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Show Pleasant Grove Review - Thursday, Feb. 3, 2005 - Page 2 Opinion Tides change for local pool The traditional city lap pool across our country has become a dinosaur caught in a money pit, and budget-wise municipalities in Utah County are phasing them out for more profitable and more popular water parks. Iarge private enterprising aquatic tenters like the one found at I'rovo's Seven Peaks gained popularity in the '90s, killing the competition, the municipal public swimming pools, both in price and entertainment value. Toys, long twisty slides, lazy river and other features became an accepted standard for water parks. If residents didn't seek other recreation v( nues, they would visit a commercial water park before they visited the traditional rectangle or L-shaped L-shaped city lap pool. Two of the north county pools were designed in the 1980 or earlier. The w pool is 2( yearn old. The American Ameri-can Fork pool was built in July 1993. City leaders are looking at possibly putting in improvements or replacing the pool. In South Utah County, Spanish Fork led out in the late '90s with its combination lap pool and water park, liecently, the city added zero depth water features. Other cities have followed fol-lowed suit. These municipal water parks, unlike the lap pools, become revenue builders for their cities help ing to fund other recreational programs. pro-grams. Pleasant Grove has replaced its 36-year-old pool with an up-to-date aquatic facility with water features. The new facility sustains itself with its revenue. Orem took out its traditional tradi-tional pool and built an aquatic facility, facil-ity, and I'rovo will open its new water park this Hummer. American Fork city leaders are considering upgrading their pool and recreation center to appeal to a wider range of consumers and to broaden its revenue base, while Lehi city's new aquatic center opens in mid-April. Its opening also signals the retirement of Lehi's outdoor pool. Some residents are protesting the closure of this pool, saying it is a needed facility and the city can afford to maintain it. While this may be true, the city must look at the demographics of its residents. Most are young families 45.83 percent and their livelihood is dependent on a technology driven economy, not the agricultural one of Lehi's past. As taxpayers, their expectations of city recreation programs pro-grams need to be heard. Instead of preserving a relic of the past, it is time to let go of the aging public pool and think of a positive pos-itive use for its property as an investment for the community's future. The long lines of courage I saw courage this week. Heal courage. Not the kind of courage that imakes sportswriters wax lyrical !wben an athlete plays through pain. Nor was it the kind of courage that elicits respectful raves from editorial writers when a political leader takes a principled stand It wasn't even the kind of courage that brings tears pi your eyes when you see brave people overcome tremendous adversity adver-sity in their lives. ', It was another level of courage jln-yond even that the level of courage that has to le summoned when life and liberty are at stake, nd the world is watching. ; I've seen such courage only a few times in my 50 years on this planet, Jiosa Parks refusing to yield her Iplare on the bus in Montgomery, Ala., m 1055. A lone Chinese student staring star-ing down a tank on Beijing's Tiananmen Tianan-men Square in 1080. New York City firefighters rushing into the World Trade- Center as fires raged and walls rumbled on Sept. 1 1, 2001. ', To those moving, memorable images can now be added this new iw-ene from January '2005; citizens of Iraq standing in long lines - sometimes some-times VKKY long lines to vote, defying the threats of insurgents who promised to turn polling places jnto blood baths. ; Of course, I realize that standing in line to vote may seem like a simple sim-ple thing to do when compared with dramatic events at those other memorable mem-orable times and places. Hut remember remem-ber that violence had been threatened threat-ened against any and all who chose to vote - and this in a part of the world where threats of violence are Very often carried out. Violently. ! And yet, they cume. They stood in Jong, meandering lines defiantly, resolutely - and they voted. They emerged from their polling places with smiles on their faces, proudly waving ink-stained fingers as symbols sym-bols of their newfound political power. They sang and danced in the streets. Many wept openly, Imashamed, Despite threats of violence vio-lence and predictions of failure, they looted. And for one day, at least, democracy flourished in u land unfa- I I ii k V. - J i miliar with democratic processes, procedures and priorities. Of course, so much can still happen hap-pen as this great democratic experiment experi-ment moves forward. The votes must fx; counted, the results tabulated and a new government installed and inaugurated. There is still time for intimidation, for threats, for violence. vio-lence. The courage to vote must now be augmented by the courage to see this thing through, and the courage to make it work. Here in America we've been at this for more than 200 years, and yet we still encounter some degree of anger, mistrust and divisiveness in our election process. Hut few of us fear for our lives when we vote. While there are those who may appropriately wonder alout the way in which democracy was delivered to Iraq, none can question the courage and determination shown by the vast majority of Iraqi people who stood in long Flection Day lines. It is thrilling. And inspiring. And humbling. It made rne wonder; As much as I cherish the right and privilege of voting, would I be willing to stand in such a line, open and vulnerable, knowing it could cost me my life? I'm not sure I have that kind of courage. That is why I am in awe of what J saw this week in Iraq, and in polling places around the world. The Iraqi people didn't just vote with their ballots, they voted with their hearts arid souls as well. They sent a clear message to the world that threats and bullying tactics tac-tics are no match for the unconquerable unconquer-able human spirit. And if they can maintain that same level of courageous coura-geous commitment to the principles for which they now stand, this experiment will n successful. And their courage will live forever in our memory. What's in a name anyway? There's a new name on the front of our building. Actually, the name isn't that new. We started using the North County Newspapers designation des-ignation in late 2003, but the name New Utah, which isn't that much older, has hung around anyway. But when we took the New Utah sign down a few weeks ago, it marked an end to that short era. The name change is an indication of changing times. We adopted New Utah in the late 1990s, when the north county area was one of the most hotly contested newspaper newspa-per markets in the state. It was a way to sell our combined com-bined strength as an advertising advertis-ing medium. We made the change back for similar reasons, but under very different circumstances. Here is a little background. Newspapers have to sell themselves to two different groups: readers and advertisers. advertis-ers. And while the two are related, advertisers pay most of the bills. But how much they pay and how interested businesses are in advertising depends on how many newspapers news-papers we sell. We adopted the New Utah name in 1 997 so we could sell the combined readership of our weekly newspapers to advertis- Gin ers. The three papers at the time had been combined under the name Newtah, which was made up by a group of people in California who had bought the newspapers. It was an unwieldy name, but worked for business purposes to identify the corporate entity. In '97 we added two newspapers newspa-pers and consolidated the newspapers under a single name. We didn't like New Utah much better than Newtah, but the publisher picked it and it grew on us. It grew on our advertisers, too. By publishing five editions of one newspaper, instead five separate newspapers, newspa-pers, we became the largest circulation weekly newspaper in Utah. It helped us compete for advertising with the Daily Herald in Provo as well as the Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune, all of which wanted the readers and advertisers in our area. But when Pulitzer Inc., owners own-ers of the Daily Herald, bought the papers in 2002, it marked a fundamental shift in the papers. Instead of competing with the Daily Herald for advertisers, we were adding the strength of our circulation to the Herald's overall numbers. num-bers. It followed quite naturally that the New Utah name would have to go. That's why we returned to the traditional names of our newspapers, adopted the Lone Peak Press name for our Lone Peak edition and added a new edition for Cedar Valley called the Pony Express. It's taken over a year for that change to be reflected on our storefront in downtown American Fork, but the new sign is now there. More changes are in the works. For one, over the next few weeks the news operation of the Orem-Geneva Times will shift from Orem to our American Ameri-can Fork office, and it will become one of our North County Coun-ty Newspapers. Changes are also under way in the way these newspapers are produced and how they look. But our goal remains the same as always. The old New Utah motto stated it best: "More local news that any other source." And we hope to keep providing that to the north county area for years to come. Readers' Forum Historical Society is here to preserve the community It is not the intent of the Pleasant Grove Historic Preservation Preser-vation Commission to be contentious. con-tentious. Although our original inclination was to let this pass, the photo with the notes in the Pleasant Grove Review needs to be addressed. Last Tuesday, 18 January, the commission met and unanimously approved an application for a demolition permit to raze an old barn in the north part of Pleasant Grove, The commission, by the way, consists of seven of us, all volunteers, and whose roots with one exception go back to the early days of the community communi-ty which we serve. Our responsibility under city ordinance 97.15 is to preserve, as best we can, the historic integrity of Pleasant Grove, including the approval of any petition for the demolition of historic structures that may come before the city, including attempting to persuade preservation preser-vation of the building, should that be appropriate. The ordinance ordi-nance states we have thirty days in which to evaluate the situation before rendering a decision. Our meeting was held in accordance with that charge and within the designated time frame. In looking into the matter we found some disturbing elements, ele-ments, including the family's unfortunate squabbling over the situation resulting in a change of title to the property and the eviction of a family member from the land where he had been raised. We were also concerned about the financial welfare of the mother of the petitioner. Letters, defamatory in nature to the City of Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove, were circulated by the petitioner to his neighbors. The petitioner's going to the media complaining about the treatment he claimed to have received including, apparently, apparent-ly, an unsuccessful attempt to "Get Gephardt" while certainly cer-tainly not inappropriate, was perceived as an attempt to intimidate the commission. Most disturbing, however, was what was perceived as threatening harassment of two female members of our commission commis-sion including our chair, Mildred Mil-dred Sutch, still recovering from a stroke she suffered in December and whose dedication dedica-tion to her responsibility is without limits. She certainly didn't need the further trauma of this recent experience. These factors, however, were beyond the scope of our responsibility since they, although very troubling, trou-bling, had no bearing 'on the validity of the petition itself and whether or not it should be granted. Although the barn is indeed historical in terms of years, we decided to approve the petition for three reasons: 1) restoration of the building to a degree of safety compatible with the public pub-lic welfare was thought to be prohibitive; 2) the history of the building had been thoroughly documented by both Mildred and local historian Beth Olsen; 3) where possible, within the realm of our responsibility, we feel the wishes of the owner especially, in this case, the mother of the petitioner are paramount. Our individual sympathies, however, were with the dispossessed brother who wishes to keep the barn, and had we voted with our hearts instead of our heads, the outcome out-come might have been different, differ-ent, but this had never been our intent. The petitioner will never know, however, how close his tactics came to back-firing, creating cre-ating opposition where none had really existed before. The petitioner claimed obstruction by the city, including the police who deny any threatened arrests. We found NO evidence that he was ever actually told "No," only that he was expected to go through the process required of all Pleasant Grove citizens: No more, no less. He didn't really "win" anything; any-thing; he was going to get approval after due process was exercised. While he might have thought he was a gallant knight battling a tyrannical city bureaucracy, to us he came across as Don Quixote tilting at windmills. According to the caption under the photo, he had to "fight for permission" to level his barn. He may have been fighting, all right, but it wasn't with us. Mildred Sutch, chair Beth Olsen Jeannie Hillman Dale Warburton Don Wadley Bill Told Ken Baldridge Pleasant Grove Historic Preservation Commission toTiTf1(frT?ffi.lnlMllliffTto Cedar Fort At the monthly Cedar Fort Town Council planning meeting on Jan. 25, Cedar Fort Fire Chief Mike Penovich discussed a plan to offer fire protection to the newly incorporated town of Fairfield. He pointed out the advantages advan-tages to both communities. Fairfield can benefit by having a fire team less than five miles away, and more Fairfield resi dents might volunteer and train for the fire and EMS teams. American Fork The City Council approved a new style of housing, called the "Cottage Concept," at its Jan. 25 meeting. The plan may only be used in areas designated as eligible for inner block development. With the cottages, the lot size may be 6,000 Bquare feet instead of what surrounds it, but all the cottages would be single-family structures. Saratoga Springs Saratoga Springs" Sheriff Terry Orton announced new Deputy Kristin Jones who haB worked for the Sheriff's Office for the past four years. She has also worked with Utah County and is now in the city. fPOOR |