city should get a response sometime this spring. The city has partnered once again with a university, this time with the University of Utah, who recently applied a Dark Sky program into their curriculum. They will bring a group of 30 students down to Helper to do a field study on February 21 and February 22. “And what is really fun is on Saturday, February 22 from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm they will be at the Untitled Gallery located on Main Street and they’re going to do some community outreach and education, what’s Dark Skies and what that is, what that means, as well as, Astrotourism and some other things that they are studying as a higher education,” stated Mayor Peterman. If Helper is approved to be a Dark Skies community, they will become the second city within the state of Utah.

The city is currently participating in the Utah Wellbeing Project led by Utah State University. This voluntary survey is for Helper residents only and the results will be used to assist in the city’s future development plans. “So, you can take that survey, it’s a six-minute survey. If you hit my Helper City Mayor page, I’ve posted the link it’s just a quick click and run through the survey and give us that feedback. We do want you to be 18 years of age and we would like feedback only once per person,” said Mayor Peterman. The survey will be open from February 7 until February 28. If residents do not have access to a computer, they may take the survey at the Helper City Library.