Looking to 2024 with our annual Legislative Breakfast

Thank you to everyone that joined us at our annual Legislative Breakfast! This year, we reviewed many exciting projects and introduced new initiatives for 2024:

🌟 Housing and Welcoming Communities Guides: Utah is growing, and that growth has had a big impact on our housing market — but there are steps we can take to bring housing back within reach. In these guides, we present strategies that to make housing more affordable and give everyone opportunities to thrive. See both guides on our website now!

🌟 Disaster Resilience: Utah is due for a high magnitude earthquake in the coming years. As we look at our state, how can we adequately prepare for an event like this? Looking at specific challenges like aqueducts or addressing URM schools helps us take care of the bigger picture.

🌟 Education Vision: The future of Utah is going to be shaped by how we educate our current students. That’s why Envision Utah wants to work towards making our public education system the best it can be by working with Utahns and education leaders from around the state to create unified vision for public education.

Identifying barriers to higher education for high school students

Throughout 2023, we conducted many focus groups and a massive survey to understand the barriers Utah high school students face when they think about higher education — with the goal of finding ways to remove those barriers. Three things rose to the top:

1. Students see the costs of higher education as a huge barrier.
2. Many students have large knowledge gaps about the benefits of higher education and the process of applying and paying for education beyond high school.
3. Many students expressed concerns about mental health and said their mental health is impacting their decisions about higher education.

*Stay tuned for our full newsletter with a summary of all the takeaways you need to know.

Have you visited YourAirYourUtah.org yet?

This week the rain is keeping our air nice and clear, but winter is the time when we can see inversion setting in. If you want to know what steps you can take to reduce emissions and help keep our air clean, check our Your Air Your Utah. This website offers specific steps we can all take from an individual level to businesses and local governments to make Utah’s air better for everyone.

Did you know?

Around 29% of emissions come from our homes and businesses, with about 42% coming from cars and trucks. The mountains act as a wall that traps our emissions, which can cause unhealthy air quality. But, our air quality is getting better! To learn more about what you can do, visit the website HERE.

In the news

Standard-Examiner

This week, Republican lawmakers highlighted bills aimed at improving teacher recruitment — including one to reward “top-performing teachers” with bonuses that could bring their pay up to $100,000 a year. While this is backed by powerful GOP legislative leaders, one teacher union is hesitant. Concerned that teacher performance can be difficult to measure, they point out that this could cause potential issues.

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2KUTV

Our CEO, Ari Bruening, met with KUTV to talk about air quality in Utah. Over the next week, areas of northern Utah will be experiencing significant inversions, which means some extra hazy days ahead. While we can't prevent inversions from happening, we can try to reduce the amount of emissions stuck in our valleys when they happen. That's why a new bill is proposing stronger penalties for commercial vehicles idling on these days.

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Utah Business

The One Utah Health Collaborative has initiated a partnership with Envision Utah to explore healthcare values among professionals, employers, and patients, aiming to shape affordable healthcare improving quality of life. This study will aid in establishing guiding principles for Utah's healthcare future, complementing ongoing endeavors to set a state healthcare spending growth target, conducted in two phases.

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For 26 years, Envision Utah has brought Utahns together to tackle some of the biggest challenges related to growth — and you have made that happen. But whether we’re talking about air quality, water use, transportation, education, disaster resilience, or a host of other issues, there’s more work to be done. When you support Envision Utah, you’re helping to create a bright future for our state.

Thank you for your support!