Who We Are
Rural Community Consultants is dedicated to providing strategic, financial, and land-use planning support to local governments – and we love our work!
Mike Hansen, Principal
Mike Hansen has worked in strategy, land use, and organizational development for 20+ years. His career has been marked by successful leadership of progressively difficult challenges. Working in all levels of government, he has worn the hats of a strategic planner, demographer, administrator, and change leader. He has led small entrepreneurial teams, statewide initiatives, and even served in the Governor’s Cabinet. Among his many achievements, Mike’s optimization efforts led to Utah being recognized as the ‘Best Managed State’. In the private sector, Mike has orchestrated projects with citizen groups, special service districts, city staff, and engineers. Focusing on short-term implementation strategies and the long-term return on investment, Mike has drafted roadmaps for cities, counties, and the state with results seen in land use, industry investment, economic development, and state code compliance.
Rural Community Consultants
Rural Community Consultants’ mission is to provide implementable solutions to the difficult issues that are unique to local governments in the West. Clients include small to mid-sized municipalities as well as urban and rural counties. The consultancy specializes in strategy, capital investment, resiliency, infrastructure, engineering, public interaction, and land use issues. The organization has key partnerships with attorneys, civil engineers, economists, GIS specialists, architects, and environmental scientists. Core values guiding product delivery are: concise, illustrative, and actionable.
Projects
A typical project includes research, data analysis, data synthesis, findings development, and recommendations or policy. Example projects include strategic planning for Parowan City and Roosevelt City, recreation planning for the resort town of Brian Head, land use and development planning for Davis and Utah counties, and state-level economic consulting. The results have been the adoption and implementation of evidence-based policy and prioritized government investments.
Take a look at this example project (pdf in Brian Head), or this one (google doc in Brian Head).