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Show Page 2 OREM TIMES Thursday, June 12, 2008 NEWS AND NOTES TO KEEP YOU INFORMED AND INVOLVED Orem approves $85.4 million 08- 09 budget Reva Bowen fJOPTM r r)ru STAFF Orem approved an $85.4 million mil-lion 2W8-09 budget Tuesday a budget termed "status quo" and "conservative" by city manager Jim Reams due to a downturn in the economy. When the tentative budget was presented to the Orem City Council in April, Reams had said sales taxes to the city, which constitute one-third of General Fund revenues, had leveled off or slightly declined over the previous six months. One of the budget highlights for the coming year is the planned construction of Fire Station 4. at a cost of $1.8 million. mil-lion. The new station will be located west of Interstate 15 at about 1300 South and 1500 West in the Orem Business I'ark. Reams said the design work is being done now, construction construc-tion will take place during the next fiscal year, and the station will be staffed in the 2009-2010 fiscal year. lie pointed out that the funding fund-ing for the new fire station is being drawn from several sources: $1,033,000 from General Gen-eral Fund surpluses; $400,000 from land sales; $207,000 from Capital Improvements Plan surplus; and $100,000 from the city's cell tower lease revenues. rev-enues. No new employees were recommended rec-ommended in the budget from the General Fund, but a fleet maintenance mechanic position that has been open since the employee retired in 2002 will be filled. All of the city divisions divi-sions that use vehicles will pay for the position on a pro-rated basis. Beetle Continued from Page 1 West, 570 North, and 1200 West. Because of the reduced treatment treat-ment area size (approximately 2(57 acres) Lewis said the price tag for the state-funded treatments treat-ments at $250,000 is half as much as last year. On Friday, Trugreen Chem-Lawn Chem-Lawn crews will begin a new series of pesticide sprayings with the treatment boundaries at the Orem Community Hospital Hos-pital and Geneva and Suncrest elementary schools, he said. Treatment of residential areas is scheduled for June 23 to July 3, moving from the south end of the treatment zone to the 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 Barbara Christiansen 443 3264 American Fork, Alpine, Cedar Hills bchristiansenheraldextra.com Mike Rigert 443 3265 Orem, Vineyard mrigert heraldextra .com Beky Beaton 443 3267 Sports bbeatonheraldextra.com Josh Walker 443-3260 Advertising Account Executive jwalkerheraldextra.com Volume 135 Orem Times Daily Herald Editmn. USPS 411-700. a week ly newspaper published at 399 E Slate St.. Pleasant Grove. Utah 84063 Periodicals postage paid at Pleasant Grove. Utah 84062 and at additional mailing offices. Poatmntar: Send address changes to Orem Times. PO Box 65. Orem. Utah 84069-0065. Published Thursdays by Lee Pubteations, which is a diwsior jfLee Enterprises. Inc Mambar: Audit Bureau o Circulations An engineering specialist will also be hired with money from the water reclamation fund. The employee is needed to increase the efficiency of the water treatment plant, according ac-cording to a staff report, and, among other duties, wiU help enter and organize data. Orem residents will see small increases in water, sewer, and storm water fees when the new fiscal year begins July 1. There will be a rate increase of 25 cents per month for the standard three-quarters inch residential meter, and proportionate propor-tionate increases for all other meter sizes. There will also be an increase of two cents per 1,000 gallons of water used, from 55 to 57 cents. For an average av-erage household using 28,000 gallons of water per month, the increase would translate to an extra 50 cents. The water rate increases help to pay for an annual $75,000 increase in the city's assessment for Jordanelle Reservoir Res-ervoir water. Sewer fees will see a rate increase of four cents from $1.31 to 1.35 per 1,000 gallons. An average household uses 13,000 gallons, for a monthly increase of 52 cents. The monthly connection fee remains re-mains at $7.07. Storm sewer fees increase 25 cents per month, from $4,50 per FSU (equivalent service unit) to $4.75 per ESU per month. A residence is considered consid-ered one unit, while parking lots, churches and schools have higher ESUs. There are no changes in the solid waste collections fees. Reams said that the city has seen good savings in this area because of its green waste and north end. "The start date for residents will not all be on the same day," said state Plant Industry division director Clair Allen. "... Residents can expect a visit any time between June 23 and July 3." Open houses about this year's round of treatments were held in February. All residents will be notified of the sprayings in advance, Lewis said. "We will go door-to-door making personal contact or leaving door hangers to let them know 72 hours ahead of time," he said. Treatments will include a single ground spraying and one to two foliar treatments again in July for problem areas Phone:756-7669 Fax:756-5274 DAILY HERALD PUBLISHING CO. mm: Jennette Esplin 756 7669 Office Manager Julia Fullmer 344 2570 Project Coordinator, DesignerCopy Editor Allison Davies 344 2570 DesignerCopy Editor Ashley Franscell 344 2585 Photographer Issue 24 '"lilies FEED THE CHILDREN MARIO RUIZDaily Herald Stephanie O'Neill of Orem loads boxes of food and supplies from Feed the Children onto a Wasatch Mental Health trailer at an LDS meetinghouse parking lot in Provo, Friday, June 6, 2008. Teleperformance GroupAmericall Group employees and their families volunteered to load 16,000pounds of food and personal care items for 400 families in Utah County. recycling programs. The city managed to carve out $320,000 to pay for two traffic signals to be installed on 800 East one at 1200 North and one at 400 North, and $25,000 to go to more holiday lighting. Mayor Jerry Washburn said that the community "gets a strong bang for our buck" with a high level of quality of service combined with frugality. frugal-ity. "So many cities look to Orem to see how it is done," he said. Acting in its roles as the governing gov-erning board of the Redevelopment Redevelop-ment Agency (RDA), Municipal and as needed. Gardening will be allowed in treatment areas this summer because the state will be using a pesticide called Carbaryl, which is approved for use on food items with some limitations. limita-tions. But Lewis said those who harvest and consume produce in the infestation area, should still follow basic guidelines" that provide anywhere from a 3 to 4 day to two week waiting period pe-riod for the pesticides to decay. A specific list of wa"it times on specific produce is available avail-able online at http:ag.utah. govpressrel JBInfoPage.html or by calling USU Extension at 851-8463. , A state Declaration of Insect Emergency issued May, 17, 2007, remains in effect with A twister , efore last weekend, ev-I ev-I j 1 erything 1 knew about ' tornados I learned from fYN watching "Twister" and I "The Wizard of Oz." i mtS So when we came to Omaha, Neb., to visit my son, Seth, I was intrigued by the television "crawl" for local stations that read: "Tornado Watch" and "Tornado Warning." "Tornados never touch down in Omaha," Seth said. "They haven't had one here in over 30 years. But they are really interested in the weather here. If the wind starts to blow, they'll spend a whole newscast talking about it. The tornado watch doesn't mean much, but the tornado warning means there is a tornado and you're supposed to go to a shelter like the one in our apartment building. But you don't really need to worry." He and Jessica had moved to Omaha in January. They live in a nice-but-small two-bedroom apartment with two dogs and no family for hundreds of miles. My wife, Sharon, and I had never been to Nebraska, and it seemed like a good time to visit. We've had a great time. We spend Friday at the Winter Quarters area and in Council Bluffs, where Sharon connected with her ancestors who were part of the Mormon Battalion. Bat-talion. Then we spent most of a hot and humid Saturday at the Henry Doorly Zoo, which is about the only thing to do in Omaha. After dinner and a rousing game of Catan, Sharon and I settled down in our hotel room to rest from a long day of hard walking. About 2:30 a.m. I was awakened by the telephone only to find Sharon standing on our balcony surrounded by rain and lightning. "This is the front desk. Those sirens you have been hearing are a tornado warning, and we are inviting you to come down and wait in our workout room until the warning is over, if you want." If I want? Well, she explained, there probably wasn't any danger and we could also hole up in the bathroom of our room, if we wanted. OK, I said. Thanks. I told Sharon about the call, and she asked Building Authority (MBA), and Special Service Lighting District, the City Council also approved budgets of $2,815,000, $1,428,304, and $1,435,000, respectively, for those agencies. agen-cies. The Special Service Lighting Light-ing District budget includes $262,439 to complete the remaining re-maining lights in city parks. Council looks at design concepts for a new Orem City Center campus New additions, addi-tions, a new parking structure, or perhaps a whole new civic building were among the ideas presented to the Orem City Council Tuesday as Ken Pol the state's goal being complete eradication, not simply control of the beetles, as states with heavier infestations have done, Lewis said. An all-in-one 2008 Japanese Beetle Eradication Program informational in-formational guide was mailed to effected Orem residents in February. Also available at www.orem.org by clicking on the Japanese beetle photo in the center, the pamphlet contains details on the eradication eradica-tion program, maps of treatment treat-ment areas, specifics on the pesticides used, and Web site and contact numbers for more information. As last year, residents in the infestation area will need to bag green waste this summer, sum-mer, and sod, soil and root of a tale from Omaha I ill Marc Haddock THE EDITOR'S COLUMN lard of the architectural firm Pollard & Associates outlined options for the City Center block. Options Pollard presented include transferring the legal department (which is loosing the lease on its current space) to a retrofitted multi-purpose room, moving it to the development develop-ment services offices with minor mi-nor modifications, or building an addition to the Public Safety building. Aligning Public Safety and the legal department may be a preferred alternative because of the security issues that create cre-ate an affinity between the two departments. One plan showed an addition connecting the Public Safety building with the City Center, which, along with providing legal department offices, of-fices, could bring IT services and equipment out of the City Center basement, and allow development services more space. Pollard floated the idea of a $3.2 to $3.5 million three-level parking structure to be built in the center of the block, east of the court building. The structure struc-ture would eliminate about 90 parking stalls but would provide 385, for a net gain of almost 300. A new civic building build-ing would carry a price tag of $ 18 to $20 million and would be "a big leap," Pollard said, impacting the ball fields and everything else on the block. The additionsremodelings carried car-ried estimated costs ranging from $5.5 million to $7 million plus the price of the parking structure. The City Council will hold a work session on the issue July 8 at 4 p.m. at the City Center. balls year round, to prevent the spread of beetles outside of the infestation area, said Orem assistant city manager Richard Manning. Residents are also asked not to aerate or power rake their lawns within the treatment zone. State officials are asking residents who plant gardens to create a 5-foot barrier (such as mulch) between lawns and gardens to minimize beetle migrations. Lewis said the state is still anticipating a three-year eradication eradi-cation program in Orem. "We've had excellent cooperation coop-eration with people there," he said. "They understand what's at stake and are doing their part." if I hadn't heard the warning sirens, which sounded like the air raid sirens si-rens from a World War II movie. I am a very sound sleeper, and was unaware that the world was blowing all around us. Just then another siren sounded. I stepped to the window and saw a lot of rain falling. The streets were full of water. wa-ter. The trees were whipping in the wind. I looked to our left and saw the most frightening sight of the evening eve-ning a very large man, his gray hair still tousled from sleep, in a pair of short blue shorts and nothing noth-ing else. He, too, had come out on the balcony to see this wonder of nature. At least I'd had the presence of mind to put some clothes on. After several minutes admiring the lightning light-ning and the wind, Sharon and I, journalistic skeptics that we are, meandered to the main floor only to find that the tornado warning had been cancelled. The security officer who met us said the worst appeared to be over. "Don't worry, the only ones who would be in danger would be those on the fifth and sixth floors," he said. (Our room was 501.) "Go ahead and go back to bed," he added, "But be aware there is more severe weather coming." The excitement over, we went back to sleep. In the morning the sky was gray, but the wind had died down. But broken branches littered the streets. When we drove to the nearby church for services, we passed several downed trees. One of them looked like it had exploded, scattering splinters from heck to breakfast. There was a shattered tree in front of the church as well, and one of the three men there told us the storm had knocked out power to part of the building so the meetings had been cancelled. We later learned that for the first time in 33 years, a Category 2 tornado had indeed touched down in Omaha the night before. The television stations spent whole newscasts talking about it. We were just lucky it hadnt touched down on us. Next time we'll worry a little more. Bus Continued from Page 1 public workshop at the University Uni-versity Mall on the options, according to a report distributed distrib-uted at Tuesday's meeting, and 99 residents attended an open house held immediately after the workshop. A majority ma-jority of the attendees were from Orem, and of 86 written writ-ten comments received, 72 expressed a preference for the center-running option on University Parkway. In a straw poll conducted during the open house, all present voted for the center-running center-running BRT on University Parkway. No one voted for the other two route options and those present expressed strong opposition to the 1200 South alternative, according to Eccles's report. At Tuesday's meeting, Marie Arnold, Westmore Elementary El-ementary School PTA president, presi-dent, said she is not opposed to the BRT system, but is opposed to having it on 1200 South, where children cross the street to go to the school. The Southwest Alliance, a neighborhood preservation group of residents in that quadrant of the city, has also expressed opposition to the 1200 South route alternative. Bill Knowles, a consultant hired by UTA to check on' the concerns of the business community, said he was "pleasantly surprised" to find that most of the owners and managers he contacted from each type of business along the corridor were "very positive" about locating the system along University Parkway. Knowles said all but one of the business representatives favored having the BRT because be-cause they felt it would provide pro-vide transportation for their employees and customers, and would create visibility for their businesses. Two of three automotive dealerships surveyed were "very positive," posi-tive," he said. Charles Allen, a local resident resi-dent and transportation engineering engi-neering student, said that he looks at cheaper cost, faster travel times, and easy connections con-nections to other modes of transportation for the system to be successful. "If you take the 'rapid' out, you have bus transit, and that's what we have already," al-ready," he said. The project, officially dubbed Provo-Orem Rapid Transit, is currently in the environmental impact statement state-ment (EIS) phase of the study to assess transportation and environmental impacts for a Draft EIS to be completed at the end of the year, according accord-ing to the project overview at www.rideuta.comproj-ectsprovoOremBRTdefault. www.rideuta.comproj-ectsprovoOremBRTdefault. aspx. A final EIS will then be presented in 2009 for consideration consid-eration of program approval and funding. Guard Continued from Page 1 officers in the 141st and providing continual support to the family members of deployed soldiers. Roughly one-third of the 141st is currently cur-rently deployed or has been deployed overseas during the past two years, he said. Another of his responsibilities, responsibili-ties, will be overseeing the unit's structural change from four human intelligence companies to two human intelligence and two signals intelligences companies. During Hadfield's command, com-mand, he and many in 141st were deployed to Iraq between be-tween 2006 and 2007 with a mission to provide intelligence support to the Joint Interrogation Interroga-tion and Debriefing Center in Baghdad. They returned to Utah in October of 2007. Garrett also served in support sup-port of Operation Iraqi Freedom Free-dom between 2003-2004 as a theater linguist operations officer of-ficer at the Coalition Forces Land Component Command. He said the 141st isnt expecting expect-ing any large-scale deployments deploy-ments over the next year. Brig. Gen. Jefferson Burton of the Utah Army National Guard thanked both men for their leadership and willingness to serve. He told members of the unit that their role in providing linguistics support on behalf of Army military intelligence in recent deployments was critical. "What you do saves lives and it takes great commitment," commit-ment," he said. Lt. Col. Garrett and his wife have four children and two grandchildren. |