5 minute read
New Springville Police Chief
New position a dream job for Lance Haight
While visiting family in Utah last October, Jennefer Haight looked at various communities and found the perfect development in Mapleton near its border with Springville. It was sold out, but one buyer had backed out, and Jennefer quickly put down a deposit on the lot. Then she called her husband Lance Haight, who was at home in California, to tell him the news.
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“I said, ‘I’m not sure exactly where that is,’” Lance Haight said, but he informed her he had just found an opening for a police chief position in a city called Springville. He applied before she returned home.
“When I was interviewed, I told them my wife is moving here with or without me, so no pressure, but this would be a great job,” Haight said. “So everything just lined up and I was fortunate enough to get the job here.”
Haight began his new job as Springville City’s director of public safety on Jan. 4 after working for the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department, or BART, for 23 years. There, he served as an officer, sergeant, lieutenant and deputy chief.
“This is absolutely a dream job for me,” Haight said during an interview in his office at the Springville Police Department. About 250 people served under him while he was deputy chief at BART, and he didn’t get to interact much with them or get to know them. “I was looking for an agency where I could have more direct contact with everybody that I worked with, so Springville is great in that regard,” he said.
Born in Provo, Haight later moved to Boise, Idaho, where he attended high school. While he served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Rochester, New York, his parents moved to Modesto, California. He returned home and attended college in California, earning a bachelor’s degree in architectural engineering at California Polytechnic State University.
After graduation, he and his wife moved to Utah where he worked for an engineering firm in downtown Salt Lake City. After about a year, they decided to move back to California to be closer to family.
Haight worked for a few more years in engineering, eventually deciding it
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wasn’t a good fit for him. His father-inlaw Wayne Scott worked in law enforcement, inspiring Haight to pursue that as his new career.
Haight was hired on at BART, which sent him to the police academy. BART is responsible for all law enforcement related to commuter trains running through five different California counties. Before COVID-19, ridership was more than 400,000 people per day. When the pandemic hit, that number plummeted by about 88 percent, Haight said. That meant ticket sales — and BART’s revenue — were way down, and BART started offering early retirement to employees.
Haight wasn’t eligible for the early retirement option, but it caused him and his family to think about moving back to Utah. Family members in California had slowly been moving to Utah over the years, and Haight’s plan was to stay at BART for another seven years before making the move, but his wife’s trip to Utah last fall sped up the process.
“I’ve been impressed since day one with the high caliber of people we have here, our training and policies, everything,” Haight said of the Springville public safety department. “Since walking through the door here, all the personnel are top notch.”
His career has taught him a lot about leadership, community service and crime prevention, Haight said, skills he plans to apply to his job here. Creating relationships and partnerships with residents is a key part of policing.
“For me, it’s very important to maintain a good relationship between the police department and the community, and to do that we have to be highly visible throughout the community,” he said.
As director of public safety, Haight is also over the fire and rescue department, and one of his first projects has been putting together a proposal for having employees on duty at the downtown Springville fire station 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Currently, the city has full-time firefighters/EMTs on duty during the day, but it relies on volunteers at night.
The station at 75 W. Center was built with space on the second floor that could eventually be finished into quarters for employees staying overnight. Plans are going forward now for finishing the area, Haight said, and his department has applied for a grant that would pay some of the cost of full-time employees for the first three years to help the city transition into that model.
The average number of emergency calls each night was just over two calls a night in 2020, up from .75 in 2012 and 1.53 in 2016. Anything over two calls per night puts a strain on the city’s volunteer force, most of whom have full-time jobs during the day, Haight said. If the plan and funding are approved for staffing the fire station at night, Springville will continue to rely on volunteers to help keep Springville safe.
This project is just the beginning of the service Haight plans to provide to Springville. “I’m here for the long term. This is where I and my family want to be,” he said. “I’ve got many more years in my career, and I plan to be here at Springville.”
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