Sometime this summer I got pulled over by Utah Highway Patrol on I-80. I wasn’t speeding and frankly, I don’t know why he pulled me over. I have a ‘fast lane’ pass and when he flipped on his lights, I was in that far left lane and so I pulled over to the extreme far left lane. The officer was mad as hell for reasons I never determined. First, he gruffly barked that I pulled into in the wrong emergency lane, and that I should have pulled to the far right lane once he turned on his lights. He said, “This lane is only for us and emergency vehicles”.  Given it was close to rush house, pulling far to the right would have taken a few miles to get over there safely. I also have a handicapped license plate and a hybrid vehicle. Basically, he had nothing to ticket me for and ordered me back into traffic, but informed me that I didn’t have a license plate on the front of my vehicle. Guess what? We’re no longer required to have a plate on the front of our vehicles, and I’m not aware of any new car that has a special place for plates anymore. The legislature killed that requirement last year!

There are a few other changes the DMV passed in 2024 to provide more efficient service that will hopefully lead to less trips in person to the DMV. First, instead of two decals for our plates, there will just be one that we will be required to place on the upper right hand corner of our license plates. Commercial vehicles can ask for two plates if they feel the need for them.  Second, the license plates will no longer have raised numbers and alphabet letters and will be flat. Supposedly the plates will look better and save production costs. Third, plates will now be mailed to us when we change them or update them. This last feature is what the DMV believes will save us all trips to their locations around the state to pick up plates.

Currently we have four standard issue plate designs as well as personalized plates, the old school black and white plates with no designs, special ‘group’ plates for folks who support certain non-profits (Boys and Girls clubs, Huntsman Cancer Institute, Farm vehicles, the Masons, Vets, Best Friends Animal Sanctuary, and many more), colleges here in the state, and disabled plates. Some monies from the sales of different plates goes to the non-profits they feature.  If you’re just moving to the state or getting your first vehicle in Utah, fees are pretty cheap. The standard is $7.50, personal plates are $16, group plates $21 and the new ‘blackout license plates’ are $25 with an annual fee of $25. Part of the sale of the blackout plates goes to the Utah State Historical Society.

Here’s why one of Utah’s most popular brewpubs is expanding to the west side
BUSINESS • SQUATTERS CORNER PUB
By KOLBIE PETERSON | The Salt Lake Tribune
People who live on the west side of Salt Lake County now have a brewpub close by, in a majority-minority city that is Utah’s second most populous.
Squatters Corner Pub, at 3555 S. Constitution Blvd. in West Valley City, opened to the public Monday and was scheduled to hold a ribbon-cutting Tuesday.
The brewpub, located in the northwest corner of the Valley Fair Mall complex, was previously a TGI Fridays and had sat vacant for years.
Rick Seven, brand and marketing manager for Salt Lake Brewing Co. — which owns Squatters Corner Pub and Squatters Pub Brewery downtown, along with six other restaurants and two breweries — said West Valley City is underserved when it comes to brewpubs.
“There’s really no brewpubs or breweries west of I-215,” Seven said. “Everything seems to be downtown, and in that south corridor off of [Interstate 15], and a little bit on the east side, but nothing out west. So we thought this was an ideal location.” Technically, Uinta Brewing Company is just west of the interstate.
Seven said the spot is ideal for Squatters, since there are residential areas, government buildings and local businesses nearby, as well as a hotel and the Maverik Center. TRAX also runs along Constitution Boulevard, and West Valley Central Station is across the street.
Salt Lake Brewing Co. considered expanding into Lehi, in the Silicon Slopes area, Seven said, but the company purposefully chose West Valley City for its population size and diversity.
In addition to welcoming West Valley City dwellers, Squatters Corner Pub will also serve the people of Tooele, Taylorsville, South Salt Lake and West Jordan, he said.
Squatters Corner Pub has a restaurant license, not a bar license, which means families will be able to bring their kids inside certain areas. The brewpub will also have a patio and a small retail section.
In the bar section of the brewpub, complete with large TVs, there is a large board that displays which beers are being poured. It features beers from Salt Lake Brewing Co. Brewery, next door to Squatters, and Top of Main Brewery in Park City, with locally tied varieties like the Dog Lake pale ale, and the Swede Alley nitro stout. One tap, called the Brewer’s Batch, will be reserved for Squatters beers.
Seven said the food menu at Squatters Corner Pub will be nearly identical to the menu at Squatters downtown, featuring appetizers, pub favorites, soups, salads, burgers, pizza, sandwiches and the Thai yellow curry, which has been on the menu since 1989.

Well, this is something I never expected. Clients and potential customers are calling me to sell their homes. That’s not unusual, but the WHY is unusual and disturbing. They are calling me because they are leaving Utah due to the anti-trans laws our phobic legislature has passed and they simply don’t feel they and or their children will be treated fairly or potentially not be able to receive future health care here that addresses their needs.
There’s the ‘Final Pre-Election 2024 Anti-Trans Risk Assessment Map (Google it) which came out this year and was updated before we all voted for President last week. It shows which states have a DO NOT TRAVEL warning (Texas, with Florida a close second) and which states may be safer. If you go to the map at the www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2024 you can click on each state and it will show you the legislative bills there that have passed and were defeated and will be updated as bills are written for future legislation in 2025 around the country. You may not have heard or seen any anti-trans ads here in Utah because national politicians don’t spend much money on ads here as we’re a ‘given Red State’ but across the U.S. anti-trans ads were a major part of many campaigns.
If you click on Utah on the website you’ll see there are ten bills the ACLU followed in Utah that passed into law or were defeated, including public accommodation bans, school facilities bans, etc. It’s a real fear of parents around the country and in Utah that their Transkids might be taken from them or that our legislators will meet this January and pass laws to force Transkids and people into medical detransition, ban the use of anything but dead names, and disallow gender to be changed in legal documents. Cities and towns can pass the same kind of laws, like Odessa, Texas that became the first city in the nation to pass a $10,000 bounty on transgender people inside bathrooms.
The rise of anti-trans bills around this country is astounding and sadly the fear mongers will submit more laws next year to restrict gender-affirming healthcare for trans and gender-expansive people this year with most of the bills targeted against children under the age of 18. Dr. Diana Finkel at Rutgers University Medical School noted, “If you, as the parent of a 16-year-old, want your child to have breast augmentation because she wants a larger bosom and she is a cisgender girl, she can do it” but noted that the law would ban a trans girl from having the same surgery.
Given we don’t know the outcome for sure with last week’s election but certainly the creation of anti-trans laws and their enforcement will continue despite what so many medical professionals and their research have found… that touting the mental and physical health benefits of gender-affirming care is good for children and adults seeking to transition.

I promise this is the last column about high rises here for a while. As an avid bird watcher, I know what a danger skyscrapers are to our avian friends due to reflections and lights at night. Most folks don’t realize that Utah is in multiple migratory bird flyways, including the Pacific and Central Flyways, which are crucial to so many species of birds that fly to and from our state each spring and fall.

Birds stop in Utah to rest up and refuel on their journeys north to Canada and south to Mexico, Central and South America each year, many stopping in and around such water sources as Gunnison reservoir, Utah Lake, the freshwater arm of the Great Salt Lake and Bear Lake. There are tens of thousands of them that pass through our state like avocets, stilts, curlews, phalaropes, sandpipers but also finches, waxwings, sparrows, juncos, hummingbirds, crows, raptors, etc. Sadly, it is estimated that up to a billion birds die every year from them flying into buildings and skyscrapers at full speed of 20-30 MPH because they see a reflection of trees or greenery that looks safe, or reflections of clouds that appear harmless in the day or are attracted by light.  In 2023 a Eurasian Eagle Owl escaped from the Central Park Zoo and became the darling of New Yorkers who looked to the skies to see ‘Flaco’ land on window sills, rooflines and decks around the city.  For a year he was dubbed the ‘Manhattan Mascot’ by his fans until he crashed earlier this year into a glass-wrapped building and died.

Luckily there are two international trends that are helping to save our bird friends, but I’m not sure any of these good intentions and changes to building materials are being pushed for here in Utah. Citizens in other areas around the world have gotten some cities to recognize this threat to birdlife and have gotten cities like Chicago. Over 1000 birds died in one night in Chicago, flying into the McCormick Center that had been all lit up.   We can help by turning off building lights at night, as that’s when most birds migrate. Developers and owners of buildings downtown love to light up their structures at night and some even add color themes-all of which change bird behavior and cause bird deaths. In Dallas, Houston and Forth Worth they have turned off more than half of the building lights downtown each night, saving thousands of birds from a violent crashing death and saving electricity.  Also, there’s a new glass material for high rises being used around the world that has patterns in it that you can’t see from the street, but the birds do and thus they avoid flying into the buildings that have this kind of glass.  It’s about time our major cities in our state start reviewing codes and permits for high rise construction and advocate for our birdlife here.

In a month we’ll learn who the new president of the United States will be, unless…?  I don’t want to go down that road of conspiracy theories but wanted to add some facts to the age old question, “Do president elections effect the housing market?”

According to the data keepers at the National Assn. of REALTORS, when it’s an election year for the CEO of the country, sales in November go down 9.4% VS in years where there isn’t an election sales go down by 9.8%.  Newsweek magazine interviewed chief investment officer at mortgage lender New American Funding who said “There is certainly a human element to housing prices and mortgage rates. As a result, election years can bring more volatility to prices and rates than in non-elections years. However, those moments of volatility are fleeting.”

Both candidates are promising to cut inflation, increase the housing supply, and cutting interest rates. We’ve just had a major half point reduction two weeks ago by the FED, which is saving buyers a bit on mortgage interest and credit card rates. People forget that a year ago rates were at 8% for an average home loan and now they are hovering in the low 6% area. No one can cut inflation pressures quickly but increasing affordable housing will help what he calls a “frozen, mostly unaffordable market.”

The market will respond to how we all vote in November because if we as individual voters like the outcome we’ll go out and buy things, like cars, houses, furniture, appliances (big ticket items). There is no evidence though that presidential elections have a huge impact on home prices. According to CoreLogic who has collected data since 1988, prices rose an average of 4.5% during the fall of non-election years compared to 4.4% in years with a presidential election.

I don’t care WHO you vote for, as long as you do vote and participate in our democratic process. In Utah, you can register at vote.org/register-to-vote/utah on line if your information is received by 5 PM 11 days before election day. It’s the same deadline for registering in person, but if you’re registering by mail, you must make sure your registration is received by that same time 11 days before an election. You can also register on election day. To register in Utah you must be a citizen of the U.S., have resided for 30 days before the election and live in the precinct in which you are registering to vote, be 18 years old by election day, not be convicted of certain felonies, treason or have been found to be mentally competent by a court of law.

For information on ALL Utah candidates, go to the League of Women Voters of Utah website: www.lwvutah.org. They offer non-partisan data on all those running for office in this year’s election in November. I won’t see you at the polls because I trust my mail-in ballot and the post office!