After years of advocating for Ogden community members, Flor Lopez said there’s a simple reason she’s decided to run for City Council.

“Regular people need a voice,” she said.

Lopez is currently running for the District 1 seat that has been held for the last two terms by Council member Angela Choberka. Choberka opted not to run again this year.

In addition to wanting to give regular people from her district and the city as a whole a voice, Lopez said her vision for the city includes many facets.

“My vision is more accessibility, accountability, transparency, diversity, inclusion,” she said. “The mayor is doing a great job. He’s trying to be very transparent, which is great. But I think we need to fill that gap of trust between the community and the city.”

She said filling that gap comes down to something she has preached with clients as CEO and founder of Phoenix Business Solutions.

“One of my mottos is, ‘Empowerment,’ and with my clients, which are business owners or community members, sometimes they come to me because they are scared to visit the city (offices),” she said. “I’m a very pushy person, so I say, ‘You can do it. Go over there and tell them this. If they don’t understand you, use your translator.’ I’m trying to empower them because that is what people need — empowerment and being listened to.”

Lopez said she’d like to help build on improvements she’s already seen the city making.

“This new administration has done a great job — I feel more welcome in the city every time,” she said. “I remember when I tried to do a verification for my neighborhood with Ogden CAN (Civil Action Network) and I needed a permit for an alley. Every time I was in the city with the zoning department, every time was someone different telling me something different with different permits. … Right now, I can go over there and almost everyone knows everything, which is great.”

However, she said she’d like to make City Council meetings a little easier to decipher for people who may not be as politically savvy.

“Sometimes, the meetings are hard to understand, and that is why we need to digest that information for the regular community,” she said. “People who are maybe not politically involved or don’t understand — we need to translate that information for the regular, daily people.”

Additionally, Lopez said she’d like to focus on an infrastructure safety item that sometimes flies under everyone’s radar.

“I live in the heart of the city,” she said. “Three years ago, we had bad (street) lighting there. I advocated for that. We fixed it in a process with the city. There’s other streets where they don’t have light in the night, and I want to advocate for those and safer neighborhoods.”

She said, ultimately, she wants the community heavily involved in the direction the city is going.

“Ogden is Ogden because of the community members,” she said. “Ogden is Ogden because we have an amazing police department. Ogden is Ogden because we are building a community, we have festivals, we do art expositions. That is the reason Ogden is Ogden. It’s not for the government; it’s for the community, and they should be included in every decision.”