Fifty words or less

Odd but true: Scarcity makes you think.

When confronted with a slashed grocery budget, a homemaker can usually make good decisions about which food purchases are truly necessary to get through the month.

We can hope government budgets work the same way.

Similarly, a writer with a word limit is forced to choose only the most essential points to include in her essay.

So, challenged to explain in fifty words or less why people should vote for me, here are the two sentences I chose to submit to the Provo Daily Herald.

American Fork's residents already know they can trust me to work hard on the issues that matter to them most. My insistence on public involvement and volunteer activity has empowered residents, giving them a voice in critical decisions facing their neighborhoods, and has saved the City thousands of dollars.

Neighborhoods. Empowerment. Hard work. Public involvement. Saving money. Volunteerism -- things American Fork already knows about me.

I hope, I fondly hope, that my dedication to quality of life will peek out from between these lines.