Pleasant Grove Mayor’s Student Intern

Student becomes PG mayor’s first high school intern

When Pleasant Grove High School senior Brigham Dunford signed up for a class that placed PG High students as interns at local businesses, he didn’t see the type of job he was looking for on the list of available internships.

So, he went to the Pleasant Grove City offices and asked if there were any internship opportunities with the mayor.

“For the longest time, I’ve wanted to go into politics or law or something that I could do concerning local government,” Dunford said.

In response to his inquiry, city staff said the city had worked with college interns before, but not a high schooler — and gave him the mayor’s email address. The two exchanged emails, met for an interview and Dunford was taken on as the mayor’s first intern. “It was a great experience,” said Pleasant Grove Mayor Guy Fugal. After spending the first few weeks of the 2019-2020 school year in class with other students learning about working in a professional environment, Dunford began his work at the city. “As soon as we had all the training for the class, as soon as I was released by the class period to go down to city hall, he (the mayor) really put me right to work,” Dunford said. Fugal said Dunford worked in the city offices from about 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. a few times a week. One of his main duties was performing research for the mayor on a variety of topics. He also wrote articles with assistance from the mayor that ran in the Daily Herald.

Dunford did research on recycling and how other cities handled their recycling programs. He also looked at Utah cities who have a bubble over their community pool and obtained cost information for the mayor.

“It worked out really well because he’s a swimmer, and so he was all over that,” Fugal said.

Another project had Dunford researching the budget information of other cities, including their utility rates and sales and property tax revenue. He found it interesting that American Fork has double the budget of Pleasant Grove, but Pleasant Grove has 10,000 more residents than American Fork. “The reason for that is they have many more businesses,” Dunford said. “It was very interesting to see how other cities were doing.”

Dunford also attended city council meetings and work sessions. “He was basically shadowing me,” Fugal said. “and every four weeks we’d go to lunch.”

One of the best meetings he went to was the city’s annual budget retreat, Dunford said. At the meeting, he was able to talk with city department heads about their upcoming projects and hear about their budgets for the coming year. “It was a really, really cool experience,” he said.

The plan was to have Dunford continue his internship throughout the entire school year, but the COVID-19 pandemic brought it to an end early when the schools and the city offices were shut down.

However, his time at the city has him even more convinced that he would like to somehow be involved in city operations in the future. “It’s been really eye-opening,” Dunford said. “As a teenager, there’s a lot of rumors and speculation that are sometimes not based on good information, and it’s really good to talk with my peers and say this is what’s really going on.”

Dunford has now graduated from PGHS and been accepted to attend Brigham Young University, but he will first serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Phoenix, Arizona, speaking French. He is considering studying in either political science or law.

He said being able to work with the mayor and city department heads has given him a lot of experience in how to work with large projects and run a city.

“It’s got to be one of the best high school experiences I’ve had,” Dunford said.