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Show ;: h .,1. ,.,,.,,- 4 r in mi- J Zv Marcella Walker One of the things I have done a lot of over the past 35 years is to attend Pleasant Grove City Council meetings and a good number of Lindon City Council meetings when I was covering Lindon, too. Most city council meetings have one thing in common, they lire usually on the boring side. TTiat is just because running a city, though sometimes interest-in, interest-in, g, is not usually very exciting as far as real excitement goes. Once in a while an issue conies up which gets citizens exci ted and they may actually atten'd a city council meeting. If they ,are brave they may actually speak to the council during the open session. Recently there was a public hearing regarding the proposed rate increases for city services. The meeting was held at Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove Jr. High as it has a large auditorium. At this meeting meet-ing then; was a large number of citizens in attendance. Everyone Ev-eryone who wanted to address the city council was given an opportunity to do so and many people took the opportunity to speak out about their opinions on the subject. The meeting began at 6 p.m. and continued until nearly 10 p.m. Many opinions were given. Many questions were asked. It was an open meeting, meet-ing, and I mean "open" in the sense that the council was open in answering questions and the audience was open in asking questions and listening to the responses from the city council. I felt that a lot was gained during the exchange of opinions at the meeting. How it will all turn out in the end is anyone's guess. However, I will assure everyone that the city council will give it the' best they have got and do it in the easiest way possible but there is no doubt that the city services have to be paid for by the users and the city has to charge the amount required to meet the obligations for these services. No one wants to pay higher prices for government services but the city has to pay it somehow some-how and we as citizens use the services. We cannot live very well without water, sewer, storm drains, etc., so we have to pay the price. It is just like we have to pay for our electricity, our natural gas, and other services to the power company and the gas company. Their prices go up periodically, pe-riodically, also. We don't have a choice even though we are allowed al-lowed to speak our mind to the companies if we want to. Oh, I guess we do have a choice, we can go without those services, but life would not be comfortable comfort-able without them. The same is true with the city services. We need them. We have sailed along over the past few years without a payment increase and now it has become necessary to make big jumps in a short period pe-riod of time, comparatively. My husband and I have to pay these same raises in charges, charg-es, too, and we are retired with a limited income, but we'll do it because the city really has no choice. Perhaps we should thank the city council for allowing these extra years without raising rais-ing fees and now accept the inevitable in-evitable like good citizens. |