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Show 0 R E M TIMES Thursday, July 5, 2007 Pag 2 NEWS AND NOTES TO KEEP YOU Orem sets new standards Reva Bowen Youth rehabilitation facilities in Orem now have some new standards to meet. The Orem City Council voted Tuesday to amend the city's ordinance or-dinance governing the facilities in order to make the homes more compatible with neighboring neigh-boring uses Steve Earl of the city's legal department said that the city's experience with a youth home on Sandhill Road has shown that some improvements can be made to the ordinance. The facilities provide rehabilitation reha-bilitation services for juveniles who have committed criminal offenses and are under the supervision and jurisdiction of the courts. Currently, the only zone in which the facilities are permitted in Orem is the highway services (HS) zone, Earl said. Changes approved include "requiring a youth rehabilitation rehabilita-tion home to be at least 1,000 feet from any school, one-half mile from any other group home, and at least 200 feet away from any dwelling if the facility accepts residents who have committed any sex-related sex-related offense," according to background information on the agenda item. Also required will be a six-foot, six-foot, sight -obscuring fence around the rear and side yards. The number of residents of a home wil be limited to ten, and there must be at least eight off-street parking spaces for residents, visitors, and staff members. Education Continued from Page I friendly and willing to help if you need something." Now, the bilingual teenager is making a positive impact in her community, and was recently selected to be Utah's first-ever representative to a prestigious youth leadership summit in San Francisco. The Timpanogos High School senior will be one of only 30 students nationwide to attend the National Council for Community and Education Partnership Booz Allen Hamilton Hamil-ton Youth Leadership Summit July 21-25. Rivera was recommended for the honor by Sharon Bluth of Utah Valley State College, a counselor who works with her and other high school students through a federal program called Gaining Early Aware NorthCounty NIWSPAPIRS ' 399 E State Si Pleasant Grove Marc Haddock 443 3268 North County Editor mhaddock heraldextra.com Cathy Allred 443 3262 Lehi, Saratoga Springs, PL Grove callredheraldextra com Barbara Christiansen 443 -3264 American Fork, Alpine, Cedar Hills bchnstiansenhera!dextra com Mike Rigert 443 3265 Orem, Vineyard mngen heraldextra .com Beky Beaton 443 3267 Sports bbeaton 3i heraldextra com Josh Walker 443 3260 Advertising Account Executive jwalker heraldextra com Volume 134 Orem '(m Daily Heaj Edition UPt 411-700 a weeklv newspaper published ai 399 E State St Pleasant Grove ut 84063 Periodicals postage oeid at Pleasant Grove. Utah B4062 ana at additional mailing offices Poetmaeter: Seno address changes to Orem Tmes. P0 Box 66, Oem Utah 84059-0066 Published Thursdays Bv Lee Publications, winch is a division of Lee Enterprises inc Member: Audi Bureau of Circulations (am Facilities also must be located locat-ed on a parcel of land at least one-half acre in size, and no person over the age of 20 can be a resident in the facility. Anyone deemed to be a "direct "di-rect threat to other individuals" may not occupy the facility, and individualized assessments of each potential resident are required to make that determination. determi-nation. The owner of a facility must certify to the city that no resident will likely constitute a direct threat to others, and must provide documentation verifying compliance with the ordinance standards. Councilwoman Shiree Thurston Thur-ston asked Earl if there would be any difficulty with the federal government over the regulations. Earl said he was not aware of any federal law that would preclude the city ordinance. "(The residents) are not there because of disabilities, but because they are juvenile offenders," he said. "They do not get the protections of the Fair Housing Act." VINEYARD NOTES I Two teats up for election In Vineyard Vineyard will either gain two new members of the Town Council or reelect them for the next four years this month. Council members Sean Fernandez and Nathan Riley will end their terms as council members. Starting July 1, anyone can declare candidacy for these ness and Readiness for Undergraduate Under-graduate Programs (GEAR UP). The program is designed to help low-income youth succeed suc-ceed in post -high school education. educa-tion. "She's an outstanding student," stu-dent," Bluth said. "As part of the application she had to write an essay about how she would improve the education system." Rivera said she and the other delegates will be making presentations at the conference confer-ence on their points of view about educational systems and how to improve them. "They will be giving us time to speak to education directors, in the format of our choosing," she said. In her essay, Rivera advanced ad-vanced the idea that some educational edu-cational systems do not "challenge "chal-lenge students enough." In some systems she has been in, students have been pressured Phone: 756-7669 Fax: 756-5274 DAILY 8I11LD rUlLIIBIXO OO. 11 MA Jennette Esplin 756-7669 Office Manager Erin Stewart 344-2558 Project Coordinator, DesignerCopy Editor Julia Fullmer 344-2570 DesignerCopy Editor Jeremy Harmon 344-2585 Photographer Issue 78 INFORMED AND INDEPENDENCE DAY TRIFLE ' 1 iCv 1 --' -sir Mi 1 - a Vrf 45 V' otf?' Nancy Judd finishes a 4th of July Orem Macey's on June 27. Judd audience at Macey's. two positions. Neither Fernandez and Riley, Ri-ley, nor anyone else for that matter, have made any official announcements as to if they will run to be candidates for to go far beyond what they think are their limits, and the results have been impressive. In Honduras, she has friends who will have the equivalent of an associate's degree by the time they finish high school, because of the depth and variety vari-ety of the subjects they have studied, and, as a result, will be qualified for a number of jobs. "Higher education is a privilege privi-lege there," Rivera said of her homeland. "It's a privilege to say, 'I can go and study at the university.'" Rivera maintains a 3.8 GPA, works part-time at a fast food restaurant, and is very active in her church. She consistently consis-tently makes the honor roll, and has studied Japanese at Timpanogos High with teacher Greg Park. "I do like Japanese," Rivera said. "It's a change a totally different language from the ones I am used to." Hopping r he baby robin hopped out of our yard and out of our lives last week, flanked by nervous parents Watching the bird hatch J and grow has been an education. edu-cation. Robins first built a nest in our yard last year, in the top of a fairly tall maple tree we had planted the previous previ-ous autumn. And while the would-be parents kept a careful watch in our yard, as best we could tell, there were no chicks, and the adult birds abandoned aban-doned the empty nest. This spring, a robin's nest turned up in our flowering plum tree, much lower to the ground. We watched again as the mother and father robins rob-ins gathered the straw and grass and mud to make a temporary home where they could hatch their young. Then we kept a careful eye on the nest. We assumed there were eggs, because the mother robin took up residence. We would get a nervous glance from her when we peeked in from a reasonable distance, dis-tance, but she never abandoned her post. And the daddy robin kept a careful and concerned watch from our roof or a nearby tree. We were thrilled to have a nursery filled with baby -blue eggs, even if we never actually saw them. Mom was very careful and the nest was well hidden. Dad stayed near the nest as well, standing on our fence or the rooftop. We were quite excited when that pattern changed, and the parents started coming and going to the nest. One of the parent birds, a worm dangling from its beak, would fly into the tree to feed the baby birds, and the other would fly out, going in search of more worms. Apparently it takes teamwork to raise baby robins. The chicks, for their part, were very noisy, especially at feeding time. At least it sounded as if there was more than one chick in the nest and we thought we saw three tiny beaks sticking stick-ing straight up in the air, opening and closing, INVOLVED for youth homes T A - MARIO RUIZDaily Herald strawberry and blueberry trifle at the little theater in the prepared a recipe of ribs, potato salad and the trifle for an either of the two spots, said Dan Wright, town clerk for Vineyard. If Fernandez or Riley decides de-cides to run again, and they get reelected, they will stay Rivera is, of course, fluent in Spanish, but also in English. She said some people detect an unexpected accent in her English Eng-lish a legacy from her father, fa-ther, who was from Brooklyn, New York. Since moving to the United States, her language skills have allowed her to help Hispanic families at school by donating her time as a translator transla-tor for parents, and as a tutor for her peers. After high school graduation, gradua-tion, Rivera hopes to attend either ei-ther Brigham Young University Universi-ty or Utah Valley State College to study veterinary medicine, perhaps specializing in wildlife or exotic animals, then working work-ing at a preserve or zoo. "You can ask anybody who knows me," she said, smiling. "I'm crazy about animals." Maria Rivera is admittedly proud of her daughter, and also "humbled" that Jennifer Jenni-fer will be representing her around but there' Marc Haddock THE EDITOR'S COLUMN i i i 11 11 l in that seat for another four years. Potential candidates have until un-til July 16 at 5 p.m. to file at the Vineyard Town offices, 240 E. Gammon Road. community and state at the conference. The mother recalled re-called the time she took her then two-year-old toddler to a private school, where the director invited Jennifer to display her knowledge to the students. The youngster easily identified identi-fied all of the letters of the alphabet, al-phabet, plus all of the animals and colors posted about the room. "When she finished, the kids applauded," Mrs. Rivera remembered. Later, when Jennifer had spent just two weeks in a pre-kindergarten pre-kindergarten and was ready to be moved up, Mrs. Rivera was thrilled with a personality pro-tile pro-tile written by the school psychologist, psy-chologist, who said, "We feel that Jennifer has been highly stimulated from an early age by her parents." The statement has been treasured by the Riveras Riv-eras "a crown of glory to us," Maria said. demanding one more bite of partially chewed worm. But one day the mom and dad were gone from the nest, and standing stand-ing on the edge was a speckled breasted, tremendously homely robin chick just one clearly making some attempts to leave the nest. Mother and father were nearby, but they didn't try to get in the nest. If there were other chicks, we saw no more evidence of them, just this one bird. Each day it was noticeably larger and looked more like an adult robin. The growth was so startling it was hard to believe from day to day that it was the same bird. And then it was gone from the nest and hopping around the back yard. The mother and father -robins continued to attend to the smaller bird's needs, fbllowing it around the yard. We figured it was safe from predators in the back yard. We do get an occasional cat climbing climb-ing the fence, but we figured the parents could take care of that. Then last Friday morning 1 was watering the garden, and watched as the young, still flightless flight-less robin hopped along the fence and through the gate. Being in the front yard exposed the young robin to all kinds of dangers. The parent birds were still watching, but they were in way over their heads "out there." I ran around to the front and encouraged the bird to hop back through the gate to safety, but there was no stopping it now. By afternoon it was gone for good. I hope it is OK. I hope it has learned to fly. I hope the time invested by painstaking parents for the bird's well-being wasn't in vain. Raising kids is a bit like that, only more so. Parents do their best, but eventually the kids head out to fend for themselves. And as we have seen over the last few weeks, there are lots of dangers out there, waiting to claim young lives. You can only keep that intense, close watch for so long. But once the chick leaves the nest, sometimes hoping is the best you can do. UTOPIA Continued from Page 1 efforts," Black said. The pledge is to satisfy state law. "(Vineyard) sets aside money for a pledge," Black said. "We then set aside those finances we receive, based on the pledge, for one year to satisfy state law. There will be no draw on the money, and at the end of the period, we return the money to you with interest." If Vineyard chooses to pledge, the town will pledge one year of build out requirements. require-ments. UTOPIA'S fiber optic system is completely scalable. "We connect (houses) to the fiber optic system and in five or seven years, when they need additional speed, we only need to change the lasers at (that house)," Park said. UTOPIA wants Vineyard to join now before the city builds any new developments so installers can put the system sys-tem in without having to rip up any roads, Park said. UTOPIA is already in Orem, and Vineyard would use the exact same system. "All we would do is extend Orem's system down University Univer-sity Parkway through Sleepy Ridge," Park said. "It would be very inexpensive." UTOPIA currently offers of-fers the fiber optic service through five different service providers: AT&T, Mstar, Nuvont Communications, Veracity Ve-racity Communications, and XMission. "For instance, if you go with Mstar ... and choose the package with unlimited local and long distance in Canada and the United States, and 15 megabytes of Internet, it would be $109 per month," Park said. Right now, if a resident wanted fiber optic, and their house isn't appropriately wired, most service providers provid-ers will waive the fee to put the fiber optic in for a consecutive year agreement, such as a 2-year agreement. UTOPIA borrows funds to pay for the infrastructure and subscribers essentially pay UTOPIA that money. Roger Black said property values would increase by $5,000 simply by having the fiber optic option. Black said DSL and cable cannot grow and expand like the fiber optic system can. Communities on the East Coast have already redone their lines with fiber optic networks, he said. "Other cities are going to want to do this," John Park said. "The system does the same to serve 5,000 today and 50,000 in ten years." The Vineyard Town Council Coun-cil requested that UTOPIA do a cost assessment, and bring it to the next town meeting. Flag Continued from Page 1 partying and water-skiing. "I remember learning a lot (about patriotism) in school ... and I don't see it as much anymore," she said. With his military background, back-ground, Seth Greer says Independence In-dependence Day and similar holidays celebrating America Ameri-ca and its armed forces take on a whole new meaning. "I just feel a sense of pride, pride in myself and in the country," he said. The Greers said it is frightening fright-ening at times with their son Josiah serving in Iraq and seeing other servicemen returning home with injuries or in flag-draped coffins. "But that's how you learn what freedom is," Keith Greer said. "It's something that has to be paid for in blood, unfortunately, because that's how important it is." When his wife first shared her tribute idea, he initially thought flagpoles in front yards are only for older generations and not young families with kids. "I used to think that if there was a flagpole in a person's yard, an old man must live there. I always thought of the Greatest Generation if someone some-one had a flagpole," he said. Yet because of the what the flag symbolizes, he's happy to have the new fixture fix-ture on his front lawn and hope is sparks expressions of citizenship in others. "As I thought more and more, I thought That's the very least we could do for my son Josiah and others who have served," Keith Greer said. "I'm so graceful for these men and women who truly gave everything and continue to give everything." |