OGDEN — As the election approaches, Ogden City Council member Ken Richey is reflecting on what’s most important to him in the coming years.

Richey said ensuring public safety is still among his top priorities.

“Our police and fire feel supported, and I believe that’s 100% the case,” he said. “We’ve made changes and we’ve made improvements to salary schedules to give a competitive wage. We’re not the highest — we’re not the lowest either — but working with the police chief and the fire chief, they’ve created a culture that really does help attract and bring people on along with the competitive wage.”

He said the City Council must continue to support this culture.

“It’s important that they feel that the elected officials really do value what they do, trust what they do and support them in that work,” he said.

Richey said he also has continued infrastructure improvements as a priority.

“There are definitely unique challenges with that in different parts of the city,” he said. “I do feel like we’ve seen an improvement in our streets in a lot of places. The folks that are in charge of that have got this master plan. They know where the hot issues are, but they’re also able to pivot if there’s an emergency like a broken water line.”

He said this also extends to streetlights.

“I have seen improvements in our lighting,” he said. “Ogden City doesn’t own all of our streetlights; Rocky Mountain Power owns a lot of them. The Ogden City ones — they’ve gone in and made sure that we’ve got LED lights and they’ve tried to be efficient there and make sure they’re bright. That’s an issue that I think we still need to continue working on.”

Richey said that economic development is also a big piece of the puzzle.

“In the last two years, we’ve had to do two Truth in Taxations and we’ve held the tax rate,” he said. “It’s considered a tax increase because of the Truth in Taxation process. It’s not a fun process and it’s one of those things where you really look inside of yourself and say, ‘What else has to happen so we don’t have to do that?’ We don’t want to constantly be putting a higher tax burden on residents, and I never thought I would ever vote for something like that, but when you see we’ve got these tremendous needs with our different departments.”

He said that economic development is key to reducing the burden on taxpayers.

“The way to avoid that is going to be developing that economic engine to where we have businesses — both large and small businesses — contributing to that tax base,” he said. “Not only through stronger commercial spaces that have higher tax revenues, but also sales taxes that come from that. We say all the time, ‘If you want to try and keep your sales taxes low, support local businesses.’ Your tax dollars are going to stay in the community. Don’t drive out to the other communities — make all of your purchases here.”