By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News | Photo courtesy of Terry Willis
Price City mayoral candidate Terry Willis joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss her campaign, platform and what she aims to accomplish if elected.
“What has inspired me is that I see greatness for our city,” said Willis of her decision to run. “I see that we could have more potential than we have been utilizing. Where I think I can help is that one of the areas that we’re lacking is our communication to the public on what we are doing, because we are doing some pretty good things out there, but we don’t always convey that. We don’t always make sure that the public knows why we’re making our choices, how we came to those decisions, and I feel that is one of my strengths.”
Serving on the Price City Council since 2015, Willis has previous experience with other public-service-based institutions such as the Children’s Justice Center and Active Re-Entry. Willis explained how these experiences would benefit her if elected: “One of the things is that I’ve learned the needs of the community beyond just the businesses, but every single citizen out there, from the person who is the most struggling to those that are the most successful, everyone can benefit from a strong vibrant community and I would like to see that happen.”
She continued,” This community has given me a lot. From a struggling single mom, there were people who stepped up, opportunities that came my way, and in some ways, I feel like I got lucky. Because I see others who were in the same boat as me who didn’t match those opportunities, and I want to make sure that opportunities to succeed are available to everyone.”
One major task faced by the council each year is managing the city budget. Willis explain how she would approach this Herculean task,” One is to rely on our finance individuals to make sure that I am informed at each step of the way making sure I’m available and take the time to sit down with finance with each department head and understand budget issues, understand places that we can cut if there are some but places that we need to make sure we have adequate money.”
Willis added,” Looking at ways to generate new revenue; and that’s a little more difficult, but to not do it necessarily on the backs of every single of our citizens, but looking at ways to bring people within our community to spend their money and to generate better sales tax. And hopefully, do a little bit of building within the community and increase our property value.”
Throughout her campaign, Wills has emphasized learning and growth, as well as transparency and trust. The candidate discussed why these have become core focuses of her campaign. “Some of our recent issues that we’ve had, I really have felt like we could have communicated better. We could have done a better job of addressing those issues when they were smaller before they had become a giant problem that we now are faced with tackling. We need to make sure that the public is aware of why we’re making those decisions … I worked in the media for a while, I learned how to communicate with the public. As I was working in Active Re-Entry and working with people with disabilities, when I worked for Head Start, communication was the key. If you didn’t communicate with the people that you needed to, you weren’t helping them. If you didn’t learn to listen – and that truly is probably bigger than how we communicate – but how we listen.”
An issue faced by Price City over the past year has been communication between first responders, namely police officers, and the city council and mayor. Willis shared how she would seek to bridge this gap,” I would go back to pulling all the parties together and doing some ongoing sit-downs to work through those issues, making sure that we define them so that we really, truly know what issues we’re working with. We’re not assuming that we understand the issues. Once we begin to feel like we both understand each other’s issues and sides, we can begin to find some solutions to that. It won’t be an overnight process. I don’t have magic. I don’t know all the inside issues, but I would think that there are solutions out there if we sit down and work together.”
Closing our conversation, Willis answered why she thinks citizens of Price should use their vote this November for her: “Because I will bring that type of change that, I hope, I think that I’m hearing people want. For us to communicate better, for us to be telling the public why what we’re doing and why we’re doing it, and for us to be soliciting input from the public to be able to hear what the needs are to make sure that we’re driving the city in the direction that the city would like to be heading. Our citizens are our employers, and so we need to listen to them. They’re the ones that say ‘Yes, represent us in office,’ but we need to hear what they want and we need to make sure that we’re not being driven by special interests or the loudest voice, but everyone’s voice.”
This article does not serve as an endorsement for the candidate featured. All candidates in the 2025 municipal election cycles are entitled to one free interview. To schedule, email news@koal.net.