For decades, neighborhood chairs have helped their neighbors navigate through city services and government processes that are confusing and daunting. The chairs were trained and given the tools they needed to be a focus of action in their communities so that people would have someone they knew and trusted to go to for help with neighborhood issues. Now that’s gone.

In October 2018, Provo resident Ginny Smith wrote a long and detailed letter to the Mayor and City Council concerning the challenges she and her husband, Scott Smith, have been facing on their property in the North Timpview neighborhood, one of the few remaining pieces of Provo’s agricultural history. Scott Smith’s ancestors settled their forty acres back in the 1850’s and built up a Centennial farm which now the Smiths, six generations later, still cultivate to this day.

For the past few years the Smith’s property has endured constant harassment by both known and unknown entities, which has been ignored by local authorities. Gates to their property have been damaged, significant amounts of fruit stolen from their trees, and multiple forms of vandalism committed on their property. Sadly, and most sinister, recently a horse owned by the Smiths was killed and left on their property for them to find.

The Smiths have attempted to contact local law enforcement on a continuous basis regarding these problems but because the Smiths are on the boundary of county and city limits the Sheriff Department and Provo City Police play hot potato on who should respond. They have also contacted the City Council and individual members of the Council but have yet to receive any meaningful response in the past 4 years. The Smith’s continue to suffer as a result.

As an almost lifelong resident of Provo and someone who grew up in Provo, it saddens me to see good people like the Smiths go un-helped and not listened to. The Smiths and those of the North Timpview Neighborhood will not be the last to have their concerns go unheard as this change takes effect. Instead of going to a trusted advocate who they helped appoint as the voice of their neighborhood, the Smiths will be left trying to confront a district board of members handpicked by the City Council instead.

There has already been a long trend of Provo reducing the ability for citizens to voice concerns, most notably reducing the amount of time a citizen gets to speak at a City Council meeting to only 2 minutes. How is one supposed to adequately describe a complicated, multi-faceted problem in 2 minutes? It doesn’t inspire much confidence that the same structure implemented on a smaller scale will do a better job of listening to and advocating for these neighborhoods, or that future changes won’t further disconnect the city from its neighborhoods.

As Provo becomes more unrecognizable to me and I grow increasingly disconnected from the vision of its legislature, it breaks my heart to see citizens lose their advocates and their voices. A legislature should seek first to listen instead of act, and this policy change accomplishes the opposite.

David Christensen is a lifelong Provo resident, former county and state delegate, Brigham Young University graduate and current Master of Social Work student at the University of Utah.