OCR Text |
Show Cyan Magenta Yellow Black Wednesday, August 10, 2005 A3 Sanpete Messenger/Gunnison Valley Edition Manti City considering tax increase By Judy Chantry Staff writer MANTI—The Manti City Council is considering a proposal to raise the city sales tax to 6.25 percent. “I believe that all of the other cities in the county are at 6.25 percent, and Manti is still at 6 percent,” Councilman Larry Lund said at the Aug. 3 City Council meeting. Mayor Kim Anderson said, “I thought that maintaining the present rate would help us, but our dollars are still going out of town anyway.” Before a change in the tax rate can be implemented it would have to go on the ballot. “We need to know how the citizens will respond to this proposal before we go ahead with implementing a tax hike,” Lund said. In other council business, Tim Jones and Jared Mathis of Jones and Demille Engineering made a presentation regarding a Geographic Information System (GIS). The system uses aerial maps as well as other data to locate problems throughout the city’s water and sewer systems. Additionally, GIS would help the city by identifying land use, pavement management and parcel mapping, as well as identifying and pinpointing problems with public utilities. “This would be particularly helpful in maintaining or installing new lines throughout the city,” Jones said. “GIS can be as complex or as simple as you can afford.” Anderson said, “We realize the benefits of the system, and, in fact, this has been on our ‘wish list’ for a couple of years, but it is not in our budget yet. I realize that this is the way to go in the future, but we will need to find the funding before it can be considered.” Steve Lund presented some lease documents to the mayor and City Council for leasing all city property for oil and gas exploration. In exchange for permission to do so, Lund will pay $50 per acre and donate $10,000 to the swimming pool fund. Councilman Alan Justesen asked if this included the land under city streets, and Anderson said it does, but it doesn’t mean that the city streets would be compromised in any way. The council agreed to look over the leases and sign them as long as everything is in order. Manti City’s General Plan has been completed and is ready for review. The final draft will be submitted to planning and zoning for any proposed changes. “There are a few things that need to be modified or added, but the overall plan looks good,” Councilman Loren Thompson said. Those changes and modifications will be reviewed at the next council meeting on Aug. 17. Dean Halling, president of the Mormon Miracle Pageant, presented a check for $1,600 representing impact fees during the pageant. “We appreciate all that the city does to help preparing for and assisting in the production of the pageant,” Halling said. He said next year would be the last performance of the Mormon Miracle Pageant. In 2007 a new production will be performed under a different name. Attendance was down a bit this year but will probably increase next year with the final productions of the current pag- eant. Halling said he does not know what the new name and format will be. He noted that close to 43,000 service hours were logged during the 2005 pageant. The final figures in regards to revenue from the pageant dinners are not yet available. Brandy Cox and Cub Scouts Rosco Cox, Henry Clark, and Michael Dickinson from Pack 636 presented a check for $100 to the mayor to use for planting a tree on Main Street. The Cubs earned the money during the Fourth of July celebration selling nachos and drinks. Anderson said the Main Street project would start at the end of September. Anderson announced that the new recreation director for next year would be Chad Moore. “I believe that Chad will do a great job,” Anderson said. “He has expressed the desire to expand and further develop the recreation department. He has knowledge of sports and has a feel for what the community needs. Additionally, he knows what it takes to hold tournaments,” he said. The council approved the appointment of Moore. Beyond trying to influence behavior, Thompson expresses the same motivation as other evangelical visitors. Christians come to Manti “for exactly the same reason the LDS Church sends out 60,000 missionaries,” he says. “We have major differences with the LDS Church. We don’t believe LDS teachings correlate with the Bible.” Evangelicals, he says, are exercising their freedom of speech to let Latter-day Saints know “why we question the LDS doctrine.” Many of the non-Mormon visitors gather each morning while at the pageant at the Ephraim Bible Church for worship and training. At a typical session prior to the last day of the pageant, the church was packed. Several people wore T-shirts saying, “I can’t die until I tell you the truth.” Other shirts showed an open Bible with the word “evidence” written across it. Participants could pick up LDS general works and Christian tracts as they entered the church. Inside, following words projected on a screen, they sang praises to Jesus. Some lifted their arms into the air as they sang. Then they broke into groups of two or three and scattered around the church building and grounds to pray. Evangelicals who were interviewed believed they were achieving results. “It’s amazing to see God’s power,” said Fajguru. “He’s worked mightily here…Being here has really confirmed my heart for the LDS people. A lot of them are really sincere about their faith but I see how they are struggling under the weight of their faith.” One young woman, who only gave her first name, T.J., said she had been “Mollie Mormon,” and had performed in the pageant numerous times between age 3 and age 15. Then she met a nonMormon student at Manti High School, now her husband, and started questioning Mormonism. Talking to evangelicals at the pageant further influenced her, she says. “Stuff started clicking. People showed me what the Bible taught. People went through it all and explained it to me. I got saved here at the pageant two years ago—right over there on the steps of that house.” After that, she says, “My life changed drastically…I felt whole finally. I finally felt the peace that was missing.” She and her husband now live in Branson, Mo. They spent $800 to come to Manti and evangelize at the pageant. “I’ll be walking by and I know half the people here,” she says. “I lost most of my friends, but Jesus is the best friend you can have.” At the other end of the spectrum, and the source of the concerns Mayor Anderson described, are evangelicals who openly describe their approach as confrontational. The prime case is Rob Sivulka of Salt Lake City, who carried one of the JosephLied.com signs. He has attended the pageant every year for many years. He typically sits near one of the gates and reads loudly from the Bible as people enter the pageant grounds. Sivulka says he got interested in Latter-day Saints as a young man when his uncle, a pastor in Texas, invited him on a summer mission trip that included a week and a half in Utah. The group proselyted door to door in Utah County. That’s when, he says, he discovered a “love for the Mormon people” and found he enjoyed “trying to persuade them to believe as I believed.” Ultimately, he moved to Utah, and for the past several years, has devoted most of his time to confronting Mormons. He carries signs near the Temple Square gate, boasts on his mormoninfo.org website about “crashing” President Gordon B. Hinckley’s 95th birthday party, and says on his site that his next stop will be the dedication of the new LDS temple in Newport Beach, Calif. Since 1999, he says, he has been a “professional missionary,” living off donations friends, family and strangers make to his cause, some via a PayPal link on his site. He is also a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Utah. When interviewed Tuesday, he said he was currently taking several months off to focus on his doctoral work. Regarding his approach, including his signs, Sivulka says, “It’s not that I want to give Mormons a bad time or ruin their day…[But] I know that controversy sells.” He believes some Latter-day Saints who are initially offended by the sign “will go home and in the privacy of their home look up the web site.” While Pastor Thompson says he would “never do what Rob does they way he does it,” he defends him. There are numerous instances in scripture where “people who believed there was a problem got out and yelled, cried out to people to repent,” says Thompson. One example in LDS scripture, he notes, is Samuel the Lamanite, who is depicted in the pageant. But others, inside and outside the LDS Church, decry tactics used by Sivulka and other confrontational missionaries. John Morehead, an evangelical who has attended pageants, writes in Cornerstone, an online magazine, “We don’t have to shout, or share in ways that are culturally and personally offensive to Mormons, in order to adequately proclaim our message. In fact, we may be causing needless offense and preventing our message from being heard.” Tery Robertson, Mayfield, a member of the Assemblies of God Church in Richfield, says nonMormon visitors to the pageant, especially people carrying signs, only deepen rifts between Mor- mons and non-Mormons in Sanpete County. Her church presents concerts in a Richfield city park, she says. “We wouldn’t want a bunch of Mormons standing around protesting.” Targeting the pageant is “totally inappropriate,” she says. “It’s not changing anybody’s mind. It’s just causing people to judge nonMormons by the way these people [evangelicals] behave.” At the 2005 pageant, a Manti High School student satirized Sivulka’s sign by carrying his own sign saying, “Johnny Appleseed lied.” The student explained that no one could possibly have planted as many trees as Johnny Appleseed claimed to have planted. In some cases, provocative signs and yelling seem to be triggering confrontations. At last June’s pageant, Sivulka says, three people went after his sign. “It was simply the sign, and not my preaching that made them really snap….But the cops were really awesome,” he writes, saying they quickly restrained one person who tried to take his sign away. Pastor Thompson says that in 2004, a driver jumped out of a car and attacked some visiting mis- Sanpete County Compiled by Kathy Lin Eggleston THURSDAY, AUG. 11 Regional Singles party set A regional singles party, program and dinner for all singles age 30 and over will begin at 6 p.m. in the Gunnison City Park pavilion. Bring your own dishes THURSDAY-FRIDAY, AUG. 11-12 Annual Garden Show set in Gunnison Tickets are available for the Gunnison G-Gettes’ second annual Garden Show. They may be purchased for $5 each from the drill team, Skyview Nursery, Gunnison Market or GIC For more information call Mallory Hermansen at 528-7317 or 528-3136. FRIDAY, AUG. 12 Ephraim sets youth soccer registration The deadline is here for registration in Ephraim’s youth soccer program for boys and girls 4-14 years old. Register at the city building at 5 S. Main. The registration fee is $20. There may be an additional cost for the uniform. FRIDAY-SATURDAY, AUG. 12-13 Walk to fight cancer The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life will be held at North Sanpete Middle School in Moroni. The event begins at 5 p.m. Friday and goes until 9 a.m. Saturday. Evangelists (Continued from A2) and don’t carry signs because, says Thompson, signs can be misinterpreted as a “protest of the pageant.” A typical practitioner of what one online Christian magazine describes as this “culturally sensitive” approach to trying to draw Latter-day Saints away from their church is Rebekah Fajguru, 19, a community college student from Arlington, Texas. She came to the 2005 pageant with about 10 people from two Protestant churches in her town. She explains that her church has a program called “Evangelism Explosion.” Two components of the program are proselyting door-to-door in the Arlington area and making a “mission trip” to the Manti pageant. Her church found out about the pageant, she says, when a non-Mormon couple from Utah moved to Texas and joined the congregation. While in Manti, she passes out tracts, talks to people and joins in prayers and singing in the street. “Our goal is to witness to Mormons, to open their eyes about what the Bible says about the LDS teachings,” she says. “As Christians, it’s our duty to express our concern about the teachings of the LDS Church and to share the truth…I don’t necessarily agree with every method that is used out here. I’m just here to do what God wants.” Tim Wilkins and Jack Swarm, students at Faith Baptist College in Ankeny, Iowa, came on their own to the 2005 pageant. Thompson is an alumnus of the same college. He told people at the college about the pageant, and college-affiliated people have been coming ever since, Wilkins said. The students combined evangelism with pleasure, stopping to hike and camp in the San Rafael Swell on the way to Manti. Wilkins says he came “basically because I was excited to tell the Mormons about the gospel.” Swarm says, “ When you get to share your faith, it makes you stronger. You’re doing what Christ asks to you to do…” While Thompson, who founded Ephraim Bible Church but recently left the church to focus on a Christian ministry to Snow College students, says he has invited a few groups to the pageant, “the majority of people in the street, other than the fact they’re Christian brothers and sisters, we’re not responsible for.” In fact, he says he got involved in evangelism targeting pageant visitors partly because he didn’t like some of the things other visitors were doing. “Because we’re the local Christian church, we have a bit of influence. We can advise them, let them know what we think is profitable.” One of his first steps was drawing up the suggested code of conduct. SATURDAY, AUG.13 Miss Sanpete pageant held The Miss Sanpete County scholarship pageant will be held in the Manti High School auditorium beginning at 7p.m. Tickets are available at the door for $6 each. WEDNESDAY, AUG. 17 Health Seminar set The Gunnison Valley Hospital Home Health Seminar will be held at the Gunnison Senior Citizen Center at 12:15 p.m. Topics are joint pain and physical therapy. For lunch reservations before the seminar call 528-3781. Policies and deadlines for Sanpete Happenings and other event publicity are published on the Messenger’s web site. Go to www.SanpeteMessenger.com and click “Sanpete Happenings” on the Main Menu. sionaries, and a middle-aged, mildmannered missionary couple were hit by rocks. Mayor Anderson said Manti City explored establishing a freespeech zone where evangelicals would be separated from other pageant visitors. But the city could not find an ordinance enacted in any other city establishing such a zone and wasn’t sure such an approach would stand up in a legal test. The city council decided the best approach was to turn problems over to the Sheriff’s Office. “We made it a function of the sheriff to just control the crowd,” he says. “There’s no doubt about it,” he adds. “It’s pretty sensitive. It’s a hot button down there. We need to keep our cool and stay away from physical confrontation. We need to not let what they’re saying or doing boil into a confrontation.” Statement from Manti Utah Stake president on protestors The Church respects the rights of those not of our faith to worship as they see appropriate. The eleventh Article of Faith states, “We claim the privilege of worshiping Almighty God according to the dictates of our own conscience, and allow all men the same privilege, let them worship how, where, or what they may.” We have counseled members of the Manti Utah Stake to not argue or contend with those who protest at the Mormon Miracle Pageant. Contention creates an evil spirit and is not productive. It is easy to become defensive when beliefs that are near and dear are denigrated, but rather than contend, we have suggested that our members ignore those individuals who choose to protest. Douglas Dyreng Manti Utah Stake President Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings in Sanpete Mon: 8 p.m., Ephraim 390 W. 100 N. Thurs. 8 p.m., Mt. Pleasant 10 N. State, (Rec. Center, upstairs) 8 p.m., Gunnison (circular apartment building behind Gunnison Market) Thu: 8 p.m., Ephraim 390 W. 100 N. (Step-study, closed) Fri: 7 p.m., Mt. Pleasant 10 N. State, (Rec. Center, upstairs) Sun: 10 a.m. Mt. Pleasant 10 N. State, (Rec. Center, upstairs) Fantastic 4 Casino Star Theatre 78 S. Main, Gunnison 528-STAR casinostartheatre.org Prices: Adults $5 Children 12 & under $3 Rated PG13 August 12-18 7:30 p.m. Bargain Night: August 16 All seats $3.00 |