BOUNTIFUL—Council member and mayoral candidate Kate Bradshaw doesn’t sit still when it comes to public service and engagement. In addition to her duties in the city, Bradshaw will take on the role as President of the League of Cities and Towns. The league is a cooperative organization that advocates for municipal governments at the state and federal levels.

“It’s a position where I’m elected by all of the cities in Utah,” said Bradshaw. “You can only be on the league board, though, if you’re an elected official from a city.”

Bradshaw became a member of the board in 2021. “Each year the current board will have a nominating committee to select new nominees to present and then those nominees are elected in the annual meetings,” she said. “So much like other boards. About a third of the board positions are open each year so you have continuity from year to year.”

Since joining the Bountiful City Council each city gets to send three designees to what’s called the legislative policy committee, said Bradshaw. “This is a committee that meets throughout the year but has a very intense schedule during the session to review legislation that could impact cities. I have served on that legislative policy committee as one of Bountiful’s representatives since I joined the city council. Then it was in 2021 that I was elected to be on the board of directors.”

To become a nominee an individual can put themselves forward or they can be nominated by someone from their own city or from another city, she said. “There’s a nominating committee that is put together. It’s always made up of individuals from cities that don’t have someone from their city that’s a nominee. So you’re looking for neutral cities to be on the committee and conduct interviews.”

There are usually two rounds of interviews, Bradshaw said. “Then the nominating committee will propose a group of board members and officers, executive officers to the full membership at the annual meeting to be voted on.”

The usual path to becoming a nominee is being a dedicated member of the legislative policy committee, she said. “People who have served on the board at least one or two terms. You’ve kind of demonstrated to your peers that you’re knowledgeable about a wide variety of municipal issues. You need to have a vision for helping lead all cities through that municipal vision and in particular engagement with the legislature.”

One thing the league of Cities and Towns does is the training of elected officials, said Bradshaw. “Also the training of municipal staff and planning commissions and things like that on all the various duties and regulatory things that cities have to do and that change from year to year.”

The league also provides technical assistance as a city goes through various processes, whether it’s a Truth in Taxation or a traffic study or just any type of resource, she said. “There’s kind of a heavy emphasis on the engagement with the Utah legislature on legislation that impacts municipalities so the league functions as that advocacy arm on behalf of all cities.”

Bradshaw will serve for a year as president. “So I will serve through next year to the end of October,” she said. “Then I’ll spend an additional year as past president on the executive committee to train and provide assistance to the new president.”

It’s very helpful to have people from different regions of the state and different sizes of cities, said Bradshaw. “Cities that have different issues and challenges to give feedback because you’re evaluating bills or issues and so having a past president to lean on is definitely really helpful.”

Bradshaw has a professional background in working with the legislature in her job. “I spend a lot of time at the State Capital,” she said. “I have a lot of relationships there and I’m able to lend those to the league to supplement the professional staff that we employ through the League of Cities and Towns. Because I’m up there it’s a very convenient dovetail.”

Bountiful has a great tradition, even though it’s a medium sized city, of elected officials serving in this role, Bradshaw said. “There’s 255 cities in Utah and the fact that we’ve kind of been in their rotation with some regular frequency I think speaks to Bountiful’s leadership statewide and our engagement in making sure that municipal perspectives are considered in the way that bills impact cities and that the important work that we do at the local level isn’t forgotten at the state level.”