Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Mayor Lenise Peterman to talk about the happenings taking place in Helper. She came in to discuss the renovations to the Rio Theatre and the power grid project.

The city recently received a grant from Castleview Hospital to do some upgrades to the Rio Theatre. “So we’re looking to finish building out some infrastructure needs at the Rio Theatre to turn it in to more of turnkey environment. We did this great walk through with Greg Cook and Jay Noyes and they are just so supportive of the community and see the vision of what we are trying to do there, and graciously have donated $10,000.00 towards that effort. Then the Helper Arts Alliance has weighted in as well with another $6,000.00, which basically gets us almost all the way done with the Rio. So we are super excited about both of those things and very appreciative of them,” said Mayor Peterman. The Rio Theatre is offering a Christmas A La Vivaldi concert on Dec. 17 at 7:00 pm and everyone in the community is invited to attend. Advance tickets are currently available for $20.00 by logging into https://www.eventbrite.com/

One of the main concerns and projects that the city is looking to improve is the power grid for the city. This is a big project and certain steps must be taken before any sort of work can begin. “The Utah State Governors Office of Economic Opportunity opened up a new grant program and we met in the summer months, and they said we think this is the program for you to kick-start your electrical grid analysis that EDA is looking for in order to fund those upgrades to the system. So I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel of figuring out how to fund some of these things,” said Mayor Peterman. So the city applied for a grant that just opened up in October for the first time, this could fund approximately $400,000.00 to do the grid study needed by the EDA. The grid study could take six to nine months to complete but this is a huge step in the right direction in possibly improving the city’s power grid.

There is another grant that has been applied for by the city to take a look at pipes inside each of the homes in Helper. “It’s a State requirement, they want to understand what the infrastructure is basically home by home for water distribution purposes. So we’re a small community, and if you’re less than 10,000 people we will assist you in this effort. So we recently submitted a grant, so that we can meet the State requirement, but the State is willing to help those communities. Where a request like this is really out of reach for us,” stated Mayor Peterman. Further information about this study will come as it is made available to the city.

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