Don Jarvis /From Professor to Pragmatist
Interview with Joelle Lambert
1. Tell us a little about yourself — what do you do, how long have you lived here, what’s your life like day to day?
I am a retired BYU Professor of Russian. My wife and I also attended BYU as students, met here, and after graduate school in 1970, we moved back to Provo. Being retired, I am able to walk with Janelle early every morning, garden with her before the sun comes up, and choose what to do all day. I try to keep up with local news online and often spend 10-15 hours per week on environmental work for Provo or other local issues.
2. Can you describe your path to where you are now as the Mayor’s Sustainability Advisor? Has your role changed over time?
Things started slowly. After retiring, I dabbled in local politics, got known as a pragmatist, and then in 2011, Provo’s then-mayor John Curtis (now our junior US senator) asked me to be his environmental “sustainability advisor,” a volunteer position unique for any Utah city, at a time when “sustainability” implied environmentalism and was not something US conservatives advocated for. He asked me to advise him and the City Council about environmental sustainability and recruit a small volunteer committee, including George Handley, to do pubic outreach. Although John was privately an environmentalist and met with me every month for a half hour, he worried about being seen as too “green” to get re-elected and told me, “Don, don’t do anything stupid.”
He not only did not pay me anything, but my position had no official legal standing, no budget, and no visibility on the city’s website. When I tried to recruit a local editor to that Sustainability Committee, I admitted that it had no legal standing, budget, or visibility, so he asked whether Curtis was really serious about sustainability, and turned me down. I told John about that. But since John is an admirer of President Lincoln and we saw environmentalism as an analog of emancipation, I suggested that he needed to find a victory like Antietam that allowed the cautious Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. I suggested that John look for an analogous victory which would allow him to “come out of the closet” on the environment. After he won his re-election by nearly 80% of the vote, he allotted me a small budget, modest visibility on the city website, and got the City Council to officially approve my position. Things gradually went uphill from there, including the hire of a city employee to work as a “parking and sustainability coordinator,”who had to spend 90% of his time on parking. Admittedly, the two are related, but you can see how cautious Provo’s administration was about the environment back then as late as 2014.
Eventually, Curtis helped Provo get bus rapid transit, and his successor Michelle Kaufusi built an energy-efficient, all-electric city hall, and Provo now has three “Sustainability Committees” (Citizens,’ Mayor’s. and Employees’). Our municipal electric company Provo Power produces some of the cheapest and cleanest power in Utah and provides Utah’s best rebates for switching yard tools and HVAC and water heaters to electric. They even provided us a $10,000 grant to support our public outreach. And I meet with the present Mayor, Marsha Judkins, for an hour every month.
3. Before you got involved in your work on sustainability, how would you describe your relationship with your local community or local politics? Were you paying attention, checked out, frustrated, something else?
I was mostly distracted with raising a large family, building a house and career. I did dabble in local politics, ran twice for the Utah Legislature without winning, but that did raise my visibility as a pragmatist and involvement in the community. I also occasionally wrote guest editorials on local issues for local newspapers.
4. Was there anything you had to overcome to take that first step — uncertainty about what to do, feeling like you didn’t have the right background, not having enough time, worry about it being too political?
Probably all of the above. I have zero formal training in environmentalism, but reading and talking to others helped. And I often reminded myself that “A little something is better than a big nothing.”
5. What skills, interests, or resources from your own life turned out to be useful in this work?
Knowing how to read and learn are the main resources needed by anyone who wants to be part of this work, regardless of prior training. Being retired, unsurprisingly, has been a huge asset in our work with Provo. I am disappointed at how few retired people get involved in the many possibilities the community offers for service. I think that we Latter-day Saints should not let our opportunities to serve be limited to Church callings or temple and family history work, valuable as the latter are to our kindred dead. Our posterity and their future demand our attention, talents, and time. The uncertain future should seem as worthy as the past for our time and effort. We cannot leave it all for Jesus to clean up.
6. How has this work connected you with people you wouldn’t have met otherwise — people with different experiences, viewpoints, or backgrounds?
Yes, one of the greatest benefits of pitching in to help the community is contact with a wide variety of people, including those with whom I don’t agree but have something to teach me. It’s stimulating, challenging, encourages thinking, memory, and learning. It has engendered infrequent fits of humility and has helped slow the inevitable decline of aging.
7. What impact have you seen from your involvement — even small things? Have you seen it ripple out to others?
Yes, to many others. In fifteen years, I have seen Provo evolve into an environmental leader in Utah, albeit unheralded. Others, seeing that progress, have joined us. Local businessman and engineer Rick Cox, whose family owns property on Provo’s west side, has helped lead our Green Business Award Program and is showing developers how to add EV charging stations inexpensively in high-density housing. Christi Leman, having experience in Mormon Women For Ethical Government is taking a leadership role in the Citizens’ Sustainability Committee (CSC). Derek Bruton, a highly educated employee of CUWCD always attends CSC meetings and gives us invaluable advice on water issues. A wheel-chair-bound local businessman, Nick Zemp, has recently joined us and helped with our local Freedom Days display. A former Green Team leader at Adobe did the same and is now committed to helping us. And many more.
8. How has being involved changed you — the way you think about your community, your neighbors, politics, or your own ability to make a difference?
It has helped me develop and maintain a feeling that even in my advancing years (I am now 87), I can still be involved and useful to my fellow Provoans, grandchildren, and others. It pushes me to use my faulty memory.
9. If someone reading this feels frustrated about the state of things but isn’t sure where to start locally, what would you tell them?
They could look at the many volunteer committees that advise Provo government (see https://www.provo.gov/432/Boards-and-Commissions) as well as Provo’s our Neighborhood District Program (See https://www.provo.gov/282/Neighborhood-District-Program). They could also help political candidates with campaign work and/or donations. LDS Earth Stewardship is another good possibility. You could also subscribe to a local newspaper either online or printed. Another possibility is to sign up for the free survey of news named Utah Policy, which carries a significant amount of local news.
10. A lot of people feel frustrated or powerless about politics, especially at the national level. Did you ever feel that way? What did that look like for you?
Everybody gets frustrated about national politics, partly because national news is vastly over-represented from every source, and our influence on it on the ratio of 1 out of 330M. I long ago realized that local news was not being sufficiently reported and decided to focus on that, producing an occasional email newsletter Common Sense Newsnotes on local issues and elections.