As the owner of a sculpture business, Heath Satow noted he’s dealt with several cities across the country and around the world to finish projects.

“With American cities, some are easy to work with and have a single point of contact that just holds your hand through the whole project,” he said. “There are other cities that just bounce you around and are a nightmare to work with, and those are cities I will never apply for another project in. I’d have to be pretty desperate for work to go back to them.”

Now, he’s turning his attention toward dealing with the city he calls home as a candidate for the Ogden City Council.

As he runs, he told the Standard-Examiner he has three major priorities as part of his campaign.

“I want to continue to look at the deals the city makes,” he said. “We were doing so many TIF deals that the state actually called Ogden out for it and said, ‘You’re abusing the system.’ And they changed the rules for it. That’s something that had been big on my list of how deals were being done. A large part of them were with a specific developer that our eventual head of CED seemed a little too cozy with.”

He said that Union Station is also a priority for him, saying he doesn’t feel it’s been promoted to the public nearly enough.

“Union Station, I feel has been really neglected,” he said. “It’s had some upgrades over the years. That’s one thing that drew me here when I first came here. … Historic 25th Street and Union Station just felt really good to me. It took me a while to find out about the Browning Collection. … We’ve got amazing things here. This should be a destination for this sort of historic stuff. I felt like if we focus more on that, we could spend less money getting developers to come here.”

Satow also wants to make it easier for the public and other interested parties to interact with the city.

“I’ve heard over and over and over again that the city is just hard to deal with,” he said. “I know things have changed some now and I’m hoping that continues, but I do believe a lot of the hesitancy of developers to come here and how we had to give good deals was because developers knew if they weren’t on that sort of inside track — there were two or three main developers we work with and you’ll see their projects all over the city — it would be hard to work with.”

He said his attentiveness toward the Ogden City Council has helped prepare him for potentially taking on a spot on the board

“I have been following everything the city’s been doing in work sessions and council meetings for the last seven years and almost every single one for the last four or five,” he said. “I dig into every packet — I guess I’m a masochist for this — but I get into this stuff and I’m slightly neurodivergent and I just drill into things and get really interested and look into stuff. … The only thing I’ve missed is the closed sessions. I don’t get to see those. I have a good idea of what goes on and I can figure out what they’re talking about depending on what’s going on.

Satow added that his work as a sculptor has also helped prepare him.

“My business involves creating things using creative solutions to create these permanent things,” he said. “I want this stuff to last forever and I don’t like making things that need a lot of maintenance. That’s one thing I promise my clients — this thing’s going to withstand the elements and last a long time. And I have to make decisions on things that will still be relevant 50, 60, 70 years from now. And I have to work with all of these cities. I have to get a feel for these cities. I have to get to know the people of these cities and create something that they will love and embrace, because they often spend a lot of money on these things and I think they add a lot of value to a city, but I have to navigate the whole city process, I have to navigate street closures and permits, engineering, planning, I’ve got to deal with all of the departments, and I’ve done that in a lot of cities and I’ve seen how that’s done well.”