Chris Condie on Lehi Growth, Service & Future | RB-021

Lehi City Council member Chris Condie shares his journey from Michigan to mayoral candidate, discussing fiber internet, infrastructure, Traverse Mountain development, and preserving community.

Chris Condie on Lehi Growth, Service & Future | RB-021

Lehi City Council member Chris Condie shares his journey from Michigan to mayoral candidate, discussing fiber internet, infrastructure, Traverse Mountain development, and preserving community.

Chris Condie on Service, Growth, and the Future of Lehi, Utah

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Who Is Chris Condie, and Why Does His Story Matter to Lehi?

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Episode Overview

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Role in Lehi

Time Periods Discussed

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Primary Topics Discussed

Resource for Listeners

Episode Highlights

Key Stories from the Interview

A Michigan Family Finds Home in Lehi

The Volunteer Spirit That Shaped a Leader

From Primary Defeat to Public Service

Lehi Owns the Fiber

The Hotel Decision: Property Rights vs. Resident Concerns

Conduit Laid for a Future Nobody Could See

A Neighbor's Water Leak and Approachable Government

Reducing Density in Traverse Mountain

Historical Insights About Lehi

Community and Legacy Themes

Memorable Quotes

Related Lehi Topics

Photo Opportunities for Historical Archive

Full Transcript

Chris Condie Lehi Utah Interview - Roots & Branches of Lehi Podcast

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A conversation with Lehi City Council member Chris Condie about moving from Michigan, building a life of public service, and helping guide one of America's fastest-growing cities through infrastructure, growth, and community change.

Work Hard Mortgage helps families achieve the dream of homeownership in Lehi and across Utah.

Every homeowner starts somewhere.

Some people are just beginning to dream. Others are getting financially ready. Some are already touring homes. Wherever you are in the process, this simple tool helps you understand your next best step. Take the Homebuyer Journey Quiz to see where you are — and where to go from here.

In this episode of Roots & Branches of Lehi , host Ryan Harding sits down with Chris Condie , an IT professional, longtime Lehi City Council member, and mayoral candidate whose journey mirrors the experience of thousands of families who have found their way to Lehi, Utah over the past two decades. Moving from Michigan in 2007 with his wife and young daughter, Chris was drawn west by job opportunities and the chance to be closer to extended family. What he discovered in Lehi was more than a place to live—it was a community that shaped him, and one he would help shape in return.

Chris's story is one of service, civic leadership, and deep commitment to the everyday work of local government. As a city council member, he has helped bring fiber internet to Lehi, supported major infrastructure projects, wrestled with difficult zoning decisions, and worked to make city government feel more approachable for ordinary residents. His perspective offers a valuable window into modern Lehi history —how decisions are made, how growth is managed, and how community spirit can be preserved even as the city expands. For anyone interested in Lehi Utah city council , local government , community growth , or the behind-the-scenes work of building a city, this conversation is essential listening.

This interview also speaks to broader themes of volunteerism , youth engagement , and small-town relationships in a rapidly growing city. Chris reflects on Lehi's explosive population growth since the mid-2000s, the evolution of local roads and utilities, and the foresight of earlier city leaders who laid the groundwork for modern improvements. His story reminds us that Lehi's future is being built not just through policies and projects, but through people who care deeply about their neighbors and their hometown.

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Chris Condie

IT professional; Lehi City Council member; mayoral candidate

2007–2024 (with references to earlier decades of his life)

Ryan Harding

Every homeowner starts somewhere. Whether you are just beginning to dream, getting financially ready, or already touring homes — this simple tool helps you understand your next best step.

Chris describes moving from Michigan to Lehi in 2007 with his wife and young daughter. They were drawn west by a job opportunity in IT and the chance to be closer to extended family. "We moved here from Michigan… and been here ever since." What began as a practical relocation turned into nearly two decades of deep community involvement, from school community councils to the city council itself.

After moving to Lehi, Chris began serving in his neighborhood and at local schools. What struck him was the genuine culture of volunteerism he encountered. "People are really wanting to serve and just help each other." That observation fueled his own desire to step into public service—not for politics, but because he saw a community that matched his own values.

Chris first ran for city council in 2011 but didn't make it through the primary. Rather than walking away, he was appointed to the Planning Commission by the mayor and council at that time. He served there for two years, ran again, and won election to the council. His path illustrates how local leadership often begins with persistence rather than immediate success.

One of Chris's proudest achievements was helping bring fiber internet to Lehi. But the infrastructure story goes deeper: the city—not a private company—owns the fiber network. "We own the infrastructure… the people of Lehi own the fiber." This means residents who subscribe help pay off the bond through revenue, not taxes on everyone. It also means Lehi controls the routers, switches, and the actual fiber in the ground, preventing private disruption.

Chris recounts one of the toughest decisions he faced: a hotel project that was a "permitted use" under existing code, meaning the council had no legal basis to deny it. Residents in the area strongly opposed it. The first vote to approve failed 4-1. Two weeks later, after the city attorney warned of an inevitable lawsuit, a similar motion passed 5-0. The episode illustrates the tension between property rights, resident concerns, and the legal framework that governs local decisions.

Decades ago, Lehi city leaders installed empty conduit alongside power lines, having no specific use in mind but sensing it might matter someday. "Someone had the foresight to lay that extra conduit, and now we're using it." That decades-old infrastructure now carries the city's fiber network, a remarkable example of long-term planning paying off for a future generation.

Chris tells of a resident who had water leaking into his basement for over a month. The man had been working with the city, but the problem persisted, and he didn't know what to do. Chris called him back at 10:30 p.m. after a council meeting, coordinated staff, and within three days helped identify that the house had settled and cracked the pipe beneath the foundation. "I want government to feel approachable—like a neighbor helping a neighbor."

Chris discusses working with developers to reduce high-density housing in Traverse Mountain from roughly 9,000 units to about 5,600—removing roughly 3,400 units. High-density projects were also moved out of the canyons to prevent traffic congestion on limited roads. "I can't imagine what Traverse Mountain would be like if it was building towards 9,000 units."

This interview offers valuable perspective on how Lehi has evolved since the mid-2000s, as seen through the eyes of someone who arrived during a period of explosive growth and helped guide key decisions. Here are key historical insights from Chris Condie's experience:

Throughout the interview, several broader themes emerge that reflect the values and challenges facing Lehi as it grows while trying to maintain its character:

This episode connects to the broader Roots & Branches of Lehi archive. Explore these related topics to deepen your understanding of Lehi's history and community:

To enhance this community profile, consider adding these visual elements to the historical record:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Ryan Harding: Welcome to Roots and Branches of Lehi, the podcast where we get to know the faces, stories, and lives that make up our community. I'm Ryan Harding, and I started this podcast as a way for us all to connect with the people we live alongside. Growing up in a small town, I learned that connections go beyond blood. They're built through shared experiences, friendships, and the moments we celebrate together. Each week, we'll sit down with someone new from Lehi to share their unique story, their passions, and what they love most about living here. So whether you've been here for years or just arrived, join us as we deepen our roots and reach out to our branches one story at a time.

Chapter 2: Meet Chris Condie

Ryan Harding: Welcome Chris Condie to Roots and Branches of Lehi. Happy to have you here on the podcast.

Chris Condie: Yeah, thank you for having me. It's good to be here.

Ryan Harding: Glad you're here. Yes. It's good to get to know you for a little bit. And so you've been in Lehi since 2007, is that right?

Chris Condie: Yes.

Ryan Harding: Yeah. Uh my family and I, my wife had a little girl. We moved here from Michigan. We were looking to come out west because we had family out here and so I had a job opportunity that came up and brought me to Utah. And been here ever since.

Ryan Harding: Yeah. And tell me what job was it? What do you do for work?

Chris Condie: So I'm in IT and information technology and security. And so I came out to be an IT manager for a software company. And I've been in that industry now for, I hate to say, 28 years. Good amount of time. Yeah, time keeps going by and I'm like, man, I'm getting old. I'm kind of the old one on some of these things. My 80-year-old aunt was, she just got put into primary. She's like, it's my fifth time being in primary. I thought that was kind of funny. The older you get, the more things you get to experience. So obviously from Michigan and stuff like that, but now been in Lehi for a long time, how has Lehi shaped you, I guess, just being here and stuff like that.

Ryan Harding: Yeah. So, when we first moved here, my daughter, she was two and two and a half years old. And I have a son from a previous marriage and he lived in Colorado. So that was one of the attractions too, to be closer. We have parents and siblings and stuff that live here in Utah, but then I was that much closer to my son, so I could see him more. And one of the things was the dynamic with my son living in different states and then my daughter knowing that she was going to start elementary school and things like that. Service has always been important to me. And as I got into and started serving, whether in my neighborhood or at the schools, whatever it was, I just noticed the people I interacted with, my neighbors and people in the community, were very service-oriented. It's one of those things where you may not see that on social media, but when you get involved and you start to be involved, you start to see how people are really wanting to serve and just help each other. So that's how I think it's molded me. I've had this desire to want to serve and be involved in the community my kids are involved in, and then just having the opportunity to work with other people in the community.

Chapter 3: Journey into Public Office

Ryan Harding: So is that kind of what got you started in public office? Just this desire to serve?

Chris Condie: Desire to serve. My mom, when growing up—I was born in '74 so I grew up in the '80s and '90s—my mom was big into politics. She talked a lot about it and she went out and she gave her time. We talked a lot about politics and so it's something that throughout my life, as I went to high school and college, I just kind of thought that if there was an opportunity I would try to serve in this way. And what was the first public office you held then? Um, so it was the city council. When I first ran back in '11, I didn't make it through the primary. But I got appointed by the mayor and the council at that time on the planning commission. And then I served there for two years. I ran again and then that's when I got elected. Prior to that though, I was on school community councils for both Snow Springs and River Rock. I've done the HOA thing a couple times, and other church responsibilities or things from my job, with groups that my company associated with, just trying to participate and get myself out there and not just talk about it, but try to do something about it.

Ryan Harding: Did you have early mentors or people that kind of inspired you?

Chris Condie: Yeah. Just one of the things I like is my parents obviously, but I've had leaders, I've had teachers, I've had co-workers. When you're talking about politics, the more that I realized that, hey, to me, politics isn't just about an issue on certain policies, it's about actually serving someone. And so as I would do that and interact with people, they would see that ability and be like, "Hey, I think it's great that you're looking to do that at some point." I always would talk about it and be open about it, but it wasn't until I got here and we kind of decided, we're building our roots here in Lehi. So this felt like this is where that would be that opportunity to try to do it.

Chapter 4: Proud Moments on the City Council

Ryan Harding: Yeah. So you've been on the Lehi City Council for a while now. Tell me some of the things that you're most proud of from that time of serving.

Chris Condie: You know, there's several little things and then there's several big things. One of the things that I've really enjoyed on the council is I've been a member of it where I've had different interactions with different people as they come and go. There's little things like in the beginning of my career, we started streaming and I collaborated with my fellow council members and said, "Hey, let's work together and see if we can stream this." Whether a lot of people do it or not, let's make it available so it's an option. I love that. Bringing up the idea of let's talk with fiber and let's see if we can bring fiber to Lehi. And then the other part is the thing I've really enjoyed is working with either scout groups or going into schools and classrooms and being able just to talk about local government and answer questions, and being involved in the youth council here for Lehi City. Just interacting with the youth and seeing that hey, there really is a drive there. They want to be a part of the community. They have a voice. That's something I think I've been most proud of, interacting with the youth, and just being able to build a connection with them and show them that whether it's public office or a career, there's lots of wonderful careers in local government from engineering to planning to parks and open space, just giving them an idea that there's wonderful career opportunities in public sector as well as private.

Ryan Harding: And Lehi has changed quite a bit over the last 12 years, right? It's grown a lot. Tell me some of the things that have changed from when you first started on the council to where you're at now.

Chris Condie: It's interesting. The first year I lived here, we lived on Traverse Mountain. We lived there for one year and then we built a home over here on the west end of Lehi off Main Street in Jordan Willows. And I remember when we moved over here, you had 2300 West, but 2300 West stopped, I believe, at Third North, and then you couldn't pick up on it again until 9th North. So you'd have to cut over to 2375 West or something and zigzag your way up, and then it didn't go under the railroad. Early on seeing 2300 West get connected and have a bridge or have it go under the railroad and be able to connect up to the north end, that was a big deal at that time. But then it was, hey, we need I-15 widened and the state is really struggling to want to do it because they're going to have to bond. Working with the mayor and the fellow council members and staff to get the state to bump that timeline up so that we could get I-15 widened sooner was a great experience because it's working with state legislators, state agencies, as well as our fellow council and sister cities. The fiber coming in now and seeing that we're in the third year and we're close to having the initial project completed, and knowing that everyone has the option to get fiber to their home now is something I'm really proud of and excited that we as a council worked together on. And the bigger part is that the city owns the infrastructure. We're not owned by some third party or private entity, but we the people here in Lehi own the infrastructure.

Ryan Harding: And does that mean any kind of income from it? Tell me why that matters.

Chris Condie: So first, when we go to pay off the bond, we can determine what revenue is to pay that off. What we've done is we're using the take rate or the number of subscribers that come on, and we're taking the revenue that we earn from that and that's what we're using to pay the bond off. So it's not a tax increase on everyone. It's not a fee that everyone has to pay. It's only those that are using. It's kind of pay to play, which is the way it should be. If you choose to do some other service, then you shouldn't be responsible for that fiber. But it also allows us to control who's going to help us manage the backend infrastructure. We own the routers, the switches, the actual fiber in the ground. It's all owned by Lehi City. It's not a third party that can come in and say, "Well, we're going to do this or make this change and cause a disruption in service." We get to work with them on who the ISPs are. They get to join the network and offer service.

Ryan Harding: There's obviously advantage to that. Lehi City is one of the few that has their own utility company too, right? Obviously there's benefits to that too.

Chris Condie: Absolutely. And one of the things just to piggyback off that that I'm really proud of supporting with my fellow council members is what we call internal power generation at the power department. We now have eight or nine large natural gas generators. Some of them are the size of almost a school bus. What that allows us to do is as energy rates start to spike, especially during a really hot summer, we can start generating our own power and help kind of moderate that spike not go so high. It helps us to keep the rates down. Something I'm really proud of in Lehi and proud of our power department is we pay a lower rate per kilowatt hour than most people in Utah do. We're still like at nine cents a kilowatt hour. The rate that we have is much lower. There's been a lot of fluctuation the last couple years in power, and now you hear at a national level, what's the big investment into power plants? There's a lot of need right now with data centers. They're huge power consumers. It's neat to see that benefit that we have to provide our own power.

Ryan Harding: Obviously that's something previous people started a long time ago, right? We're enjoying the fruits of some of that labor.

Chris Condie: Well, one of the fruits from that is that back early on in Lehi, they had the idea to run parallel conduit. Conduit that they would run the power line through, and then they put empty conduit because they thought, well, maybe there'll be something in the future that they might use that for. And lo and behold, we're putting fiber in. Wherever that conduit is still viable, we're using that to put our fiber in too. Instead of having to put conduit everywhere throughout the whole city, someone had the idea, hey, let's run an extra conduit line next to the power one. And now here we are in 2022, 2023, starting to use that for our fiber project. They had no idea what they were doing it for. Thought hey, maybe there's something to use it for. Future or previous pioneers, pioneering the future.

Chapter 5: Challenges and Tough Decisions

Ryan Harding: Going back to your time on city council, I'm guessing not every decision is an easy decision. Can you think of any tough decisions?

Chris Condie: Yeah. Well, there was one decision early on where an applicant was coming in to build a hotel. We were aware of what the situation was and it was what we call a permitted use. So there was nothing in the books, nothing in the code, anything that would allow us to deny it. But we knew that there was a lot of residents in that area that didn't want it. That was a really tough situation because you understand some of the concerns the residents are bringing, but on the other hand, this applicant's coming in with a valid request and we don't have any reason or justification to not approve it. I remember when that first vote came up, the applicant had an attorney that got kind of hotheaded. I went and made a vote to approve it and that vote was denied 4 to 1. The other four made someone else made a motion to deny it and that passed 4 to 1. Only two weeks later to bring it back because the city attorney said, "Hey, if you deny this tomorrow morning, we're getting a lawsuit." And that's what happened. Two weeks later, I gave a similar motion and that passed 5-0. It's hard because there's a lot of emotion from the residents and a lot of speculation of what they think is not going to be good about the project. But when we can understand what the project is and talk about it and help give them assurances, hey, it's not as bad as some think. But also it's their right too. The applicant has rights as well as the residents have rights. It's a tough decision when you've got people pretty adamant that they don't want something.

Ryan Harding: That brings me to something a lot of people don't always understand. Why is the city approving all this? Why do you even meet if it's automatically supposed to be approved?

Chris Condie: Well, what's interesting, my neighbor after I announced I was running for mayor said, "Hey, so could you have everyone prior to 2000 that moved in after 2000 move out?" And I said, well, if I were to do that, I'd be the shortest term mayor in Lehi history because I would have to move out myself. It kind of goes to this point—how many of us would be impacted by that? Imagine the chaos. When we approve something and it's what we call permitted, it's because a council, whether it's a council I've been on or one previous, we've gone through and put tools in place that we use as guides. One is like the general plan. Here's where we believe the appropriate zones are for commercial, residential, high density, all these things. We can change that up until someone applies for a use in that zone in that area. Once they apply, if we haven't changed it and it allows for a high-density project, now we're too late because they've applied for something that's permitted. Up until that point, if there's no applications in place, we could as a council, with residents' input, business's input, look at that general plan every 5 to 7 years and say, is this still meeting the needs of Lehi? Because as we grow, you may determine we need an area for groceries or retail because we've got heavy housing in one area. There's flexibility in it. Once someone applies, they get vested in that right. That's why we meet—because if you're elected and sit on the city council, it's a legislative body. You create the laws, you edit the laws, you remove the laws. If you can get support from other council members, you can influence change a lot. That's why this office is so important—look at who you're electing because you're the legislative branch for the city. You have that discretion to make changes that can have a huge impact on people's lives.

Chapter 6: Lessons in Local Government

Ryan Harding: What lessons have you learned about local government and how it best serves its residents?

Chris Condie: For me, some of the times I've enjoyed most is when we're serving the public for the services that we provide, the day-to-day services. One of the things I really enjoy about Lehi City is the staff. They work really hard to not just show up at 8:00 and leave at 5 and do their job, but they try to be very personable. What I want to do as mayor is increase that level of what some would call customer service. One of the things about Lehi and that small community feel is when we as a city are coming to you to help you with an issue, we're approaching you as if you're a neighbor or family. We may not be able to help in everything. I've had a neighbor call me one night at 10:30 after I got out of city council meeting. I was like, "Oh, should I call him?" But I did. He had water leaking into his basement and he had it for over a month. He'd been working with the city and the city had taken some action but it didn't fix it. He was left like, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to dig up my whole front yard? I worked with staff and him and in three days we were able to help him understand that his house settled and the pipe that the culinary water comes in from comes in underneath the foundation and it cracked, so it's leaking. Everyone was doing their job and doing it well, but it's going one step further. If we could have just helped him understand—he wasn't looking for the city to fix it. He was looking for, can you help guide me as to what the problem is so I don't dig up my whole front yard if I don't have to? In something he'd been working and stressing over for over a month, I was able in three or four days to connect with staff and him, get someone over there, and finally just realized this is the issue. They helped him identify what he needed to fix and in a day he got it all fixed and the leak stopped.

Chris Condie on Lehi Growth, Service & Future | RB-021