Mayor Dustin Gettel

“I can help repair the Main Street in my adoptive city of Midvale that I could not necessarily do in the hometown where I grew up.” For Mayor Dustin Gettel, Midvale Main Street is not simply a city project. It is personal. He grew up near Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in Chambersburg, a rural community surrounded by farms. “Every one of my neighbors was a farmer, except me,” Dustin said. “Some of my best early friends were barnyard animals.” He especially loved the goats - feeding them, petting them, and laughing about the strange thrill of having one suddenly charge toward him.

It was a small-town childhood in every sense. Family lived nearby, life moved slowly, and sports filled much of Dustin's world. Football, basketball, and baseball carried him from one season to the next. His mother worked in the county clerk’s office where Dustin, fascinated even as a young boy, would sometimes sit late into the night as votes were counted by hand. His great-uncle, Bob Wareham, served for decades on the Chambersburg Borough Council, giving Dustin an early glimpse of what local government could mean. “When you’re a kid, if you’re elected to the borough council, you may as well be president.”

Still, Dustin often felt a little out of place in the town where he was raised. As a teenager and young adult, he was drawn toward cities and new experiences. He went to Philadelphia and New York, and at nineteen he moved to Toronto by himself, not knowing a single person. “This is an adventure I feel like I should go on,” he remembered thinking.

Dustin later attended Neumann University outside Philadelphia, then earned a Master of Laws degree with a concentration in healthcare law from Delaware Law School. For several years, he managed a home healthcare agency in the Philadelphia suburbs, work that was meaningful but emotionally exhausting. In 2015, the person he was dating got a job in Utah, and Dustin followed, not exactly convinced at first. “I followed him begrudgingly to Utah. It was like, what the heck am I going to do in Utah?”

That changed almost immediately. As the plane descended into Salt Lake City, Dustin saw the mountains. “We pretend that we have mountains on the East Coast, but then you come here and you’re like, oh, yeah, okay.”

He found an apartment in Midvale because it was convenient, close to TRAX, and available. But convenience quickly became connection. “I have never, as long as I have lived in Utah, lived anywhere but Midvale, and I do not have any intentions of doing that anytime soon either.” What he found was a city of 37,000 people that somehow still carried the feeling of a smaller town. “It feels like almost everyone knows everyone, which is impossible because there are so many people who live here.”

Main Street, in particular, stayed with him. When Dustin first arrived, it reminded him of the Main Street in his hometown of Pennsylvania - a place with history, character, and possibility, but also visible neglect. “Everyone knew that we had the bones of something special that just needed some tender, loving care.”

That sense of possibility became one of the forces that pulled him into public service. After moving to Midvale, Dustin began attending city council meetings to advocate for more crosswalks in his neighborhood. He felt the city was moving too slowly and eventually thought, “I could not do any worse of a job.” In 2017, after living in Utah for only about a year and a half, he ran for city council and won.

His friends still call one early project the “Dustin Crosswalk,” because he pushed so hard for a safer crossing at Bingham Junction and Tuscany View Road. But Main Street soon became one of the larger priorities. Dustin represented the district around Main Street, and when he knocked on doors, he heard two very different responses. People who lived farther away were excited by the idea of an arts, culture, and food district. Those who lived closest were more skeptical. They had heard promises for years. “It was more of a, we will believe it when we see it, attitude.”

That made it even more important to Dustin that the city not merely talk about change but begin making it visible. Today, Midvale Main Street is becoming what he and others imagined - an urban-feeling center with a hometown welcome. There are restaurants, small shops, creative businesses, gathering places, public art, and more coming. Dustin is quick to say that none of this belongs to one person. “Everything, Main Street especially, is a shiny example of team effort all around.” Economic development, community development, legal staff, elected officials, city employees, business owners, and residents have all played a role.

The city has also worked to create incentive programs that help small businesses take the leap. Dustin understands that independent owners often cannot absorb the same risks as large national chains. “We’re looking for smaller businesses.” The goal is to make business ownership more possible, while also creating a district that benefits the entire community.

Art has been central to that effort. It brings people in, encourages them to walk, and helps them linger. One shop leads to another. Coffee, pizza, dog treats, plants, tattoo parlors, needlepoint, pressed flowers, restaurants, and gathering spaces begin to form something larger than a row of storefronts. “A rising tide lifts all boats,” Dustin said. “By building up these businesses, we are helping them, but we are also helping us as a city and helping the community long term.”

When Midvale’s mayor stepped down in December 2024, it created more than a vacancy - it left a moment of uncertainty at a time when the city was gaining real momentum. For Dustin, the decision to step forward was not about ambition, but about continuity. After seven years with the city council, much of it spent representing the very district where the most visible change was underway, he understood both the vision and the work still ahead. He did not want to see that progress stall. After an unusual replacement process that involved a coin toss to break an early tie, the council voted him in as mayor. He laughs now about being called the “coin toss mayor,” but the deeper story is not about chance. It is about a young man from rural Pennsylvania who arrived in Utah unsure of what he would find, discovered a city that felt unexpectedly like home, and then chose to help shape its future.

He carried that responsibility into the following year when he ran for a full term. The result was decisive. In November 2025, the voters of Midvale elected him mayor, affirming not just the path he had helped set, but their confidence in where the city is going. For Dustin, Main Street still carries the echo of the place where he grew up, but Midvale has given him the chance to do something he could only imagine. “We want to find that right combo of urban feel, but also hometown. Everyone is welcome here.”