Heber City Police Chief Parker Sever identified affordability as the greatest threat facing the department based on its annual report. Each Heber City department performs a yearly analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats before the annual Heber City Council retreat in Jan uary to identify priorities for the upcoming year. For police officers, the cost of living is a hard pill to swallow. The median sales price for a single-family home in the Heber Valley is $1.3 million, according to the Park City Board of Realtors. Sever recalled when representatives of a development company had visited the Police Department to share their housing incentives for police officers. “I was almost not happy that they came in,” he said. “They showed them two houses. It’s the same developer. And in Heber, that same house was over $100,000 more.” The other house was located in the Provo-Orem metropolitan area, where many of the Police Department’s officers live. Sever estimated that of the Police Department’s 30 officers, just over half live in the Heber Valley. The long commute for some results in additional strain. Officers drive their patrol cars home, and that results in additional wear and tear on the city’s vehicles if commutes are upwards of 50 miles every day. But Sever said keeping that job perk is essential to retain officers.  “If we didn’t do that, they would go to another agency on the other side of the mountain,” he said. Additionally, if a major incident is reported that requires backup beyond those on duty, the Police Department cannot rely on commuters who may have to drive up to an hour to arrive on scene.  Because of the need for quick response times, officers who don’t live locally can’t be promoted to sergeants or participate in opportunities like the K-9 program. “If we have a really good officer who lives on the other side of the mountain, and he wants to be a sergeant, he’s eventually going to leave to be a sergeant somewhere because he’s not going to have that opportunity here,” Sever said.  In Sever’s opinion, affordable housing developments often do not provide perfect solutions because deed restrictions can scare off officers as potential buyers. Some developments have deed restrictions requiring that the home remain in a pool of affordability. The downside of that, he said, is that officers cannot build equity when they are selling the home to someone else in need.  Sever is hopeful that Heber City can provide a housing stipend to city employees who live in the area, much like what Midway offers. The Heber City Police Department polices Midway from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, with the Wasatch County Sheriff’s Office picking up the responsibility the rest of the time. A separate challenge for Heber police is traffic enforcement on Main Street. “You would think it’d be easier to write tickets when you have more vehicles. It’s actually more difficult,” Sever said. “And a great example is, if I see a semi going through town, unless they’re doing something really bad, we’re not pulling it over, because as soon as we pull it over, we’re blocking traffic. So if we do, we follow it until it gets out of town and then pull it over in an area that isn’t going to be impactful to all the streets around there.” Heber’s Main Street is a magnet for incidents, so the Heber City Police Department won’t send officers to areas farther from the center of town, like Jordanelle Ridge, for regular patrols.  Among the opportunities Sever identified was the purchase of an armored vehicle for the department’s tactical response team. “People think of them almost as an offensive thing, and I think that’s because of the media. My experience has always been (that) it’s a really good de-escalation tool,” he said. The vehicle could be used in situations involving gunfire, which Sever said could arise at public events like Swiss Days or political demonstrations like the “No Kings” protests. No such incidents have been reported in Wasatch County. He estimated a mid-grade vehicle would cost the city between $300,000 and $400,000. He’s hopeful he can squeeze it into the city budget for the 2026 to 2027 fiscal year, which begins in July.  As far as strengths go, Sever wrote that the Heber City Police Department closed out the year fully staffed with high morale. He also jokingly included the addition of a splash pad on the department’s front lawn as an opportunity for the upcoming year. The post Heber City Police Department identifies weaknesses, opportunities in annual report appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less