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Show One city Dear Editor: As a concerned citizen I feel that we all need to re-evaluate the impact upon ourselves and our children before we vote on further separating our valley. I agree with Mr. Grua's letter to you last week totally, and respect his willingness to exercise freedom of speech. There are advantages to forming municipalities in complementary circumstances. cir-cumstances. These circumstances however do not exist in Ashley Valley. The alternative to three or four cities is ONE and there are several advantages advan-tages to considering one unified local government in Ashley Valley. In my own opinion these are some of the advantages: ad-vantages: 1. Do away with lawsuits between competing government entities. 2. Unify our efforts as a community to plan for the future and solve our problems pro-blems together. 3. Stop inconsistency between each government entity in controlling developments and administering government affairs. 4. Give us all a vote on who represents us in government services. Now, we are being influenced directly by people in and out of the city that we don't even vote for. 5. Distribute the benefits of taxes in the valley to the residents of the valley instead of only a few. 6. Increase our impact on State and national affairs by increasing our united efforts and voice. 7. Stop competing for water resources which none of us own but are provided for all of us to benefit from. 8. Increase the accountability of our elected officials to us. One elected body, representing each area of the Valley is simple, straight-forward, and each of us would know who to go to for a response. Presently there are at least six different dif-ferent taxing entities who provide common com-mon service; each with their own boards, commissions, and councils. Each has from 3 to 6 members elected from different areas. Each entity competes com-petes with the others for taxes who gets the most, gets the benefits. 9. Combined overlapping, inconsistent inconsis-tent services for police, recreation, solid-waste, planning and zoning, animal control, etc. All of these separate operations have separated bureacracies, with separate facilities and budgets. Combining them will bring br-ing more accountability and better utilization of facilities, manpower and equipment. 10. Unifying our form of government will bring us closer together as neighbors and as a community. No one will benefit if we continue the way we are and further separate ourselves by voting for two or three more cities. Do we want to be known as a fighting, conflicting con-flicting community or leaders in community com-munity cooperation and progress. If we vote for the formation of more cities in such a small valley, we will live to see the error of what we have done. We will multiply the conflicts, the costs, and destroy any hope of a unified valley that we now have. Can we resolve our differences? Yes, we can, if we establish a unified community with one elected body, accountable directly to you and I. I believe the people of this valley get along alot better than the elected representatives do. We are all "From Vernal," let's keep it that way. SHA1VE LUCK Vernal |