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 her recent trip to Washington D.C., the wellbeing survey and about an upcoming river clean up.

The Mayor recently returned from a Washington D.C. trip where she was invited to represent the Intermountain Region during this meeting. “So they had four states participate in this event, it was Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Utah. It was a really wild mix of people, there were educators, a handful of elected officials, people from business, really coming to the White House where they wanted to hear from us about the challenges we have and it was super interesting to hear from these other states in our region with the same problems we have,” stated Mayor Peterman.  The topics that were on top of list for many attending the meeting was water issues and lack of affordable housing.

This was a great networking trip for the mayor as she now has contacts in Washington and in other states to bounce ideas off of when it comes to city issues. “So I’ve been able to network those connections as I’m trying to pursue electrical grid analysis and those types of things. Now I can email people who actually respond to me because now I’m a person to them, not just some little town in Southeast Utah, but a person and they want to help. So that was really reassuring and it was a great opportunity to network and to hear about similar challenges across all sorts of communities. So I was super honored to be there,” explained Mayor Peterman. She has already reached out to colleagues for assistance with the city’s electrical grid project that the mayor is currently working on.

Residents were asked to complete a federal mandated water survey; the deadline is coming up on April 30. If you have not be able to take the survey you can log on to Helper City’s website. The USU Wellbeing Survey is also being shared with residents too. “So we’ve worked closely with USU’s Dr. Flint, its really just to keep a pulse on where people are at, what’s working, what’s not working. That data is invaluable, I utilize it for grants – you know how happy are people? Where do they see deficiencies? What can we do to address that? So to have that in a really compact data format is its great to use when you’re applying for funding, and can really reference comments or real data from our community,” said Peterman. The Wellbeing Survey is part of the USU Wellbeing Project and you can learn more by visiting the website at https://www.usu.edu/utah-wellbeing-project/

There will be a River Cleanup taking place on May 13 with students from Helper Middle School. This is the first cleanup that has been organized since COVID. This gathering is always very educational for the students, as Mayor Peterman explains, “I bring down water scientists to talk about the work we have done as far as river restoration. So it’s a mix of outdoor activities, as well as education so Quinn Donnelly from riverrestoration.org will be there and we’re working with Trout Unlimited to have some resources there who can really help the kids understand the value of the river, as well as for us to get a little sweat equity cleaning up the walkway, and branches and trash and getting ready for a wonderful Spring.”

To learn more about Helper City please visit their website at https://www.helpercity.net/