Open Houses

The Utah County Republican Convention is soon approaching. Candidates for Utah County Party's Leadership have been holding open houses so the delegates can get to know the candidates and often times ask questions. Lynn Taylor (running for treasurer) and Lisa Shepherd (running for secretary) held a joint one this past Saturday. It was one I could actually go to, my hectic schedule prevents me from going to most of them.

Lynn seems like a very nice, intelligent man. He is retired from the Air Force. You can get online and read about him @ lynntaylor.wordpress.com. I liked that he would want to make the Party more transparent. That he would want to place all the financial statements online on a restructured easy to navigate Party website. I also really liked that he wants to place the proposed by-law and constitution changes on a forum so that they can get debated long before we ever go to vote on them. I find this extremely beneficial.

The last special session we had we were voting on changing the appointed Education Officer to be elected. Lisa Shepherd was given a whole 2 minutes to make her case. This is not enough time. Neither was it very fair. From what I was told, Lisa was told be prepare a 7 minute presentation, one minute before she got up to present they changed it to only 2 minutes. Now if this had been available online in a forum, we could have read the arguments for and against. We could have been better educated as to why people felt that way. Personally I think that Lisa got steamrolled. Of course, the party leadership did not want the education officer appointed. They want to stay in control of as much as they can.

Lisa has been actively involved in our county politics for a long time. She has also worked on several campaigns. She is also very nice and intelligent. You can read about her online @ web.me.com/lisamshepherd. One of the things I really liked about Lisa is that she would want to credential everyone for our central committee meetings. She would propose to use the precinct secretaries to do this.

I think that this would be really beneficial. The last Central Committee Meeting (not the special session) was held at the Provo City Council Chambers. At the time of voting it was standing room only. Problem being, is that some of the people in the room weren't even Central Committee members. As a delegate I could see how easy it was for someone to stand and be counted, even if they didn't have the right to do so. It was kind of a mess (not surprising right!!!).

I also liked that Lynn and Lisa both agreed that we should have an agenda at our committee meetings. Every meeting I ever go to has an agenda, be it for school, church, community, etc. I'm not sure why the party feels like they are exempt from this. I think it's common courtesy to give everyone an agenda. The current party leadership is afraid of technology for some reason, so you would think handing a piece of paper to everyone would be right up their alley.

Lisa also mentioned that she would want more money to go to rallying republicans to party meetings. I know its hard for the leadership to think that we need more voters out in Utah County. I think that they are afraid that we will lose our stronghold. I think that they should have more faith in our party. They should quit treating us like we don't know what is good for us. I think more people would get involved if they weren't treated so bad from the beginning. I don't know what they spent their money on, apparently they did to try and get more people out, but I didn't see it in my neighborhood. I would hope that they would do something on a more local level, since it is our Utah County Party that the money would come from, so why not use it locally?