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Show Wednesday, October 8, 2008 C11 uarry center construction advances -I iW i I I ft' ? ' i I J Vernal Express Dinosaur National Monument Monu-ment superintendent Mary Risser announced that Mike Snyder, ' National Park Service (NPS) Intermountain Regional director, has signed the record of decision for the Quarry Visitor Visi-tor Center final Environmental Impact Statement. "This is one of the last steps in the lengthy compliance process to rehabilitate the Quarry," said Risser. The Record of Decision is a summary, to be published in the Federal Register announcing the Quarry building is a national historic landmark. Included is a memorandum memoran-dum of agreement with the State of Utah's State Historic Preservation Office and the Advisory Council for Historic Preservation that concerns the treatment of the building. USU considers revising student evaluation form LOGAN (AP) - Utah State University is considering changing chang-ing the form students use to evaluate their professors. The university currently uses a form that hasn't undergone any validity and reliability tests. Raoul Arreola, an expert on evaluation forms from the University of Tennessee, told students and faculty at USU that the school should consider "looking over evaluations from the past 15 years to see if they're effective. Arreola said universities should only use forms that have been tested to make sure they measure what they're supposed :to measure and are consistent in their ratings over time. The university could also buy a professionally constructed form that has undergone testing. These forms have been shown to measure factors that are connect Health Career day for The Utah Center for Rural Health at Southern Utah University Uni-versity and the Utah Hospital Association are visiting the Uintah Basin on Nov. 6 to put on a Health Career Exploration Day. : The activity will be held at the Roosevelt campus of the Uintah Basin Applied Technology Technol-ogy College. Local health care providers and schools will also be involved. Organizers of the program slated jLJfdJt $ J!JLiJLSJL .iitx.. JfJ lf 2006 CHEV Trail Blazer EXT ?i r. mnnnp mo PI in r - '.,77, -An ,; v J I. - ;-m f "i?. it.-, ; l.l il-cj "" '". 2007 GMC'-YUKON 2tL 0z?mFS A J U-4109 Leather, 4x4, Sport Seating Open Monday - Friday 8 am to 6 pm, Saturday 9 am to Noon, Service Department Closed. Main Office 722-51 07, Used Cars & Trucks 722-41 00 "We will now be able to move forward with design and construction drawings - a process that typically takes about a year to accomplish," Risser continued. "That way we will have everything in place as soon as we receive construction funds, which are currently scheduled for 2011." On July 12, 2006, the NPS closed the Quarry Visitor Center due to structural instability. The building, built on expansive soils of Mancos shale, was later condemned. The NPS plans to protect the fossil wall and provide access to the public by rehabilitating the existing exhibit hall. Other parts of the building, including the administrative wing, south wing and serpentine entry ramp, will be demolished. ed to student learning-clarity of explanations and strong course organization, Arreola said. Student evaluations are usually usu-ally a factor in determining which professors receive tenure and are also used to help professors improve their teaching skills. "This is a topic that is important impor-tant to our campus," said USU Provost Ray Coward. Utah State Faculty Senate President Mike Parent says student ratings will likely be revisited in the faculty senate this academic year. "It would probably be as a consequence of the faculty evaluation committee meeting, discussing this issue and bringing bring-ing forward the results of their discussion, which may or may not include some recommendations in terms of changing the form," he said. UBATC say it is the first time this kind of activity has been put on in rural Utah. It will involve several hands-on activities where the students get to suture, make a cast, take blood pressure, and maintain airways. About 200 students from around the Basin are expected to attend one of four sessions on Nov. 6. Those who attend will have expressed an interest in health care occupations. 35 to 40 K ' -7 --vM jc, w 1 2008 UETTES The 2008-2009 U'ettes, Uintah High School's drill team, seize the day. The team chose the Latin phrase, carpe diem as their motto and for inspiration as they prepare for half-time entertainment, competition routines and various community events. Back Row: Coach Cami Cook, Kati Allen, Christy Hughes, Megan Merkley, Madi Aycock, Manager Kristine Jolley, Coach Robin McClellan, Jessie Barton, Allyson Beddes, Janelle Batty, Jordan Kearl. Middle Row: Aubrie Jones, Andrea Rinderknecht, Manager MaKall Reynolds, Shidale Woody, Melanie Bustos, Emily Millecam, Robin Wright, Rachel Brown, Amanda Roop. Front Row: Corrin Phillips, Caityn Gurr, Ry-eleigh Ry-eleigh Dickson, Anne Wilkins, Kadee Pitt, Brinli Buckalew, and Lauren Murray. Not pictured Brinli Aycock. By Jim Abrams Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) - The year's most important tax package pack-age was in trouble Friday as the House passed a key part of it that the White House threatened to veto and the Senate said was a dead end. On the table were four tax initiatives wrapped into one bill by the Senate earlier this week: preventing more than 20 million people from being victimized by the alternative minimum tax, incentives for renewable energy, extension of expiring tax breaks and disaster relief. All are must-do tasks for Congress Con-gress before it adjourns for the year, but the House, in three different dif-ferent bills covering those issues, has taken the same approach as the Senate only on the alternative alterna-tive minimum tax. The Senate has made clear that any House divergence from its carefully crafted compromise will kill the whole package. The Senate bill passed 93-2. The House on Friday voted 257-166 on a $60 billion measure dealing with renewable energy initiatives and the extension of such business and individual tax breaks as the R&D credit, credit for higher education tuition, deductions for state and local sales taxes and the expansion r --.v ,y J Li J r- - T H! j! jj PONTIAC MOTORSPORTS of eligibility for the child tax credit. The bill covers similar ground as the Senate package: in the energy portion it provides investment invest-ment and production tax credits for solar, wind and other renewable renew-able resources, offers credits for purchase of plug-in electric vehicles and promotes conservation conserva-tion and energy efficiency. But the House has insisted on a basic principle, that relief should be paid for by increasing revenues elsewhere so the budget bud-get deficit doesn't worsen. That concept is opposed by the White House-a main reason for its veto threat - and by Republicans who say it is wrong to increase taxes to extend existing tax policy. The House bill is paid for by .limiting tax breaks available to the oil arid gas industry and closing loopholes that hedge fund managers and corporations use in paying taxes on overseas income. The energy and tax extension parts of the Senate bill have revenue rev-enue offsets for about $25 billion out of a total of $68 billion. House Ways and Means Committee Com-mittee Chairman Charles Ran-gel, Ran-gel, D-N.Y, said it was "shameful" "shame-ful" that the Senate would give the House a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum on the tax package. "They shouldn't have the arrogance arro-gance of saying they aren't even fflf TT-Sl VVXi TT I TTLL--J ti i i i i ,- . ill LalllJULai'LiLJiilj 100,000-MILE gVEAR POWERTRAIN LIMITED WARRANTY 100,000-MILE THE BEST IJ YEARS OF COURTESY TRANSPORTATION COVERAGE 4gt ft rift IN AMERICA. 1 00,000-MILE 007 Models on. JJYEARS OF ROADSIDE ASSISTANCE U-4043 About 31 K, Leather seating STARTING AT ft .1 UMllOllbU I Customerss vy Calvin Murray 4-J I; . roves tax reiie: going to look at it." But Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., said Democrats should face the reality that their bill "will never actually deliver the tax relief it is promising because it will never pass the Senate and it will never be enacted into law." The House earlier this week bowed to Senate pressures and passed separate AMT and disaster relief bills that are not paid for. The AMT would cost an estimated $64 billion over 10 years to keep those hit by the tax, originally designed to affect only millionaires, from growing from about 4 million to up to 26 million mil-lion in 2008, with an average tax increase of more than $2,000. The bill extending tax breaks to natural disaster victims would cost about $8 billion. The House ' VERXMt See J ii : I'iilll. i i i M" i n i7 LudvOj U Rob Reynolds Doug bill covers disaster victims nationwide, na-tionwide, while the Senate bill targets those in the Midwest hit by devastating storms this summer sum-mer and recent hurricane victims in Texas and Louisiana. A similar battle played out last year over the AMT, with the House pushing for new revenues to pay for the one-year fix and Senate Republicans blocking any bill with offsets. Finally, shortly before Congress adjourned at the end of December, the House gave in. As a result of the delay, more than 13 million taxpayers had to wait until February to file their returns and get their refunds while the Internal Revenue Service updated its programs to reflect the changes in the law. Wow! Let me tell you, it it worth shopping in the pages of the... 54 North Vernal Avenue Vernal, Utah 435-789-3511 www.vemal.com Calvin, Doug or Rob For More Quality Selections! Murray |