Appointed incumbent facing challenge in Mesquite council race

There are many similarities between the candidates in the election for Seat 4 on the Mesquite City Council.

Both Paul Wanlass, the challenger, and Karen Dutkowski, the incumbent, retired to Mesquite after a career in working for government agencies in Utah and agreed on the biggest issue facing the scenic city that sits along the Interstate-15 corridor: creating affordable housing for the city’s workforce.

While both candidates see the same problem, they have different solutions.

“Building up is going to be the only way you can keep the housing costs cheap enough,” Wanslass said.

Dutkowski said she would want to see the city use funds to persuade developers to build affordable housing and connect residents to state housing assistance programs. But she did express concern over density as a solution to Mesquite’s housing situation.

“Everything’s being considered for zoning changes,” said Dutkowski. “I tend to not like the increase in density, because I think that one of the things that is great about Mesquite is that we have a lot of space.”

But she did add that she would consider every housing option presented to the council and could approve a dense housing project if it made sense for the city.

Wanlass grew up in the small farming town of Bluffdale, Utah, where his father was the first mayor of the city and served for 20 years. He spent 30 years working for the Jordan Valley Water Conservancy District in Utah and although he is retired to Mesquite, Wanlass holds a real estate license to help his wife in her business.

He currently serves on the Mesquite Master Plan Committee and the Mesquite Community Education Foundation and would like to see those two groups work more closely together in order to keep young people in Mesquite.

Dutkowski was appointed to the Mesquite City Council in 2020, despite losing a primary for the seat. Before her time on the council, Dutkowski worked for a variety of public safety and government groups including Intermountain Healthcare, Veterans Affairs hospitals and for fire departments in Salt Lake City and Fresno, California.

In her few years on the council Dutkowski said that it’s impossible to “please everyone” and has made her decisions based on the “health and safety of the community as a whole.”

Wanlass is one of those people who wasn’t pleased by the City Council’s actions, saying he would wants to see more conservative spending practices and didn’t like the decision the council made to use $7 million of redevelopment funds to build a new fire station. He said he would’ve wanted to see the bids for the firehouse sent out sooner in order to keep the costs lower and less impacted by supply chain issues and inflation.

Dutkowski defended the spending practices of the city during her time as “prudent” and that the spending on the fire house was necessary in order to ensure public safety. She said using redevelopment funds for this project made sense.

In the July campaign finance filings, Dutkowski raised a total of $10,450 and spent just more than $8,800; she has put $3,000 of her own cash into the race. Her biggest donor is the Wolf Creek Golf Club which gave $2,500. While Wanlass hasn’t raised any cash, he’s spent more than $2,400 on his campaign.

Contact Sean Hemmersmeier at shemmersmeier@reviewjournal.com or on Twitter @seanhemmers34