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Show Page 2 AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN Thursday, March 27, 2008 mm mmEn NEWS AND NOTES TO KEEP YOU Engine brakes illegal in Am. Fork city limits Barbara Christiansen NORTH COUNTY STAFF Engine brakes, sometimes known as "jake brakes," are now illegal to be used in American Amer-ican Fork. The City Council approved an ordinance which prohibits their use within the city limits. Councilman Rick Storrs explained ex-plained how the law came into being. "Some residents that live on 1100 East between 300 and 400 North complained that trucks coming off the steep hill were keeping them up all hours of the night," he said. "They are also noisy during the day." "There was also a resident on 500 East, who asked for such an ordinance for trucks coming off the freeway," he said. "They are just annoying and keeping people up. I don't think they should be used other than an emergency." The engine brakes are ones which use compression and work from a truck's engine. "They make a lot of noise," Storrs said. "I think some of the older trucks are the worst culprits. The new ones don't have that problem." Storrs said the ordinance as approved by the City Council was actually stiffer than what had been proposed. The council decided to include all the land within the city limits, instead of just particular locations. COMMUNITY NOTES Planners make no recommendation recom-mendation Weeks of con templation and discussion lead to a motion by the Planning and Zoning Commission to forward changes in the city's drainage plan to the City Council without a recommendation recommen-dation either to approve Cross Continued from Page 1 giving Point. Dawn Higley, a deacon at the church, said the activity was designed to benefit the entire en-tire community. "We wanted to share the spiritual season with our neighbors," she said. Travelers were accompanied by a shepherd to the various stations, which included Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, the Trial, and Good Friday. Alysa Fratto, age 16, was one of the shepherds. NorthCounty NEWSPAPERS 399 E. State St. Pleasant Grove Marc Haddock 443-3268 North County Editor mhaddockheraldextra.com Cathy Allred 443 3262 Lehi, Saratoga Springs, PI. Grove callred heraldextra .com Barbara Christiansen 443-3264 American Fork, Alpine, Cedar Hills bchristiansenheraldextra.com Mike Rigert 443 -3265 Orem, Vineyard , mrigertheraldextra.com Beky Beaton 443 3267 Sports bbeatonheraldextra.com Josh Walker 443-3260 Advertising Account Executive jwalkerheraldextra.com Volume 135 American Fork Citizen Daily Herald Edrtion USPS 018-580 a weekly newspaper published at 399 E. Slate St., Pleasant Grove, Utah 84063 Periodicals Postage Paid at Pleasant Grove, Utah 84062 and additional maing offices. Poetmartan Send address changes to the American Fork Citaen, P0. Box 7 American Fork, UT 84003-0007. Pubkshed Thursdays by Lee Publications, wnch is a drvsonof Lee Enterprises. Inc. w. Audit Bureau of QrcUations or deny. The city's previous policy had called for separate channels to carry irrigation water and storm water from developed areas on the south side of the freeway in their journey toward Utah Lake. The intent was to keep any oils or other materials which had been washed from roads or driveways separate from water which would be used to irrigate crops. Several developers had requested re-quested the city change its policy, poli-cy, saying it was an obstacle to development, in part because another property owner could refuse to give permission to have one of the streams cross the land. Commissioner Ken Baldwin Bald-win made the motion to send the proposed amendment to the City Council. The motion included a recommendation that the future system provide for maintaining some type of separation for the two types of water. He encouraged the city to look into what it would take to undertake a mosquito abatement program, in the case there is standing water in retention ponds which the developers de-velopers had proposed. He also asked the city to coasider methods to handle water soluble components that could be introduced into the storm water. The City Council may choose to consider the item at a later date, or could send it back to the Planning Commission for further review. Commission looks at revisions to cottage ordinance Several years ago, American Fork created cre-ated the possibility for "cottage" housing, intended to be smaller homes on smaller than average lots, often in the centers of the city's large-size blocks. "I didn't know what to expect, ex-pect, I got thrown into it," she said. "I'm glad I participated because it gave tne a whole new perspective about the order or-der of things. "What impressed me the most was the different emotions emo-tions between when we began the journey and the end. We started smiling and joyous, and toward the end it was scary, solemn and uncertain." Shepherd Olivia Mitchell, age 13, said the sadness was resolved Easter morning, when visitors were able to peer into an empty tomb and hear a message mes-sage about the resurrection. Phone: 756-7669 Fax: 756-5274 DAILT HERALD PUBLISHING CO. Mm mm Jennette Esplin 756 7669 Office Manager Julia Fullmer 344-2570 Project Coordinator, DesignerCopy Editor Megan Carteton 344-2570 DesignerCopy Editor Ashley Franscell 344-2585 Photographer Issue 13 INFORMED AND " fa V;,: V "Viz Two- and a half-year-old Gunner egg hunt on March 22. Since then, however, some of the projects built under this provision pro-vision have come under review. One stipulation often misunderstood mis-understood is that a developer designs certain homes for specific lots in the project. The Planning Commission approves ap-proves those and there is then a requirement that the specific plan be used for construction. Sometimes the lots are sold individually in-dividually instead of developed by one individual. In the previous previ-ous circumstance, sometimes the purchaser has not understood under-stood there are construction restrictions. The commission voted on March 9 to make those terms more conspicuously conspicu-ously on the plat to avoid misunderstanding. mis-understanding. Another concern has arisen "It was a truly amazing thing," she said. The Friday event culminated in a procession around the block carrying a cross, which was then placed in the chapel cha-pel in preparation for Easter morning. Polly Broughton, who walked the stations with her husband Dale, said it was a good event. "We have come to Good Friday Services here before, but not anything like this," she said. "Usually it is just a light service. Having the scripture verses read in the stations sta-tions was really meaningful. It brought it all to life." The spirit omewhere in this country on the staff of some small newspaper, someone has decided it might be a good idea to celebrate April Fools Day with a newspaper article, or even an entire newspaper, dedicated to nonsense. It happens every year. It's never a good idea. April 1 has always been one of my favorite holidays, and my dear wife, Sharon, likes it even more, dreaming dream-ing up elaborate schemes to trap me and anyone else she can think of in a web of deceit and despair. Like the year she told her son that the wedding photographer had called and all of his wedding photos had been destroyed in a developing accident. The despair in his eyes as he prepared pre-pared to call his bride was painful, but the anger an-ger when he found out he had been fooled was even more intense. What a hoot. One year we conspired to April Fool our daughter and her English husband. Ian has found it quite difficult to navigate the ocean of red tape required by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Immi-gration Services, formerly the NIS. As a British citizen, he must jump through hoops on a regular regu-lar basis to maintain his status as a productive resident of the United States. This even though he works for the U.S. Bankruptcy Court. So we had Vicki, our office manager, make a call to his home from our toll-free office telephone tele-phone line to inform him that he would have to pay an outrageous amount to remain in this country. The fact that the call came on April 1 was totally lost on him and his wife until they called Sharon to complain about the terrible turn of events, and to lament the fact that Ian may have to leave his wife and (at the time) three children. After wringing enough grief out of the situation to satisfy any sadist, she confessed con-fessed that we were the authors of the April Fools Day prank. A week later, when they were talking to us again, we were able to apologize, but it took months for the couple to recover from the emotional trauma. While private pranks like this one may be amusing, April 1 is the wrong date for newspapers newspa-pers exercise their funnybones. INVOLVED BARBARA CHRISTIANSEN North County Lyon blows a pinwheel he got at the American Fork Easter with the occasional large home being constructed on a small lot. The proposed amendments to the ordinance include a provision pro-vision that the home, including the garage, cannot exceed 50 percent of the total lot area. The commission will officially offi-cially consider the revised ordinance or-dinance at a future meeting. It would have to also be adopted by the City Council before it becomes law. New library board members named Shauna Dunn, Roger Griffin and Jenna Heier have been named to serve terms on the Board of Trustees for the American Fork Public Library. Skate Park board adds members mem-bers Recreation Director Easter facts Many Christian churches celebrate the Easter season beginning with Ash Wednesday, which is the first day of Lent. Lent is a period pe-riod of spiritual preparation which lasts forty days excluding Sundays. Sun-days. The last week of Lent is called Holy Week, and includes three of the most significant days on the Christian Calendar - Maundy Thursday (the Last Supper), Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. Upcoming community activity at the Community Presbyterian Pres-byterian Church All are invited to participate in the Habitat for Humanity workday on April 5 at 1 p.m. For more information, contact the church at 756-2621. Maughan said it had been more than 20 years since the church provided a Good Friday of April foolishness - - -up fj Marc Haddock THE EDITOR'S COLUMN F Derric Rykert and Mikayla Orton from the Youth City Council have been appointed to the Skate Park Board. AF signs contract with City of Fun Carnival The City Council on March 11 voted to sign a three-year contract with City of Fun Carnival to provide the carnival at the annual Steel Days celebration. The city had been looking at other carnival providers, but decided to go back to the Pleasant Grove-based Grove-based City of Fun. Councilman Dale Gunther made the motion to approve the contract for 2008, 2009 and 2010. "They have cleaned up their act, literally and figuratively, and been good about closing early," he said. procession. "I think we would like to make it a yearly tradition," tradi-tion," she said. 1 For years when this newspaper was published on April 1, we would dedicate the back page to a publication publica-tion we called the Tri City Tattler. We even printed the page upside down and put April Fools! on the page in prominent type. Each editor was expected to produce pro-duce one story for the special page the more outrageous the better. The plan was to write stories so outrageous no one would take them seriously. But we just couldn't get crazy enough. Long-time editor Betty Fowler, writing under the pseudonym Betty Fooler, wrote about the Alpine School District's plan to re-open the old Fairfield one-room school house to solve some of the district overcrowding overcrowd-ing problems. This was well before anyone thought of restoring the school and using as part of Camp Floyd, as it is used now. It was an outrageous idea, but some folks thought this was real. We even got a couple of letters to the editor taking the district to task for the proposal. Barbara Christiansen wrote about American Fork being named the Fast-Food Capital of the World because there were more hamburger joints per capita there than in any other city. For a long time, the city had a lot of fast food restaurants, and few other types of eating establishments, but the story was clearly designed de-signed to poke fun at this trend. Barbara was amazed to hear her story quoted quot-ed years later in a Sunday School lesson as if it were the truth and I mean direct quotes taken from a story written by someone with the improbable name of Barbara Nondenomi-nationalsea Nondenomi-nationalsea There are many examples from other publications pub-lications who found their readers taking stories sto-ries that were supposed to be gags as serious news. The problem is, of course, that there are many fools out there, many working in the news business. We've learned to restrain ourselves. Personally, I'll spend the day expecting my wife to call with news about a wrecked car, a serious diagnosis or a financial disaster that didn't really happen, all in the name of some good April foolishness. Recycle Continued from Page 1 drop by 25 cents a month per home. "We would have to buy an extra truck and have an extra ex-tra man to take on the whole city," he said. In addition, there would also be the need for additional containers. He said the recycling in that case would take more than the one day it does now. "We would probably split it up into sections and do one-tenth one-tenth of the city at a time," he said. That would still make the service on a bi-weekly basis, but a truck would be in a section of American Fork every day. Councilwoman Sherry Kramer said she has had residents resi-dents tell her they would be interested in recycling, but had not taken the time to call and sign up for it. She suggested sug-gested the city provide a free month of service for each home, then begin charging for recycling for those who do not cancel. "I feel like if we can get the cans in people's homes they would use them," she said. Saying it would be a logistical logis-tical issue to purchase those new cans for the trial basis, DeMille suggested the possibility pos-sibility of offering the trial to only a portion of the community commu-nity at a time. DeMille said people support sup-port recycling in concept. "People love the environment, environ-ment, but nobody wants to pay for recycling," he said. DeMille said there was a perception per-ception that those who haul the recycling matter away make money in the process. He clarified the situation. "Recycling is not a money maker for a hauler," he said. "It costs a lot to process and ship it." The city is not making money on the project, either. Charging the residents $4.50 a month for the service and paying Allied $4.57, which includes a fuel surcharge, the city is actually losing money for each home participating participat-ing in recycling. There is an off-setting benefit, however, in that the items in the recycling recy-cling program do not end up in the landfill, which reduces the charge the city has to pay for the tonnage it sends there. Councilman Dale Gunther said he was against making the program mandatory, but felt there could be a good way to provide an incentive incen-tive to the residents to par- ticipate. He suggested a rate structure to make the costs the same for garbage pickup alone and a combination garbage and recycling. The cost for those who currently use two garbage cans and change to a garbage can and recycle bin would actually go down, he said Who does what Residences with garbage service 6,523 With additional can -1,630 Participating in recycling -884 Builders Continued from Page 1 use the latter approach. He said when the two came to the same table for the discussions, the differences differ-ences were not as great as had been previously presented. pre-sented. "It wasn't anywhere near as aggressive as how they painted the picture to the mayor and Melanie (chief of staff Melanie Marsh)," he said. Director of Public Works Howard Denney said the city would work to correct any concerns. "We are developing a strategy to improve customer cus-tomer relations," he said. "We intent to meet with the home builders again. We will see what they perceive would help us." 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