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Show Cedar City Council Approves Redevelopment Agency The Cedar City Council approved an ordinance last week establishing a Redevelopment Agency which hopes to promote a Special Events Center and a revitalization effort for the downtown area. Presented by local resident and former state legislator Dixie Leavitt, the ordinance establishes an Advisory Committee comprised of the Superintendent of the Iron County School District, the President of Southern Utah State College, the Chairman of the Iron County Commission, Com-mission, the Cedar City Mayor and five members of the public. These five members will be rotated on staggered five year terms of office. Most of the members of the Advisory Ad-visory Committee were present and discussed their progress with the council. "We have two things here, a special events center and redevelopment. One requires the cooperation of the other and a lot of work is going into this thing. We meet every Monday morning and these people are extremely busy.. .We can't afford to let politics enter into this project. We also want to recognize that . this is an advisory group when it comes to redevelopment," said Leavitt. The ordinance outlines the group's functions and states, "The Advisory Committee shall have no authority to appropriate and expend public money or to incur any obligations except by consent of the city council." Concerns over the possibility of the council "hamstringing" the group were expressed. Leavitt also said that the group would probably need staff assistance by summer. "One of the concerns of the committee com-mittee is how much flexibility do we have so that we don't have to wait for city council meetings to go ahead with things. We need the city to spell out how much control is needed... if every time we have a meeting we say that we have to come back to the council meeting I think that we could become discouraged," said Southern Utah State College President Orville Carnahan. "We have the engineering com-. pleted and we are waiting until spring to get the money to put the improvements im-provements in," stated one of the Industrial Park's developers Met Johnson. The park is planned for the junction of Airport Rd. and U 50. "We are open to any suggestions. We're not against working with the city or selling the area to the city. If we market the property we will want a profit and if the city develops the area you can market it at cost," said Johnson. Johnson said that earnest money for seven of the lots has been received by the developers-three of the lots have new businesses in the area interested in-terested in them and four are businesses already in the area which want to expand. Mayor Jack Sawyers appointed a committee to work with the developers to help get the park underway. un-derway. "When we go to get the money for the improvements we want to get an industrial bond and we would expect that you'd (the city) have some continued on Page 2 Council Meeting continued from frontpage guidelines on the price we put on the land. The other choice is that we borrow from someone else or we do it ourselves," said Johnson. Other Business -The council approved the concept of an equestrian facility proposed by Linford Nelson. Nelson was referred too the Planning Commission with his plans and the question of whether or not the city would be willing to sell him land for the project was not resolved. -The council approved a condominium con-dominium conversion ordinance. -The council approved an ordinance changing the number of Water Board members from seven to nine. -The council gave City Engineer Matt Bulloch permission to discuss operating procedures with Mountain Bell. He said that in the past the city has not beeen charged for damaging phone lines while repairing streets and that the phone company has likewise not been charged for city water lines which is damages while installing phone cables. He said that the company has recently begun to charge the city for damages to cables and that the city has not granted any easements to the phone company in the past six months. -The council met with Richard Christensen of Burrows Smith and passed a resolution that bonds for Special Improvement District No. 1 totalling $487,000 will be scheduled for sale beginning on Feb. 28 at 6 p.m. -The council granted a beer license to the Iron County Jeep Patrol for a one night gathering which they have planned. The council agreed to return the license fee to the group as a donation and thanked them for their consideration in applying. -The council approved various employee raises which had been arranged previously. -The council passed a resolution thanking the Southern Utah State College Marathon Group which recently organized a run to raise money for the March of Dimes. - The council accepted bids of $315 and $401 for two police cars which they are selling. |