January 2026 | Vol. 22 Iss. 1
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Holladay
New general plan See Holladay Horizons addresses growth and sustainability Page 4 Inside...
Goodbye 2025
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Holladay’s next mayor talks growth, priorities and respect By Peri Kinder | peri.k@mycityjournals.com
Paul Fotheringham answers eight questions about his upcoming mayoral term.
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fter serving on the Holladay City Council for eight years, Paul Fotheringham was elected mayor of the city and begins his term on Jan. 8. While excited to serve, Fotheringham knows he has big shoes to fill. He plans to guide residents, elected officials and city staff with decorum and respect. How would you describe your leadership style? [Former mayor] Rob Dahle set such a great tone for mutual respect. Whatever my leadership style is, I hope to maintain that. I need to listen first and share my opinion later. Folks shouldn’t think they need to follow my lead without my having heard their opinion first. That’ll be important for me to remember. It’ll be a challenge for me because I like to get in there for discussion and debate. How will you guide the city council when there is disagreement? It’s important to get along, and while we haven’t always agreed on issues, and we’ve had some vehement disagreements, it’s never resulted in hard feelings or raised voices. It’s always resulted in a better-compromised solution. That’s so valuable. How will you engage residents? We’ll make sure to use our communications channels. We have a communications coordinator in the city who’s developed our social media messaging and keeps our website updated. We know the Holladay Journal is an important source of information for our residents, so we will continue to provide articles from the city, council and mayor’s office, to keep residents up to speed on what’s going on in the city. What are your top two priorities for your first year? The big priority is the projects that I think will have generational importance. The first is our 100-year-old building,
Holladay Mayor-elect Paul Fotheringham prepares to take the helm of the city in January. (Photo courtesy of Holladay City)
the old Holladay Elementary, that’s now city hall and our police precinct. We love our building, but to extend its life, we need to do some work on it. We’re in the process of initiating a municipal bond to fund a seismic retrofit and
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life extension of the building. That bond will also fund the second priority, the new park at the Spring Lane Elementary site. Those are big projects linked to Holladay’s future. How will you balance growth with
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keeping the city’s character? I think our focus isn’t to accommodate monstrous expansion. We need to have an environment that is accommodating to growth for the purposes of renewal, not necessarily expansion. I think Holladay Village is a great success story and there’s hope that Holladay Hills, which sat for so long, will be rejuvenated to provide that renewal and vibrancy that the Cottonwood Mall provided back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. What will success look like for you at the end of your first year in office? I would say completing phase one of the Spring Lane Elementary Park. That should include the pavilion, restrooms and pickleball courts. And then, being on schedule with our city hall seismic retrofit, I don’t think it will be done until the following year, but as long as it’s underway and we’re on schedule, that would be a great victory. One more thing I’d feel good about would be having a successful integration of our new councilmembers into a functioning council. What do you do for fun? I play tennis twice a week. I grew up playing tennis and the bulk of my career was running the Sports Mall in Murray. Now I play tennis at the Cottonwood Country Club, so that’s my outlet. I like to do some biking, too. My favorite ride is what we call the Holladay Loop. I go with a group of friends in the summer and it’s about 17 miles. What else would you like residents to know? The city staff is so great. It’s almost impossible to fail at city council, as long as we’re listening to such a level-headed, capable, caring staff and city attorney. We listen because we know who the smartest people in the room are. It’s smarter and wiser to avoid letting your election victory go to your head and then let the staff do their job and make decisions based on their good advice. l
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