At a city council meeting, a Page community member once said the city has transparency but lacks clarity. It is demonstrably true that the City of Page has a high degree of transparency. The city’s website is comprehensive, including an open checkbook, records of public meetings, contracts and projects. While navigating the city’s website has improved, it still requires some effort. City government is like a machine with multiple gears, all spinning at different ratios and speeds. A little patience is needed. It gets easier with time.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone living in the digital age, a world defined by short attention spans, a thirst for instant gratification and a general distrust of governments that communications between a city and its citizens isn’t easy.

Information voids are easily filled with gossip and misinformation. If activists with agendas get involved, as seen with the recent “Streetscape” uprising, it costs the city and taxpayers money and resources. Former Councilor Dugan Warner warned of this in the Feb. 26, 2020, council meeting that set Streetscape in motion. “You can’t just do the plan, you’ve got to do the job. We’ve got to get back on track with that concept and we can't lose years in that process. You go from study to initial plan to design to construction. If there's not a train in that lineup and if we're not moving, then these are wasted dollars.”

Much of city’s efforts to keep the community in the loop with timely, accurate information on events, changes and projects goes unnoticed. People are busy with life, their jobs, their families.

The Chronicle spoke with Darby McNutt about communication challenges. McNutt is a member of Page Forward, the pro-revitalization group that hopes to bridge the communication gap between the city and community members. She is also a Marine, a former Page City Councilor like Warner, and an anthropologist like Page Forward Director Erik Stanfield. She works for Indian Health Service and specializes in health information technology systems and support. She also has a passion for combating disinformation and misinformation.

“This isn’t just a Page problem,” said McNutt. “It's across the board. Whenever you start talking about politics, it seems that misinformation, disinformation, even malinformation, gets filtered into a lot of the discourse that happens, and it's unfortunate because it really derails things. And a lot of that gets people really spun up and emotional over the causes and the initiatives and efforts that they care about. So those things tend to really flare people's emotions. And whenever emotions are involved, rational thinking and discourse sort of goes out the window with a lot of things. What I see this group being able to help with is sort of having that more moderated or measured and informed voice in it to bring together business owners as well as community leaders, people who are knowledgeable in various areas of the issues that we face, you know, subject matter experts, and to really formulate sort of a measured response and direction that we want to try to influence change in Page, Arizona.

“And I think that's a valuable thing because it's taking the emotion out of it. It's taking a rational approach, and it's doing it in such a way that the main goal is to benefit the community. Nobody should be looking at this, from this group, with the aspect of, 'I'm going to selfishly promote my business or my particular viewpoint.’ It's ‘We're going to come together as a collective and try to both educate and unify a voice of business owners, community leaders, etcetera, to say, this is what we want to see in town.’”

McNutt said she’s not interested in changing anyone’s mind, only presenting the information. Her experience as a council member also helped her understand the constraints of open meeting laws councilors must follow. Page Forward is outside politics and can communicate freely.

“One thing that I learned as a council member is you're really kind of hamstrung with how you can communicate, because you have to be cognizant of open meeting laws, record keeping and a lot of things like that,” said McNutt. “So, it's not as easy as just being openly communicative when you're on council. You have to be respectful of the rules that are in place. I think something like [Page Forward] will allow us to have more of an open dialogue with council to try to express the wants and needs of the community. It's not to form a shadow form of government. I hope people don't see it as that. It's to bring community leaders and businesses together so that you can have a collective, representative voice to help make meaningful change, and just have that that dialogue with council the way it should happen -- honestly.”

Although it’s been six years since McNutt served on council, the conversations are the same. Page needs an update.

“When I was on council, one of the things that I used to do was I would purposely go out and have coffee at one of the shops and invite people to come talk to me,” said McNutt. “Quite often I had business owners and families in town that would come visit with me. The No. 1 complaint, and a consistent complaint, that I heard from everyone, [is] it's not a walkable downtown. It's disjointed. There's no central, real focus point. It just doesn't feel like a small town or city with a downtown. That was one thing that they felt that Page could improve on.”

Page business owners Kelly and Trent Sutherland are both onboard with Page Forward, and both supported J2 Engineering & Environmental Design’s Streetscape revitalization plans.

“I wanted to see Streetscape happen,” Kelly Sutherland told the Chronicle. “A large majority of the town did not, but that can't be the end of the conversation. Everybody agreed that something does need to happen downtown. So, we've got to pick up kind of where that abruptly left off. I know that there were some plans originally that started off with [smaller] changes, some kiosks, some planters -- that type of thing. And I think that would be a great start.”

Sutherland said she knows reducing the number of Lake Powell Boulevard lanes is “the big hang up for most people” so not an option. “I think we want to start with the smaller changes, beautification and that type of thing, so that people can kind of get used to the idea of the changing downtown.

“Everybody has agreed that we do need to change our downtown. Beautify. At least everybody across the board has agreed on that. So just because a lot of people didn't care for the two-lane change, that can't be the end of the conversation. And unfortunately, that was the end of the conversation. Nobody offered any options or any plan Bs. That's why we started the group, because there was just, ‘We don't like it.’ That's it. And I just don't think that's fair for the entire town of Page.”