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Show Citizen - Wednesday, April 3, 1991 - Page 2 Editorial Election flaws outweigh center's advantages Next week, Utah County's residents resi-dents will be asked to make a $7.7 million decision based on about two bits worth of information. The manner in which Tuesday's bond election for a special events center at Utah Valley Community College has been handled is not fair to the voters. And without adequate time to examine the ramifications of the proposed general obligation bond, local voters ought to reject the proposition. propo-sition. The 8,500-seat events center may be a needed item in Utah County, which has a definite lack of large meeting facilities outside of the Brigham Young University campus. And the fact that the Utah County C mmission plans to repay the 20-year 20-year general obligation bond with a 1 ,-iercent tax on restaurant food sales (.u t to relieve concerns about increased in-creased property taxation. However, it seems odd to finance the events center by charging people who eat out (students, business people, etc.) rather than financing the center by charging the people who will use it. The project has the support of Governor Norman Bangerter. Most of jr local city councils have fallen short of endorsing the bond election, but they have endorsed the idea of letting us vote on the proposal. The large question looming over this election is why rush for a ballot. The justification for all the hurry to take this issue to vote is that UVCC, which is planning to build a $10 million physical education building build-ing with or without the events center, cen-ter, needs to know by July 1 what kind of facility the college should design. Cliff just missed chance on 99th birthday article A few days ago a lady called me on the telephone. She was a relative of Cliff Austin. She informed me that Cliff was in a rest home in American Fork and wanted to see me. He would be 99 on the 28th and wanted a little write up in our local newspaper. A few days ago I visited Cliff at the rest home. I could see the ravages of old age but he was bright and talkative. He introduced me to an attendant and told her how I would get mad at him when he beat me at bowling. I have known Cliff for many years. In fact I was the one who hired him at Geneva Steel. He accepted a position as custodian of the blast furnace change room. He was ideally suited for this job. He had a friendly personality and got along well with the men who used the change room. However, he would not take any guff from anyone. There was one instance I remember. A small group of men were eating their lunch in the change room. One of them threw a banana peeling on the floor. Cliff walked over and told him to pick it up and put it in the garbage can. "What if I don't," said the man. Cliffhad ' is mop that was still dripping water. "Ill let you have one with this mop," said fiiff. The man picked the peeling up and put it in the container. The next day the man came into my office and complained about Cliff. "I understand," he said, "that the custodian's custo-dian's job is to keep the change room clean." As I looked at his ignoramus I actually wished that Cliffhad given him a good one with the mop. Instead, I explained to him that the job of the custodian was to keep the change Who has the Burroughs Wellcome Co. will give you $100,000 if you can finger the person who olluted its Sudafed with cyanide. Much is at stake in this nefarious t mpering with medicinal products. The pill maker is being sued for "negligence" "negli-gence" by the spouse of a dead victim. Since the Tylenol tragedy of 1982, which cost the lives of seven Chicagoans and has never been solved, all over-the-counter medicines have been required to include two tamper-resistant features in each product. Obviously, that's not enough. Maybe you have an idea. Every health product poisoning since 1982 has involved a capsule, a two-part dissolvable gelatin container that can be separated. Johnson and Johnson, which makes Tylenol, and Bristol-Myers Squibb, which A June election could provide that information in plenty of time, if a special election is really necessary to resolve the question. Then the merits mer-its of the center could be considered, and questions about scheduling and availability of the new center could be resolved. As it is, the center is being pitched with high-pressure salesmanship. In addition to the hasty election, the county has been less willing than usual to inform voters about the election. In general elections, county officials are conscientious enough to see that voting information - registration regis-tration dates, polling places, etc. -are printed in all of the county's daily and weekly newspapers. With this election, polling information infor-mation has been printed only in The Daily Herald, the newpaper of record. rec-ord. This limited publication meets legal requirements, but it doesn't meet the needs of the county residents resi-dents who don't live on Orem or Provo and don't subscribe to the IVovo newspaper. In the end, the short preparation time, the special election date and limited publication of election information infor-mation all seem designed to keep voters home - especially the voters least likely to vote for the center. It is a move which favors this kind of election at the expense of the county voters. That means people who oppose the center or the method in which it has been presented need to turn out Tuesday, so that the will of a few will not determine a $7.7 million matter. The proposed events center may be a good project - but this is not a good election. Not good at all. browsing room clean. This would be impossible if all the users of the change room threw their garbage on the floor. "We are fortunate to have someone like Cliff who takes an interest in the change room. The man gave me a dirty look and said, "I reckon I will have to take it up with the Union." He must have thought it over, for I heard no more about it. Cliff was physically strong, yet he was gentle. He was also artistic. He enjoyed making objects of local scenes and giving them to his friends. 1 am grateful 1 was one of the recipients of one of these choice gifts. When he was in his eighties he joined with the senior citizens in their bowling league. I can't say he was a good bowler, what 80-year-old man is? Yet he had a lot of fun. Cliff didn't quite make it to 99. but 98 is a good age, especially when you make so many friends. Well, Cliff, in the eternal plan of things, you will be there making it a bit of heaven. ftl By TOM GRIFFITHS B key to eliminating consumer Paid Harvey News 1991 Los Angeles Times Syndicate makes Excedrin, have stopped using capsules, selling their products only as hardened tablets or one-piece gelatin capsules that cannot be separated. One cyanide poisoning case in Seattle involved Extra-strength Excedrin. In that case, a woman was found guilty and sen Laidlaw finds We got our garbage schedule in the mail yesterday, and frankly, I'm impressed. Someone went to a lot of work with colors and numbers and all to let us know-when know-when our garbage is going to be picked up from now on. All we have to do is hang onto this handy little calendar, which everyone will keep close at hand, so we can figure out which days to take out our garbage. This new system takes all the guesswork guess-work out of garbage pickup. Before, if there was a holiday in the recent past, you never knew when they were going to pick up the trash. And I've spent more than one morning running across the street in my bathrobe with a trash can in hand so the garbage men could empty the cans on their return visit, since they had just passed our side of the street. I guess I need to add a little explanation for those of you who aren't blessed with Laidlaw as your trash collection agency. I guess holidays are a problem for garbage gar-bage collection. Because while the collectors take a day off, the garbage just keeps accumulating. And it's got to be picked up sooner or later. Before, when there was a holiday on Monday, you just took it for granted that the trash would be collected a day late that week. Despite that, many of us put our trash out on the usual day, just in case. There is nothing less welcome around the house than the remains of a week-old chicken dinner, for example, and we wanted to make certain it didn't linger any longer. I know how this works from experience. I took last Friday off and when I got back there was twice as much mail piled on my Reporters don't work for bylines A few issues have been clogging the editorial pages lately. I've tried to avoid hashing the issues more, but at the risk of belaboring the points, I'm going to put my two cents worth in on just one aspect of each of these things that I think has been somewhat overlooked. If Mayor Hewlett of Highland thinks journalists are into reporting for the money, he should check into a career day at a high school. The starting salary for reporters is so low, it's below that of teachers. (Now that's really low.) Besides, Highland City is the only city around that doesn't pay their officials something. Even the menial monthly stipend sti-pend the Alpine officials get is more than my average monthly pay. All I can say is, no reporter I know reports because it's the best-paying job he (or she) can get. ' fused to think the ACLU was mildly, annoying, but they are quickly losing the 'mildly' qualifier in my book. They have a definite agenda, which is not what I have a problem with. Different people having differing strong opinions on the same subjects is how we try to keep our society balanced. But the ACLU members try to pass themselves off as defenders of the constitution and of civil rights in general, which is not an accurate portrayal. They're interested only in a few specific issues. However, such theatrics as they pulled off with their New York times ad show they're not big into accuracy. I wonder if Michelle Pixler-Parish (of the Utah chapter of the ACLU) has positive things in her life. I hope so. The whole ot her professional life is spent criticizing other people and defending her own organization. organiza-tion. Criticizing is something she does proficiently. profi-ciently. Defending is something she has to do often. Speakingof extremes, all this talk about President Bush's "New World Order" in- Letter to the editor Bond election rushed Editor: A special election on Tuesday, April 9, will determine the fate of this next tax proposal. This does not provide significant time to properly evaluate all potential implications of the project and communicate them to the voters for their consideration. Special elections elec-tions usually have low vote turnout, enabling ena-bling a few special interests to make this important decision. If the proposal was on the November ballot, voters would be given more time to consider the value of the project, and cost tenced to prison for thus killing her husband hus-band and another woman. Publicity relating to that case might have inspired a copycat killer. One poisoning of the product Contact was traced to a man who speculated that he thus depress the price of its manufacturer manufac-turer SmithKline's stock and "make a killing" in the market. There is a limit to the precautions we can afford. Blister packages, sealingeach pill with a second layerof transparent plastic, have been tried. Another approach was to wTap each pill in aluminum - inside a sealed outer box. And with the Sudafed killings unsolved, we could be in for more. Psychologists try to profile these killers. kill-ers. Some, like the typical arsonist, may way to make Tlte Editor's Column By MARC HADDOCK desk - the garbage just keeps piling up. You come back from a holiday and have to put in two days' work in one day's time. The work accumulates while you have fun. Up until now it's been a natural law that all holidays must be paid for with extra labor when you come back to work. Well, Laidlaw has come up with an ingenious in-genious solution to this problem. Every time there is a holiday, your trash day changes to the next day permanently -- or at least until the next holiday, when it is kicked up another day. This week your trash day is Tuesday, and next week it changes to Wednesday -until the next holiday. You get the idea. At last, someone has found a way to make a paid holiday painless when it's time to get back to work. I suggested we try it at the newspaper, with mixed results. 1 figured that after Memorial Day on May 27, w e could move our weekly publication publica-tion date to Thursday permanently. This way, we can enjoy the holiday without having to work twice as hard on Tuesday to get a newspaper out on time. Discoveries By RACHEL C. MURDOCH volving the overthrow of the U.S. Constitution is really getting out of hand. Although I don't really think that's what Bush has in mind, it doesn't matter one way or the other. The constitution is certainly cer-tainly in place now, and no president can or ever has been able to impose his personal agenda on the country without congressional congres-sional approval. That's the reason for the balance of power that we have. Bush can't even get his budget proposal passed. How could anyone think congress would allow him to dissolve the Constitution? America's congress wouldn't even join the League of Nations, which was promoted pro-moted heavily by the U.S. president at the time. Besides, even the United Nations, which the U.S. did finally join, often has trouble getting any kinds of sanctions enforced or effective action taken, which points to another reason that the one-government Wew World Order' I've heard warned about won't ever happen. There's this thing called state sovereignty. sover-eignty. It's the thing the allied forces were trying to give back to Kuwait, even though their government wasn't exactly democratic. It's the reason America fought the Revolutionary Revo-lutionary War. It's the reason all the British Brit-ish colonies in Africa rebelled against British Brit-ish rule and formed their own governments, even changing the names of their countries. People want to be able to rule themselves them-selves in the way they please. The right of self-determination is something people will, and historically have, died for. A number of other things have changed in governments, but I don't see any country we taxpayers less money. There is too much uncertainty about how the Special Events Center will be paid for. When you vote in favor of the issuance of general obligation bonds, you give the county the right to hold the property owners own-ers responsible for the debt by increasing property taxes. If the election is approved by voters, County Commissioners could choose to pay for this project with the restaurant tax or property taxes or a combination of both. Taxpayers should have the choice of deciding decid-ing how the projected is funded, not just whether it is funded, also this tax discriminates discrimi-nates unfairly by singling out business. If terrorism? construe the subsequent news medica coverage as some kind of perverted personal per-sonal triumph. Others may visualize poison pills as the perfect crime with which to dispose of somebody in particular. But the person who spikes some product prod-uct on the store shelf with no specific target in mind hard to figure. The FBI and FDS recognize that though we might find a way adequately to protect drug products, other products are even more vulnerable -- milk, bread, eggs. There may be no adequate protection against consumer terrorism. Meanwhile, a minuscule handful of crazies is compounding com-pounding the cost of most everything we consume. Discounting research, 91 percent of the cost of most pharmaceutical products is now "packaging." holidays work When July 4th rolls around (on Thursday Thurs-day this year) we can simply change our publication date permanently to Friday -at least until July 24th, when it will change to Monday. And on Labor Day, a Monday, we will move the date back to Wednesday --just to give us time to get some fresh news put together on Tuesday. What could be more simple? It ought to work for everyone. Why, we ought to consider altering our calendar so that holidays don't even count in the numerical structure of things. And that way we could keep things on the same day without having to pay for the holiday by working extra hard the day after the holiday. holi-day. The mathematics of this might get a little tricky, but a Cray supercomputer could probably figure it out. In the meantime, holidays would take on a new meaning, and leisure time would become quality non-time - hours spent outside the loop of our complicated lives. It may take some time to sell the idea, but I'm glad Laidlaw took the trouble to give us this idea. Why, I think we have an inalienable right to have our leisure time without having to be penalized for it when we go back to work. In the meantime, I've also figured out a way to make sure my garbage is ready for collection, in case I forget to look at the colorful calendar the Laidlaw people were so kind to mail me this week. Just park your garbage cans at the curb where they are always ready for pick up. Then you'll never becaught unawares when your revolving trash collection day rolls around. giving up the right to govern itself. Not the United States, not Russia, not Malta or Monaco, not South Africa, not Switzerland, not Qatar, not anyone. I'll freely admit I've not sent the $5 in to read more extensively on just what these people think will happen. I don't think I'm going to, either. Better in my view to donate the $5 to feeding the hungry. This police brutality scare has really disturbed me. I do think excessive violence was used in the Los Angeles case, but on the other hand, these kinds of things often get blown out of proportion. I would hate to be a L.A. policeman at any time, and I can understand how they become frustrated. It's to cur benefit to remind law enforcement enforce-ment offifK.o f their limits. It's to our detriment to stop them from doing their jobs. I hope in this case we find the right balance. The final one has caused me a chuckle every time I see it mentioned. I never saw the infamous letter from Howard Neilson, et. al. asking Utah republicans to help Karl Snow retire his campaign "debt of honor." From what I gather, it implied that all those Republican voters who helped put Bill Orton into office now owe it to Karl Snow to donate money to his overdrawn campaign fund. I find it interesting to wonder what Snow would have done if he'd won. He'd still have the hugh debt, but he could hardly appeal to the Republican voters for money, saying they owed it to him for his agreeing to take office, or some such reasoning. Snow and his fellow Republicans should see that all voters chose the candidate they thought would be the best. If Snow were going to be worried about paying for campaign cam-paign expenses and the Republican party wasn't willing or able to help him enough, perhaps the judicious thing to do would have been to incur fewer debts. one should pay, all should pay! Governance of the proposed facility has not been adequately defined. This could lead to "turf battles between the UVCC and future County Commissioners. Scheduling Sched-uling criteria have yet to be set for the center. If the community pays to build this center, they should have certain access privileges clearly outlined before they decide whether or not to pay for it. This policy, as well as the board which will determine it, has yet to be established. The proposal is being rushed without allowing ample time for study. -Vernon Baugh Calendar garbage Editor: Well it is April Fools Day so I guess that I was not too surprised to find in the mail the latest folly from American Fork City and their supervisors: Laidlaw Waste Systems, Sys-tems, Inc. The last time they were heard from, a city councilman went to them to check their books to see if they were making enough money to ask for a rate increase. This time it appears the entire north end of the valley will have to get a calendar tp know when to put the garbage out. I believe if there is a problem with the holiday collection collec-tion of garbage it would be simpler for Laidlaw to make a change than for everyone every-one in the north end of the county to change. After all, isn't it easier if one person has to keep track of the day change rather than 40,000? Of course, I could be wrong, because I also believe that American Fork City would be ahead by taking care of the recreation facilities that they have instead of building another white elephant on the north end of the city. -Melvin L. Provost |