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Show Gimme land, lotsa land emergency is an emergency, it should be perfect obvious at the A'ifTsuspected emergency turns out to be a genuine emergency, it should be taken care of with dispatch, right? Rlght! Well, we here in this frontier state of Utah are confronted with an emergency; a real, genuine emergency o r 8 t-now P o P proportions. The emergency is, upon realization, horrible to the mind. And it is this: Utah may be becoming another California! The Utah landscape is being eaten up by homebuil ders Jand developers, recreations, businesses and X?Zlt "bte eager and willing to make their fortunes in Utah land The trouble the state has little or no control over the uses to which p nvate lands may be put (zoning), and the land is being abused and destroyed ,n the try to capture the almighty dollar. Lots of people, including the Governor of Utah, have called the problem and "emergency," and we agree. There even exists a P ann.ng Law Amendment Task Committee to draft "emergency legislation in 1973, and then to come up with a comprehensive plan in five or ten years." five or ten years!! If the land developement situation is really an emergency, let's treat it like one. To wait a year for "stopgap legislation is comparable to waiting a year to deal with an infected appendix. Uncountable acres of land will be lost to impatient fortune-makers fortune-makers while this "stopgap'; legislation is being contemplated. Which makes it not stopgap legislation, but admittedly inadequate legislation a year late. If this really is an emergency let's see some genuine concern. Let's save a few extra acres of land. Let's not give the real estate lobby so much free time to organize its defense. Let's see something constructive come out of the 1972 budget session. We would like to see an effective moratorium on land developement until the final plan is completed; or failing that, a moratorium on land developement until the stopgap legislation is drafted. Emergency? Let's start here to separate the alarmists from those really concerned. For a change... Our thanks and appreciation to all those groups, greek, religious, service, ad hoc, or anonymous, who put forth an organized effort during dur-ing the Christmas season to do something for somebody else. Parties, donations, sub-for-santas and other things for the underprivileged remind us all that we are darn fortunate just to be here. But inevitably the good works end with the Christmas season, exposing the efforts for the tokenism that they are. But a token effort is better than none, and if tokenism becomes common enough something may actually get done. |