OCR Text |
Show Thursday, October 11, 2007 0 R E M TIMES Page 3 NEWS AND NOTES TO KEEP YOU INFORMED AND City Council grants parking and Reva Bowen NORTH COUNTY STAFF "Special exception" multi-family multi-family dwellings in Orem were granted changes in parking and driveway standards by the City Council Tuesday. The "special exception" designation des-ignation applies to lots that are surrounded by four-plexes and duplexes, and are consequently allowed to have multi-family housing if a number of criteria are met, and approval is given by the Board of Adjustment. Seven of the "special exception" excep-tion" multi-family dwellings have been approved since 2002, said Stan Sainsbury, Development De-velopment Services director, but not all of those have actually actual-ly been built. He estimated that the city would have "maybe 10 more lots" where the exception could also apply. The units cannot be "stacked," or placed on top of each other. Density is determined deter-mined by the size of the parcel two units if the parcel is between be-tween 8,000 and 10,000 square feet; three units for 10,000 -12,000 square feet; and four units for 12,000 - 20,000 square feet. Parcels less than 8,000 or more than 20,000 square feet do not qualify for the exception. Each unit is required to have 2.5 off-street parking spaces, which are not to be constructed in the front or rear setbacks. The council approved a change that will allow one driveway parking space to be counted toward the standard Construction Continued from Page 1 woes related to the road reconstruction recon-struction are keeping shoppers away. Park said business owners own-ers have been dealt a double whammy after first coping with State Street construction and now enduring a long 800 North project. Merchants say they have been further thwarted thwart-ed by electronic marquee signs instructing motorists to use detour routes. "We spend hundreds of thousands thou-sands of dollars to get a pattern pat-tern where people (come here to shop) and we tell them to go somewhere else," he said. "We create a buying pattern and we just don't get them back" when customers change their pattern. Park said revenues this year at his outdoor clothing and NorthCounty NEWSPAPERS 399 E. State St. Pleasant Grove Marc Haddock 443 -3268 North County Editor mhaddockheraldextra.com Cathy Allred 443-3262 Lehi, Saratoga Springs, PI. Grove callredheraldextra.com i Barbara Christiansen 443-3264 American Fork, Alpine, Cedar Hills bchristiansenrferaldextra.com Mike Rigert 443 -3265 Orem, Vineyard mrigertheraldextra.com Beky Beaton 443-3267 Sports bbeatonheraldextra.com Josh Walker 443 3260 Advertising Account Executive jwalkerheraldextra.com Volume 134 Orem Times Doily Herald Edition, USPS 411-700, a weekly newspaper published at 399 E. State St., Pleasant Grove, Utah 84063 Periodicals postage paid at Pleasant Grove, Utal 84062 and at additional mailing offices.' Potmatr: Send address changes to Orem Times, P 0 Box 65, Oram, Utah 84059-0065. Published Thursdays by Lee Publications, which is a division of Lee Enterprises. Inc. Member: Audit Bureau of Circulations Construction on the west side of customers. if the driveway leads to a two-car two-car garage. Sainsbury said the change will "encourage two-car garages" ga-rages" and consequently may reduce density. A 30 percent requirement for landscaping landscap-ing remains in place, and the change may improve on-street parking, he said, by creating more parking spots per unit. The council also OK'd a equipment store are down 20 to 30 percent and he's also been hit with major increases for his employee medical plans. "I can't tell you how many loyal customers have said 'Randy, there's no way in heck we're coming down here,' " he said. Though they're not directly on 800 North, Park and other businesses, including John Chatterton, manager of Electrical Elec-trical Wholesale Supply, have said the traffic interruptions are enough that customers from around the valley are avoiding their State Street businesses and shopping elsewhere. else-where. Some clients have told Chatterton it takes 45 minutes to get off the freeway, purchase pur-chase a $10 part, and get back to Interstate 15. "The project has made our business hard to get into, as well as decreased our overall sales and profit," Chatterton Phone: 756-7669 Fax: 756-5274 DAILY HERALD PUBLISHING CO. Jennette Esplin 756 -7669 Office Manager Julia Fullmer 344-2570 Project Coordinator, DesignerCopy Editor Megan Carleton 344-2570 DesignerCopy Editor Ashley Franscell 344 2585 Photographer Issue 91 t 800 North progresses on Tuesday change that will allow separate driveways for each unit in the special exception multi-family housing, if a transportation study is done by a "qualified engineer" and it is determined that there will be "little or no negative effect" by increasing the number of driveways up to four maximum. The city's transportation engineer must also approve the study. said in a letter to UDOT and project contractors. UDOT representatives and project contractors responded that unfortunately the massive reconstruction project was bid out before these concerns were expressed. Because of the complex logistics involved in balancing road reconstruction work with utility companies' installation of gas lines, water conduits, and municipal water and sewer pipes, roads and intersections periodically have had to be torn up and repaved at various stages, they said. Stages of the project have also had to work around weather conditions and irrigation canal flow seasons. Phil Huff, UDOT's project coordinator 800 North, said though the work is currently on schedule, utilities installation installa-tion has caused unforeseen delays and put the pressure on project general contractor Free schooling for all monument in American ill Frk'sR obinson Park stands tribute to one of I 1 the city's early claims to i fame. U U It was here that Utah's first publicly supported, free school was opened in 1868. George F. Shelley recounts the event in his "Early History of American Ameri-can Fork." I'm going to retell part of that story here, mainly because it is interesting, especially in light of the current debate over school vouchers. The proposed vouchers allow parents to receive publicly -funded scholarships to help pay their child's tuition in a private school. In those early days, all schools were private schools supported by tuition paid by the student's parents, sometimes with money, sometimes with produce, sometimes some-times even with firewood. In Utah's earliest schools teachers were hired and schools were maintained by the bishopric of the LDS ward. So was everything else in the town. But after a few years, those responsibilities were passed along to a three-person board of trustees who would hire the teachers, collect tuition tu-ition and see that the schools were maintained. Shelley tells us that about the worst thing that could happen to a student would be to be sent to the trustees. Leonard E. Harrington was largely responsibly responsi-bly for seeing that change, not only for American Ameri-can Fork but for the rest of Utah as well. Harrington was American Fork's first bishop and its first mayor, jobs he held continuously continu-ously for 29 years. He was also the first postmaster post-master and its first justice of the peace. It should come as no surprise, then, that he was also the first man from American Fork to be elected to the Utah House of Representatives Representa-tives in 1852. This was fairly common in the small communities commu-nities of Utah in the 1850s, by the way. Harrington was a firm believer in free edu-catioa edu-catioa Shelley tells us that in 1867 he and Lorin Farr of Ogden were instrumental in passing a bill in the Territorial Legislature giving a community com-munity the right to establish taxsupported free schools, by a majority vote of its taxpayers. Shelley recounts what happened next: INVOLVED driveway exceptions MICHAEL RIGERTNorth County though some merchants say traffic issues are driving away BRIEFINGS Correction A story on page 4 of last week's Pleasant Grove Review headlined "Farms turn into mazes for fall entertainment" contained some incorrect information. infor-mation. The article should have said that this year's Hee Haw Farms' maze was designed by Kelly McDonald, a teacher at Condie Construction. "We haven't given (Condie) any more time," Huff said. "It's just put him in a hole to start with ... (and) put him behind schedule. Park and former Orem business busi-ness owner and City Council candidate Brent Sumner, who helped arrange the meeting, asked if a combination of more funding and extended day or 247 work schedules might speed up the process. Huff and others said with only a two week paving window win-dow left this fall, more money, if it can even be acquired, might only have an impact in the spring. "That's something that would have to be negotiated with Condie's work crews and schedules ... ," Huff said. "There's lot of work going on in this state." Though the question of if major adjustments to the Marc Haddock THE EDITOR'S COLUMN in Greenwood Elementary. Brett Herbst formerly designed some of Hee Haw Farms mazes but is no longer affiliated affili-ated with the farm. The farm's famous pig, Leroy weighs in at 1,200 pounds. And Kyle and Chalise Smith own Hee Haw Farms. the business, and a small portion of the land, the rest is owned by several members mem-bers of the Smith family. project can be made to assist businesses owners remains to be answered, Huff said UDOT representatives and contractors contrac-tors met after Thursday's meeting and did agree to some concessions. They agreed to make signal light and electronic electron-ic marquee changes, and work with Condie officials when the contractor starts work on State Street "to get his schedules sched-ules moved up." In the coming weeks, contractors con-tractors will be finishing pavement pave-ment operations on the north side of 800 North prior to moving mov-ing traffic over to that side. Work will then commence on the south side of 800 North, turning out pavement and installing sewer and water for Orem city. Project updates and background back-ground can be found online at www.udot.utah.govorem-800north. www.udot.utah.govorem-800north. students "Soon after the passage of this law, the taxpayers of American Fork were called together for the purpose of putting into effect its provisions. The free school idea was discussed pro and con and some were very pronounced against it; one man, with considerable property but without children, emphatically declaring that he was not going to educate other people's youngsters. The meeting broke up in confusion. "A little later, another meeting was called, at which Bishop Harrington Har-rington was chairman. Again the proposition of a free school to be maintained by taxation was discussed, dis-cussed, and apparently was received more favorably. A vote was called for, and those in favor were lined up on one side of the meeting house and those opposed op-posed on the opposite side. When a count was made, it was found that the vote was a tie, and the chairman's vote decided the issue in favor on a free school." By 1868, Utah had its first tax-maintained free school, in American Fork. In less than a decade, the town had four schools, three of them running for 1 1 months a year, another closing in May because "many of the larger scholars had to leave school to go to work in the summer, one of the schools closed on the first day of May." In the intervening 130 years, Utahns must have been mostly satisfied with their public schools, since now only three percent of the state's residents choose to send their children to private schools. In some states as many as 15 percent of the student are enrolled in private pri-vate schools. But apparently many of them aren't satisfied any more, and among those who aren't satisfied are a majority of the state's lawmakers and the governor. Hence the decision to subsidize Utah's private schools with public funds. There's a lot of rhetoric surrounding the voucher initiative on the Nov. 6 election, both for and against the initiative. But I suspect when the votes are counted, all the arguments for and against won't matter much. Most residents see this as a test of public confidence con-fidence in our tax-supported free public schools. They've come a long way since 18(58. Disorder Continued from Page I profusely for nine months. Extremely anemic and weak, McDougal was hospitalized hospital-ized and missed most of her eighth grade year of school. It wasn't until after treatments began working and her red blood cell count was increased in-creased did she feel fully back up to speed by l()th grade. "Dancing was my life ... I was used to dancing five hours a day and so not being be-ing able to walk around the kitchen was pretty devastating," devastat-ing," she said. But the bright and talented girl bounced back from her ordeal, took up the cello and harp, won last year's Orem Junior Miss Scholarship program, and is currently carrying 18 credits at BYU as a declared pre-business management major. She performs in the university's harp ensemble and was just called to serve as her LDS student ward's relief society president. McDougal secured thousands thou-sands of dollars in college scholarships, including those from the Utah I lemophilia and National 1 lemophilia Foundations. She's been heavily involved with the Utah Hemophilia Foundation and later, the National Na-tional I lemophilia Foundation, since her diagnosis five years ago. She currently serves as a teen representative on the Utah's foundation's board of directors and as a member of NHF's National Youth Leadership Lead-ership Institute. McDougal frequently speaks to groups about her story and for several sev-eral years has been a guest lecturer at a upper-level BYU health course for pre-med students. stu-dents. She really enjoys volunteering vol-unteering as camp counselor at a UHF camp for children with bleeding disorders. More and more, McDougal said, the word about VWD and other bleeding disorders is getting out. She said there's even been freeway billboards in Salt Lake City alerting people to the problem. Rodgers said individuals who believe they may have symptoms should consult their physician or obstetriciangynecologist obstetri-ciangynecologist and ask that they be tested for VWD. "I'm happy and living an active life and I'm really passionate about spreading awareness (about VWD)," McDougal said. "If they think they have warning signs, go get a test because it could save their lives." For more information about von Willebrand's Disease, Dis-ease, go online to www.hemo-philia.org, www.hemo-philia.org, www.projectred-flag.com, www.projectred-flag.com, or WebMD.com. Ordinance Continued from Page I tempt to reduce them. City attorney Paul Johnson said the council mast have "pretty good land use criteria" in order or-der to deny a conditional use permit. Mayor Washburn said the current ordinance seems to have worked, because there have not been "objectionable applications of flagpoles." Sainsbury was asked during the discussion if the city has had complaints about flagpole height, and he said he could not remember any. "We have eliminated conditional uses wherever practical. I don't see the real problem here either in the past, or, I don't see a future problem," said Washburn. But Councilwoman Karen McCandless expressed concern con-cern about the perception citizens citi-zens have that if they object to a conditional use permit, the permit can be denied. "State law says we can say no," she said, "but the standard stan-dard is pretty high." "I'm fine with this as it is," said Councilman Dean Dick-erson. Dick-erson. "My opinion would be, let's leave it the way it is. Let's be patriotic and fly the flag." McCandless objected to having the American flag turned into "an advertising tool", and noted that, "A 120-foot 120-foot flagpole is not more patriotic pa-triotic than a 30-foot (pole)." "I don't think we're ever doing anything wrong when we take citizens' input as their elected voice," said Dickerson. "I want people to understand under-stand I'm not taking away anyone's voice," said McCandless. Mc-Candless. "I'm not trying to muzzle the public... I am afraid of getting citizens' hopes up, then having them dashed because of what state law says." |