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Show ... EH.l E.s. An Open Forum for readers of The Milford. News. Letters of reasonable length will be published, but privilege of editing any and all letters is reserved. ' All letters must be signed, however names will be j withheld upon request. hesitate to call on me. Sincerely, ARTHUR V. W ATKINS. Dear Steve: Your letter concerning highways. high-ways. At the very time I talked with Gus, he had been dictating a letter covering the policy of the S. L. Chamber board, to Mr. Geraghty .president of the Ely Chamber. Gus said, "It covers the situation in Steve Williams' letter precisely, so we better have a copy of it made and sent to Steve." This is official from the Board of Governors, and is the present policy of the Chamber. Cham-ber. I can assure you also that Mr. Backman's statement about our interest in all roads regardless re-gardless of ingress to Salt Lake City is true. It is true also that we divert new businesses to outside communities which need them for their economy. As long as the industry is in our trade area, we get our share of the business ultimately. Our cut may be delayed a bit while it goes thru the hands of local retailers, but eventually we get some of the business so there is no purpose in trying to hog everything for S. L. and then have to pay all the receipts out in taxes to help support poorer communities. Regards, STEVE MALONEY. Dear Mr. Geraghty: We trust that our many good! friends in the Ely area will be fully appreciative of the fact that the Salt Lake City Chamber Cham-ber of Commerce is not interested inter-ested in the development of highways in the intermountain country which only come di- rectly to Salt Lake City, as has been alleged by many people i not only in the area served by Highway 6 but also in the area served by highway 30, and similar sim-ilar highways. The Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce is vitally interested in the development devel-opment of the entire intermountain intermoun-tain empire and we believe thru our activities we have proven our position. It has been charged by our good friends, particularly in the I Delta area, that we are resisting I the development of Highway 6 in the interest of other highways, high-ways, while at the same time we are charged by the people in the Milford area with being interested in-terested in development of Hi-way Hi-way 6 as opposed to the development devel-opment of Utah 21, which the people in the Milford, Beaver and Cedar area claim will develop de-velop more business for Ely, Milford, Beaver and Southern Utah than any other route, inasmuch in-asmuch as it will provide a circular cir-cular route from California cities from which the major portion of the tourist travel visiting vis-iting Southern Utah originates. We are vitally interested in the development of both of these highways and to prove ( our interest we are providing i the Highway Advisory commit-1 tee of our Legislative Conference Confer-ence $10,000 to be used by the Utah State Legislative Council I for the development of a com-1 prehensive highway study of the state, together with a study as to ways and means of financ-, , ing a highway program which, above all things, will develop a increase in the gasoline tax, or if it calls for a bond . issue, something definitely must be done as soon as possible and done by the next legislature. Again assuring you of our unqualified interest in the promotion pro-motion of any factor which will assist in the development of I this intermountain area, we are, j Most sincerely yours, SALT LAKE CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. I Gus P. Backman, Sec. i , Dear Steve: I'll have to ask your forgiveness forgive-ness for the delay in accepting your offer of a free book for a prompt renewal of my subscript tion to The News. Norma un-j derwent an operation two ' weeks ago and I just haven't had time to keep up with my delinquent correspondence. Norma is recuperating 'satisfactorily 'satis-factorily now. I am still ' attending school with the hopes of sometime being be-ing able to earn a living. Our life here is pretty monotonous. Occasionally, however, we do manage to find time to go tour the "city" and see the sights. Even this seems monotonous because be-cause such things as the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monu- i ment and the Capitol Building are so familiar to us thru the medium of newsreels, textbooks and paintings that it sometimes leaves me with the impression , that I am turning the leaves of an old calendar. Anyway, we are quite comfortable com-fortable here and will be calling call-ing it home for the next year and a half at least. And in the meantime, we DON'T want to lose touch with Milford and our many friends there. So please keep sending The Milford News. Sincerely, Thorpe, Norma and Brent Waddingham. Hyattsville, Md. Editor, News: Please enter my subscription v for The Milford News. I lived - there a long time ago and ex pect to spend my vacation there this summer. I would like to receive the paper for a while and see if any of my old friends are still there. LOUISE DIXON. North Spur, via Fort Bragg, Calif. (A few weeks ago we published pub-lished details of a Beaver County proposal to help finance fi-nance construction work on Highway 21. To date, there has been little or no definite progress reported from Salt Lake City. The attorney general gen-eral requested a copy of the brief furnished the Beaver County group, but no further action has been reported. (Following is a letter from Senator Arthur V. Watkins, regarding amount of federal funds available to Utah for secondary roads, and excerpts of a letter from Gus Back-man, Back-man, secretary of the Salt Lake Chamber of Commerce, addressed to Cec Geraghty of Ely. Steve Maloney, at the request of The Milford News, contacted Mr. Backman regarding re-garding the Beaver County proposal, and Mr. Backman forwarded us a copy of his let- j ter to Mr. Geraghty.) , Dear Mr. Williams: This will reply to your wire of Feb. 23. First, let me explain ex-plain that the delay in answering answer-ing was occasion by Washington's Washing-ton's Birthday, which closed down all government bureaus except the hard-working Congressional Con-gressional branch of the government. govern-ment. I In your telegram you requested request-ed that we supply the total fund appropriated for secondary hi-way hi-way construction and the amount remaining unexpended. The unexpended portion is $4,002,567. Since I felt that this was not the figure which you actually desired, I am including a second sec-ond figure which represents the federal secondary road money for which no program has been set up by the state. The differ- ence in these two amounts, or j $2,431,280, represents that portion por-tion of the unexpended funds which have been programmed and are in the process of being carried out. In other words, the state has programmed a certain cer-tain number of secondary highway high-way projects, but as of this writing these projects have not reached the stage of actual construction con-struction and the money' remains re-mains unexpended. Therefore, while the remaining unexpended unexpend-ed funds total over $4,000,000, 1 there is only a little over Vz j million available for additional projects. I hope this supplies the information infor-mation you desire. If I can be I of any further service, do not j system of interstate highways properly serving this state. As you are probably aware, the people in the Beaver County , area have agreed to contribute I $125,000 to the development of highway Utah 21 to offset the offer which we understand has been made by the people of Nevada Ne-vada to complete Highway 6. You must fully appreciate the fact that until the survey has been made and a determination arrived at as to priorities on roads, there is little we can do except to occupy a more or less neutral position with respect to the highway programs which are being pressured by various groups, not only within the State of Utah but in adjoining communities. I think if you will analyze ! the amount of money which has been expended on Highway 6 over the past few years, you will find that more money has been expended on this highway i ! than any of the highways in or 1 around Salt Lake City, .. . Our job, in order to meet your j requirements, is to get a com-j com-j prehensive study completed as quickly as possible and then find ways and means of undertaking under-taking a major highway con struction program thruout the entire state. If it calls for an |