Who am I?

I was born in the San Francisco Bay area to a family with strong Utah ties. My teenage years were spent in Guam and Hawaii, chasing my father’s work assignments and visiting various locations throughout the Pacific. In my twenties, I moved to Provo to further my education, and other than a short business assignment to Texas, have spent the last 42 years here in Utah County.

I earned a bachelor degree at BYU—Hawaii, a master degree at BYU and a Ph.D. from Nova Southeastern University in Florida. I have worked mostly in education-related industries, designing and implementing educational programs and materials driven by computers and associated technologies. I currently work out of my home as a testing scientist—a psychometrician—helping others design, create, measure, and administer valid, reliable certification and licensure tests.

This is my home. I married and raised a family here, and now enjoy watching my children do the same. Claudia and I have seven children and fourteen grandchildren, with (we hope) more on the way. Vineyard has become the hub for our little extended family—our gathering place. We so enjoy the way we have been welcomed into the Vineyard family. You have made our almost 5 years here the best of our lives.

Now it is time to give back.

For the last two years I have attended all official city leadership meetings—often as the only private citizen in the room—the rest either elected or appointed officials or employees. That includes all City Council and Planning Commission meetings. This has allowed me to hear the concerns you bring in. It has also allowed me to thoroughly study the issues we face. I serve on the Vineyard Heritage Foundation which seeks funding to preserve the unique, rich, amazing heritage left us by generations gone before. I have served and continue to volunteer with the annual Vineyard Heritage Days festival. Especially enjoyable to me is introducing our youngest residents to the vintage games, attractions, and petting zoo we sponsor there.

And now, I would like to serve on your City Council.

Our city motto is “Stay Connected” and we strive to live it. It is on our city vehicles, website, and even the logos worn by our city employees. Staying connected means staying close, maintaining positive relationships with our families, friends, churches, schools, neighborhoods, parks, heritage, and having the infrastructure to make that all possible. It is staying connected that makes living in Vineyard so enjoyable.

But these connections are threatened.

They are threatened by mundane things. Things we often take for granted.

Things like a lack of parking, congestion on our roads, the threat of  overcrowding in our neighborhoods and schools, unbalanced development within our city. Things like a lack of water, power, roads, internet, sewage, parks, recreation.

The list goes on.

In saying this, I want to be clear I am not running against any current or former city officials, employees or volunteers or the enormous work they have accomplished in making these fields into a city. They have worked tirelessly and had many successes.

We are their grateful beneficiaries. Rather, I am running to fill the seat left open by a retiring city councilor.

As a member of your city council, I will work, as have those before me, to reduce threats to our city—find ways to repair and complete needed roads, decrease crime, limit density to pre-planned levels, fix parking problems, attract desirable businesses, hold developers to established, approved plans, clean up our Utah Lake shoreline, and keep Vineyard the safe, clean, desirable, connected place that brought us all here to start with.

Now a word about the election itself.

This year, we will vote differently than in the past. In previous elections we voted for two people—one for each open council seat. This year on your mail-in ballot you will be asked to rank all the candidates in order of your preference. That means ranking your favorite as number one, second favorite as number two, and so forth. This allows us to avoid run-off elections, which are expensive for the city and which divert precious tax dollars from more desirable projects.
So I am asking for you to rank me as one of your top favorites on your ballot. Let me help continue the work of making Vineyard into the wonderful place our children and our children’s children will enjoy long into the future.

My name is David Lauret, and I’m asking to be your choice to fill the vacancy on our city council.