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Show Page 2 The Ogden Valley news Volume XX Issue XXIII March 15, 2013 The Ogden Valley news Staff: Shanna Francis Tel: 801-745-2688 Fax: 801-745-2688 Cell: 801-791-4387 E-Mail: slfrancis@digis.net Jeannie Wendell Tel: 801-745-2879 Fax: 801-745-2879 E-Mail: crwendell@digis.net crwendell@msn.com Opinions expressed by advertisers, columnists or letters to the editor are not necessarily the opinions of the owners and staff of The Ogden Valley news. guidelines for Letters to the Editor Letters should be 300 words or less. Letters must be signed and the address of the writer submitted. The Ogden Valley news reserves the right to edit or decline printing of any submissions. Announcements Sought As a community service, The Ogden V alley n ews will print local birth, wedding, obituary, anniversary and missionary farewell & homecoming and Eagle Scout announcements free of charge. We invite residents to send their announcements to: The Ogden Valley news PO BOX 130 EDEN UT 84310 If you would like your submitted items returned, please send a stamped, selfaddressed envelope. The Ogden Valley news , while respecting all property received, will take no responsibility for lost or misplaced items. Please remember to keep a copy for yourself. Invitation for Articles The staff of The Ogden Valley news welcomes the submission of articles by our readership. We invite you to submit local historical accounts or biographies, articles pertaining to contemporary issues, and/or other material that may be of interest to our readers. We also invite you to submit to the paper, or notify the staff of local events. Awards that have been earned by the reader, family members, neighbors or friends are also sought. While the staff of The Ogden Valley news invites the submittal of information and articles, we reserve the right to select which material will be considered for publication. 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Letters to the Editor Community Thanked for their Support to Stop Incorporation Effort at Powder Mountain A big thank you goes out to all who supported the effort to Stop Powder Mountain Town. The petition to incorporate has been withdrawn and the last legal bill has been paid. What a monumental community effort it took to ensure that the citizens were not forced into an unwanted municipality. We sincerely wish to thank all who helped the effort by donating to the Citizens Rights Defense Fund, displayed signs, and planned, participated in, and attended the fundraiser at the Union Station. About half of the funds raised came from residents of the affected neighborhood, and half from the larger Ogden Valley community. After covering legal fees, fundraising expenses, and banking fees, a balance of $11,649.54 remained. These remaining funds have been donated through the Community Foundation of Ogden Valley to Weber Pathways for pathway projects in Ogden Valley. This means that the money so generously donated by so many people who live in this valley, and who love this valley, will be used to enhance and connect the area through trails. Thank you again! development (PRUD), which they are requesting, is more than the 500 units, more than the valley can bear, and more traffic than the road to Powder Mountain can safely handle. VCRD should clamor to the county for a public hearing on the PRUD, at which time, a demand can be made by all for the plans to build 500 units and a small conference center at Powder Mountain be tabled. We might want to picket the place chanting, “500 units.” I thought the March 1, Ogden Valley News article was misleading, because it is less than a half truth and doesn’t go far enough. We were misled and all should be chagrined. I hope this information will be corrected. Greg Mauro may be the Summit person to show all plans and to explain them, but all these guys need to be watched like a hawk. I hope Summit’s prevaricating will make everyone mad enough to attack by all peaceful means. customers money in theory) and add water storage for the Durfee Creek area, which had run dry last summer. He said they needed to enforce the new rates for five years to collect the money they needed for said improvements. So I started doing the math, and if there are 602 pipeline customers (I got this number from the same letter they mailed us), at $25 extra per month on just the basic rate increase, that is $15,050 a month more they are bringing in. Well, the math I did comes up with $903,000 over a five-year period. That is some $311,000 more then he claims they need?!#! This doesn’t even begin to take into consideration the exorbitant summer rates and where that revenue is supposed to be allocated? I called around to some of the water providers in the lower valley and, indeed, Liberty water users are due for a rate increase, as only Bona Vista has a lower rate structure currently. In doing this research, I also found that those new water meters they are proposing should save us money in the “off” months when Liberty Pipeline just estimates and charges us all for 20,000 of water, even though the average person only uses 100 gallons a day or 3,000 gallons a month. Please feel free to check these numbers on the government website of <ga.water.usgs. gov> So, unless you have six-plus people living in your home all winter, you have been paying for way more water then you are using. Being that many homes here in the valley are only lived in part time, or, if you are like my wife and me, who travel considerably, you have definitely been overpaying. Bona Vista told me that their customers pay a $5.20 base rate and .62 per 1,000 gallons for the first 7,000 gallons, which would make the bill $11.20 during the winter—a far cry from the $45 it would be under the new proposal. If you have questions and want answers like I do, show up to the Board of Liberty Pipeline Shareholder meeting being held Thursday, March 21 at 7:00 p.m. at Snowcrest Jr. High Citizens Rights Defense Fund Hoodwinked by Summit The whole valley is being hoodwinked! The Summit group gives new meaning to the term embellishing the truth. At the last VCRD (Valley Citizens for Responsible Development) meeting, the summit group assured us that they were only going to build 500 units and a small conference center. Barely three weeks later, on February 13, I went to the town meeting held by the Summit group. The plan presented was not at all what had been being represented to the valley residents for months! They have a request for Phase I and a plan for Phase II. The planned residential unit Ernest Goff, Huntsville Going Broke Over Water? Liberty Pipeline recently sent all of its customers a letter that I hope we all took the time to read and decipher. Upon first opening the letter, I assumed there must be a mistake— they aren’t really proposing a 225% basic rate increase! Currently our basic service it $20, but the proposed rate would make it $45. But after a phone call to 801-745-2088 and a conversation with Scott Storey, whom I assume is the manager or owner of Liberty Pipeline, indeed that is exactly what they intend to do. As if this exorbitant basic service increase wasn’t enough, under the new rate structure, our summer water bills would increase up to 475%. Just to give a basic idea of what this would mean, our August bill in 2012 for $100.60, under the proposed rate, would be $475! I certainly cannot afford this high of water bill, can you? What made the conversation with Mr. Storey even more aggravating was that his numbers didn’t add up, as to where the money from this proposal was to go. He informed me that Liberty Pipeline needed some $592,000 in improvements to get new water meters (which should save us J. Dale, Liberty Republican/Democrat Unity? Following the disgrace of President Clinton’s impeachment trial and the loss of Al Gore in the Presidential election of 2000, Democrats were disheartened and in disarray. After an appropriate period of name calling, fixing of blame and crying in their beer (or Martini or Manhattan), they became unified and decided to move-on, and why wouldn’t they want to? They picked up the pieces and soon their political energies were directed at the Bush Administration, trying to make life miserable with help from the liberal media. The Iraq war was declared lost by none other than Senate Leader Harry Reid; Nancy Pelosi tried her mischievous brand of diplomacy to disrupt supplies to our military in the mid-east. In spite of their efforts, the “surge” turned things around in Iraq. In 2008, Barack H. Obama arrived on the national political scene with assists from Caroline Kennedy, Oprah Winfrey, and others. Prayers were answered; he was the embodiment of Progressive/Liberal ideology—thanks be to Nature, whoever or whatever sent the “perfect candidate.” Books about the perfect candidate proliferated, bookstores overflowed, songs were written, school children cheered, women fainted, and tingles tantalized the leg of at least one TV pundit. All was well in “Liberaland,” our country was saved from those gosh awful Conservatives. Recently, Republicans lost the Presidential election, their second in a row; a sense of disunity and confusion reigns in some quarters. Perhaps it’s time for the GOP to move on, not in the sense of moving away from Conservative principles or maintaining that the Constitution is the bedrock of our nation’s foundation. Maybe it is time to reassess who we are as a nation; our common values as well as our differences and implement a plan to unify not only the party but the country. Maybe the disunity of our people is fueled by the stress of economic uncertainty with invasive governmental interference, increased taxes, and loss of freedoms. In addition, the pressures of a nation that has long been “king of the hill” and has become the target of many nations that would like to take us down a notch or two add to the personal stress of those individuals in the margins of society. Maybe this adds fuel to creating a citizenry that is becoming obsessed with violence and triggers actions in those who are prone to violent behavior. President George H.W. Bush envisioned a kinder, gentler people and nation. In many respects we’ve become the antithesis of that ideal. Not that Americans don’t believe in kindness, or practice giving and being helpful to one another, even to those in other countries—we do. And we do it without political party labels. I personally know as many Democrats as Republicans who fit this ideal. You may also. Yet there are within us as a nation, a growing number of individuals who need help of a psychiatric nature, who have violent tendencies and can and are pushed over their limit. This seems to beg the question; what, if anything, can political parties do to help lower the frustrations and stress of the citizenry? Hopefully the answer is not, “nothing.” Political parties guide and advance the agenda of a particular ideology. They influence those elected because they can help make or break a candidate or office holder. They don’t make law or create policy; they do exert great influence over what happens in our state and national capitols. Given the power political parties, it would seem that we have two parties that are polar opposites when it comes to deciding what is best for us as a nation. But, parties are made up of people, and people have the power to vote so it seems that our people are at polar opposites; or are they? It is really about what or who influences the vote and the degree to which the voter is informed on a particular issue. And that, dear friends, is what the Constitution is all about; a free people acting in their own best interest and in the best interest of the nation. No one knew this better than our first President, George Washington, who said, “The power under the Constitution will always be in the people. It is entrusted for certain defined purposes, and for certain limited periods, to the representatives.” Yet we see a growing effort to discredit the constitution, to increase powers of government, and to ignore the time limits of representatives. It seems that the only way to reverse current trends is for Democrats and Republicans to unify through the efforts of citizen voters. There is reason to believe in the good of those around you and their desire for a prosperous, peaceful, and civil nation and to make the effort to unify our country. Attractive as it is to believe, or even hope that our country can overcome great adversity, history tells us a different story. Great nations have, over time, always fallen in one way or another, through internal corruption or external pressures and wars. While we may be able to continue on our current path and go into deep decline, morally and economically, only to be steered back at the last minute—it’s a chancy proposition to risk doing so. As a member of the “check-out” generation, what happens to this country will have little consequence for me; however, I do have great concern for this and future generations. John W. Reynolds, Pleasant View 2013-2014 Early Season Pass Sale! Hurry! This price will end March 30th. Individual $195 Student $165 Family $548 Each additional child $50 These will be the lowest prices for the 2013-2014 season Note: The contents of The Ogden Valley News are copyrighted. 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