There is always something fun and exciting taking place in Helper so Castle Country Radio caught up with Mayor Lenise Peterman to find out what is happening. She was able to talk about the return of First Friday events, wellbeing survey, Poet Laureate, and the Janet Street Bridge.

Because of the pandemic, the Helper’s First Friday events were put on hold and the city is hoping to start up the events in May. “So I think people have been very patient knowing that we are trying to take care of health considerations as our priority and now it’s time to kind of get back to normal. With the vaccine and people behaving well, you know utilizing masks, and so on, we see it as a real viable return in May,” said Mayor Peterman. This monthly event shuts down the city’s Main Street where vendors, musicians, family-oriented activities such as arts and crafts take place outside or inside the various businesses. All the activities are geared around the month’s theme which range from Outlaw Days to Leprechaun Madness to other fun ideas.

Utah State University is hosting a Wellness Online Survey for residents in Helper. “USU has been conducting Well Being Surveys, they started this prior to the pandemic and so they are doing a follow-up survey. They had selected several communities throughout the state, Helper being one of them. Its an online survey. If you access mayor’s Facebook page you can easily find the link and launch it. It’s about a 10-minute survey. It compares results pre-pandemic and then post-pandemic, where people are in their social, mental, physical well beings,” said Mayor Peterman. This 10-minute survey is different than that one that was posted pre-pandemic so if you have an opportunity to participate please do so.

Last year the city announced their Poet Laureate as Nancy Takacs who had planned on hosting several events but then the pandemic happened. The city is hoping she can pick up again with her events to share the beauty of poetry. “What we’ve done is she is eager to get into the schools, that was part of this concept was to engage our students in poetry. So she contacted me, we got connected with the local principals, Brady and Blake Allen, and they were excited, their teachers were excited. So we are looking at doing some poetry events this Spring,” explained Mayor Peterman. This is going to be a great asset to the community in more ways than one.

The Janet Street Bridge is possibly going to be another historic landmark in the community. “I had the State Historic Architect, Steve Cornwell come down and we went and checked it out. Our first step is to register it as a historic landmark, it meets the requirements, its was built in the 1930s. The construction of it is really quite beautiful if you walk down there and actually study it. So we believe our first step is to do that, to do some power cleaning of it. We’ve had some leaks there over the years, because the bridge is almost 100 years old,” said Mayor Peterman. The State Historic Architect has also put the city in contact with some concrete companies who specialize in landmarks that may be able to assist with some patchwork.

To stay informed on the happenings in Helper visit the city’s Facebook page.