By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

The new rendition of the Helper City council gathered for its first council meeting on Thursday, Jan. 8. On the docket were recognition of Officer Garrett Newman, a property rezoning, and an update on the city’s ordinances.

Opening the affair, Police Chief Sean Draper invited Newman to the podium, explaining that the officer had recently gone above and beyond the call of duty. “Society has faced quite the uncontrollable sensation of scam phone calls, texts, emails and mail services. Scams that targeted all individuals within our community, ranging from young teenagers to our elderly community, and have also affected our businesses,” explained the Chief.

Draper continued, sharing the story of Newman assisting a man named ‘Dale’ who had fallen victim to one of these scam calls.

“In September of 2025, Officer Garrett Newman was dispatched to a call for service where ‘Dale’ was needing assistance. It was discovered that ‘Dale’ had become a victim of a scam from a bank he thought he could trust, although it was not the bank at all and it was a rogue employee. The employee convinced ‘Dale’ to mail her a large sum of money to assist in an internal investigation into a corrupt bank manager.”

After learning this, Newman jumped into action, calling the mail service and putting a hold on the package. However, the mail service still let the package through. Undeterred, Newman called the Sheriff’s Office of the location the package was to be delivered, successfully intercepting the mail and returning it to ‘Dale’.

“In law enforcement, it seems it is quite rare that we are able to recover such a drastic amount of money for someone that had fallen victim to a scam,” shared Draper. “Thank you, Officer Newman, for going above and beyond and turning a negative into a positive learning experience for those involved. You not only helped Dale, but you also provided the rest of our agency with other avenues we can pursue in the future and call to some situations similar to this.”

Moving forward on the agenda, the next major item saw a request for a property rezone from residential to industrial by Christie Wilde and Roegun Wilde, following a positive recommendation from the Helper Planning and Zoning Committee – the Wildes’ aim to create an asphalt business at the location.

The council addressed some concerns raised about the switch, such as dust and noise pollution in the area, but ultimately agreed that the item was not a business approval, but rather an approval for the rezoning. Still, Roegun Wilde explained some of the mitigation processes, including using foliage to contain dust and keep equipment hidden from the public. After this, the item was approved unanimously. 

Following the passage, one audience member sought to share her opinion. She stated that she had spoken against the rezoning at the planning and zoning meeting and asked whether this was the go-ahead for the business. She was informed that this simply got the ball rolling, and a lengthy permitting journey would be the next step. She was also informed that as the item was not a public discussion, she would have to wait to share this opinion with an approving body.

Chief Draper jumped in as well, reminding attendees of the rules of decorum and encouraging the citizens to visit with the mayor and council members outside of the meeting to share their concerns.

The final major discussion point saw Mayor Lenise Peterman providing an update on the city’s journey to updating its ordinances. “We’re currently codifying our code. That takes an amazing amount of time to update. And once we have that, I’ve been speaking with the city of Roosevelt, who recently updated all of their ordinances, and they recommended Mike Hansen to help guide that process, and they spoke highly of his work.”

She continued,” I reached out to Mike to say, ‘What would it look like if we wanted to do an overhaul of our entire code?’ So he is looking into that and drafting a proposal … If the ordinances are like the HR policy book that hadn’t been updated since 1993. We’re probably seriously out-of-sync with a lot of things, so I’ll keep you all apprised as that goes.”

The next meeting of the Helper City Council will be held on Thursday, Feb. 5, beginning at 6 p.m. in Helper City Hall.