ROY — Roy city officials are discussing some of the challenges faced by both city government and some of the people living there.

Roy City Council Member Diane Wilson said there is a need to bring the community together going forward.

“Coming together as a community, I think, is a really big interest for me,” she said. “I think that this, MyHometown project, is going to help us a lot, because I believe that the carrot works so much better than the stick, and that’s a focus I really believe in. And again, once we do that, it naturally will feed into the solution of these big problems that we see right now. I think sometimes boiling it down to some of those fundamental issues, the others start kind of coming out in the wash, as they say, we can start coming up with solutions. So I feel that we can push through that, and I think that MyHometown project is really going to help us with that. We have a lot of that in little bits and pieces, but I think this will hopefully help us across the wider community.”

She said one of the biggest needs of the city today is better outreach to its citizens.

“Education and citizen involvement, I think, are really critical,” she said. “We’ve tried to work on it; we just need to come up with some different ideas and some different avenues because of these other big problems that we have. If we can have that input and involvement, people will understand and I think we’ll have solutions that meet a bigger need.”

Mayor Ann Jackson, who also works at Roy High School, said many of the city’s youngest citizens are seeing a challenge that is far too common throughout the region.

“There are kids that are really hurting for food,” she said. “We had a girl before the Christmas break broke down in our office because she could not stand the thought of not being here for two weeks and she didn’t want to be at her house. She knew she wasn’t going to have food. It broke my heart to listen to her.”

She noted that Roy High School has been trying to do its part to help its students who lack food resources at home with the opening of a teen resource center.

“When we opened this teen center, it’s just been such a benefit to students,” she said. “This week, they’ve been taking classes on daily tours and showing them what they have, the kids will know and then they’ll go home and tell their family. Then they can come and get food if they need it.”

Several other schools in Weber and Davis counties have built similar centers that not only provide food but also offer a place for students to do homework, shower and do laundry.

For more on Roy City government, visit https://www.royutah.gov/government/index.php.