Debbie Winn keeps a copy of the sepia photograph in her office. There’s no documentation to prove it, she says, but the men in the photo bear an uncanny resemblance to Butch Cassidy, the Sundance Kid, and Winn’s own great-grandfather. “He would always say how he helped the outlaws,” she said.
Winn is the mayor of Tooele, Utah, an old smelter town with a thriving anti-establishment scene that would have made Cassidy feel welcome. But these days, Winn finds herself responsible for maintaining civility in a community torn asunder by a changing identity and economy.
Separated from Salt Lake City by 40 freeway miles and the Oquirrh Mountains, the Tooele Valley was historically a self-sufficient community. But roughly one in six of the county’s 67,000 residents arrived in the last seven years, effectively turning Tooele into a bedroom community. The move-ins, many of whom are former city-dwellers seeking a more agrarian slice of life, typically earn more money than long-time residents — but spend most of it elsewhere. (Per-capita retail spending is double in neighboring Salt Lake County.) As a result, home prices and property taxes are up, but jobs and wages remain stagnant. And when the Tooele County Commission opted in October 2018 to rezone seven parcels of land for higher-density housing, many residents saw only more traffic and taxes in their future.
Since then, angry residents have tried to put seven referendums on the ballot: one to reverse each rezoning decision. The commission hastily reversed the upzone of three parcels, but some 30 signature-gatherers, spurred on by social media complaints of latte-toting yuppies taking over their rugged farm country, continue to pursue getting the other four on the 2019 ballot.
“So when these people move in, these city folks, right? They come in and they’re used to their city life,” said Kyle Mathews, one of the signature gatherers and a lifelong resident of the valley. “And then the farmer next door is baling his hay at 2 in the morning, with the noise and the dust and the lights, and who gets the call to the Sheriff?”
Oddly enough, some of Mathews’ allies are those very city folks. Douglas and Dana Buss moved to Tooele last year to escape the traffic and noise of Seattle. While out collecting signatures, Douglas says he had a woman accuse him of hypocrisy.
“And I says, ‘Yup, you’re right … I’m doing something about it,’” Buss recalled.
It’s not that they’re against growth, the Busses say. They just believe Tooele needs to invest in the infrastructure necessary to support that kind of population first. Winn, Tooele’s mayor, says she’s on the same page. But in the absence of new jobs, and with most newcomers building outside city limits, she was forced to double property tax rates just to maintain the status quo.
Newly-elected County Commissioner Kendall Thomas feels the tension. He considers himself a supporter of the referendum movement.
“I’m worried about what we want to become as a community,” he said. “But we need public input … because growth is coming, and as a community we need to decide together what we need to be.”
At the same time, Thomas, who is still helping support his adult son, sees the economic opportunity in the boom.
“I wish I owned a thousand acres in Tooele Valley,” he said. “I’d be rich.”
This story first appeared in the Bitterroot newsletter.
