Jon Beesley is hoping to fill what he sees as a major disconnect between the people and cities of Weber County and the Weber County Commission.

Beesley, who served as mayor of Plain City from 2018-2025, is challenging incumbent Weber County Commissioner Sharon Bolos in the Seat B primary race.

Recently, Beesley sat down with the Standard-Examiner editorial board to discuss his campaign, why he’s running for Weber County Commission and his goals if elected.

Restoring relationships

Ryan Comer, Standard-Examiner

Beesley said there’s no better government than local government, and he’s seen this being challenged by the current County Commission.

“You live next to a council member, you know the mayor personally,” he said. “That is where the biggest change can happen is at local government level. And the county commissioners are just a step above that, that they’re a little disenfranchised. I really knew it when I had a county commissioner come into a council meeting and he flat out said, ‘If you don’t build it, we will.’ And that was pretty black and white that there was a pretty big separation between the county level working with the cities. It was no longer a mutual playground. It was ours and yours and that really bothered me.”

He said that, in addition to administering elections, protecting property and maintaining a budget, there’s an important role the County Commission has.

“One of their biggest jobs is to support cities and to help them where they need help,” he said. “That’s not necessarily financial, but it’s supporting, it’s working with them, it’s working on regional projects together. There’s projects that eight-and-a-half years ago, they were just getting talked about, and today very little to none has been done on those projects.”

Beesley said maintaining the relationships between county and city officials is critical.

“So you’ve got to have those great relationships with your mayors and your councils as a county commissioner, and those are nonexistent,” he said. “There’s a few cities that feel like they have good support, but I can tell you right now, there’s many, many mayors that do not feel like they have the support of the county commissioners. That’s sad and that’s not how it should be.”

He said that he is running to restore this relationship.

“As a former mayor, that would be my number one — working with the cities, showing them the support, working on those regional projects, applying our county engineers on those projects and not saying, ‘Hey, city, will you chip in 10, 15 grand?’ No, let’s make it a regional project, put it under the county and then let’s go solve these problems together.”

Experiences

Beesley said the experience of being a mayor helped prepare him for a potential seat on the County Commission.

“Being a mayor for eight years — eight years of managing a city budget,” he said. “That’s no small task. Checking in with your department heads, making sure that they’re spending where they need to be spending from and being as frugal as they can with taxpayer money. In eight years as mayor, we saved nearly $5 million, with an average of $4.5 million budget per year. That’s one of the things I hang my hat on in Plain City. I didn’t build a big building or anything like that that says, ‘Jon was the mayor here!’ My contribution was being fiscally responsible — and not that building a building isn’t right — but that was my contribution to Plain City was fiscally responsible spending.”

He added that his life outside of government has also helped.

“I’ve been in the management world for 15-plus years in many management roles” he said. “I’ve managed up to 260 employees at a time out of two different offices. Absolutely loved that job. That was a great one. Did that for five years and it was time to move on. I’ve owned my own glass business. It was a one-man band for eight, almost 10 years. Still do a little bit on the side if I get time.”

Challenges

In addition to the disconnect between cities and the commissioners, Beesley said he feels one of the biggest challenges facing the county is that it’s taking on too much in the way of development costs.

“Development is not in the county’s portfolio — it shouldn’t be,” he said. “There’s a reason that the county was always under 1-acre development. One, because they didn’t have sewer and two, because you had to have 1 acre for septic systems.  And so now they’re adding sewer and all these things on taxpayer dollars. Plain City never paid for a sewer line to be put in for development. That’s always been development driven; developer paid for it. The county’s putting $20 million out spending money that we could have spent other places to put a sewer line in for developers. I don’t agree with that. I think that kind of stuff needs to stop. It’s them that are going to be making the big bucks on it and it’s us that’s going to be maintaining it.”

He said that fixing the disconnect comes down to being present and willing to debate the issues.

“I think having town halls, being open, being at events, being available to people, show up,” he said. “Just show up. … I think there’s a lot of things that can build trust with people — transparency. There’s no debate at our Weber County Commission meetings. There’s no debate. It’s all done behind closed doors, so when they walk out there, it’s three people that are right in line with each other, and that’s not good. There needs to be three opinions. There’s going to be some issues that we all agree on sometimes. But if you have a difference of opinion, let’s talk about it. It doesn’t have to be a fight. It’s not that. It’s just let’s talk about it in public and let’s do the public work in the public.”

Beesley said there’s also a lot that can be done about developing the county and developing it responsibly.

“It can’t all be high-density,” he said. “That’s not the answer to this. We need multiuse residential. We need the 1-acre lots. We don’t want to go away from having horse property in Weber County. That has been a lifelong, forever thing here — people having horses, people raising a few animals on their property. We don’t want to go away from that.”

Positives

Beesley said there are some major strengths to Weber County’s government he would like to build upon if elected.

“We have got phenomenal department heads,” he said. “We really do. I can’t think of one that doesn’t fit my criteria as a department head. … I know most of these guys and they’re very, very good at what they do, and I have no vision to change any of that.”

“I haven’t dug into the spending to make sure they’re spending wisely,” he said. “That’s one thing I focused on as mayor was creating good spending habits. Sometimes buying used is OK. You don’t always have to buy brand new equipment. For that once-a-year project, you can buy something used and maybe you got to go give it a little carburetor cleaner in the fall when you need it again. Just whatever piece of equipment it might be. Or go rent it. We don’t always have to own it.”

From the voters

As he campaigns and speaks with potential voters, Beesley said he’s hearing a lot of concern from voters about the major developments going on throughout the county.

“They’re not happy with the current commission,” he said. “Some of it’s because of the development stuff out west that they’re pushing. They’re creating cities — 13,000 home developments. Those are cities. Plain City has under 3,000 homes right now. These are cities. They’re not just little communities.”

He said there’s also a lot of concern around the lack of youth recreation in the county and how it will impact cities that do host youth sports as growth continues.

“The county has no recreation sports for kids, no junior recreation stuff,” he said. “So all of those kids — if we’re talking about the development out west — will go to Plain City or go to Hooper or go to West Haven, which will completely flood those cities’ junior rec systems with nonresidents. And that is a bigger issue than it sounds. The cities do not make money on rec. We subsidize that, and I didn’t ever have one council member that ever said we shouldn’t subsidize that, because it’s phenomenal for the kids.”

‘Not a power guy’

In closing, there’s one thing Beesley says he is not.

“I’m not a power guy,” he said. “I’m not a power-hungry person. I’m not a title guy. People call me ‘Mayor’ and I start looking around for somebody important. And people call me and say, ‘Is this Mayor Beasley?’ I say, ‘Yeah, this is Jon.’ I don’t need the title.”

For more on Jon Beesley and his campaign, visit jonforweber.com. He also invites members of the public to contact him directly on his personal cell phone at 801-388-0383.