OGDEN — Ogden City Council candidate Jase Reyneveld likened the city to a ship, saying that he doesn’t see a need for major change in course but noting that even small deviations can have a huge impact.

“Government organizations, much like the military, they’re large ships that do not turn on a dime — and that’s really a good thing in a lot of ways,” he said. “But if you’re off a couple of degrees, in 1,000 kilometers you might end up somewhere you never intended to be. I don’t think there needs to be some hard right turn or left turn — we don’t want to capsize the ship in that sense.”

He said one place he would like to see a change in how regular business is done pertains to who takes the lead on property development.

“There’s stories that continually come up as it pertains to business processes, permitting, single-family home permits, engineering permits — I hear a lot of, unfortunately, negative things,” he said. “The people of Ogden, they’re our bosses. It’s their town, it’s their property, it’s their money and as long as they’re not doing anything illegal and it’s in line with the zoning and what our whole vision as a community is, then we really have to get out of the way and make it as cheap as possible  from the government expenditure side. That would be my main change — to do more facilitation and less of actually doing it.”

Reyneveld said he sees recent projects as examples of the city taking on a role it doesn’t need to.

“When you look at some of these projects, the city is kind of expanding its role to do like a landlord type of situation,” he said. “I don’t know that that’s really territory we want to be in for very long.”

He also acknowledged that there are challenges to growing Ogden and its tax base.

“Ogden is a built-out city,” he said. “There’s not a lot of green fields. I appreciate that challenge that the councilmen and the mayor have raised. My approach would hopefully be more on the private side — do a really good job of zoning, allow people the flexibility to innovate, to create, to build things that the market demands like smaller single-family homes and maybe some smaller lots. I know that these things are being talked about and I’m grateful for that.”

On the growth of the Ogden-Hinckley Airport, Reyneveld tempered expectations on it being a bustling passenger hub.

“I understand there’s a big vision to build economic capacity,” he said. “Truthfully, I’ve not read into how they plan to do that. With having Salt Lake 45 minutes away, I think it’s difficult to get a real passenger terminal going out of Ogden. It’s so convenient to go to Salt Lake if you’re asking my personal experience. I just think it would be a challenge to get that market share and I know it’s taken a lot of money and a lot of goodies, so to speak, to get some of these bigger airlines — or even small airlines — to come in.”

He said there are options for expansion at the airport.

“Focusing on the defense industry and maybe the Forest Service and different things that need flexible airports … would be beneficial,” he said.

Reyneveld said, if elected, it will also be important to interact with the public — especially those in District 1 — even after the votes have been cast.

“We have to get out, we have to do townhalls for our districts,” he said. “We have to particularly represent the districts that elected us. Obviously, I want to o the best for the whole city, but my job, in my opinion, is to go and take the needs, issues and concerns of my constituents to city hall and try to fight for them particularly and make it accessible. You can’t just campaign and disappear.”