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Show Thursday, December 25, 2008 Page 2 AMERICAN FORK CITIZEN Lesson learned in the cold NEWS AND NOTES TO KEEP YOU INFORMED AND INVOLVED Preschool program remains open after protests Caleb Warnock NORTH COUNTY STAFF ' After speaking out, some American Fork residents have convinced the city not to close a preschool program. Parents of children attending a city-sponsored preschool at the American Fork Fitness Center Cen-ter were chagrined recently to learn the city was planning to close the program at the end of this month. Now, after attending City Council meetings with a petition signed by 75 parents, and re-. cruiting more students for the program, the city has agreed to let the preschool stay. "I was more than thrilled," said Jennifer Vilchez, whose &-year-old, Lisana Vilchez, attends at-tends the preschool. In a recent meeting, council members noted that the parents had recruited enough additional students to make the program turn a small profit. Council members were set to direct the staff keep the preschool open until the end of the school year, but then said they could see no reason to put a sunset clause on the program. They directed staff to run the program as long as it is profitable. The preschool charges parents par-ents $65 a month and runs from 12:30 to 3 p.m. on Tuesday and Thursday. Parents said they even offered to pay an enrollment enroll-ment fee, which is sometimes charged by other programs, or to donate supplies in order to keep the program operating. Council members said that while some might feel the program competed with local businesses that offer preschool, other cities do offer similar preschool programs. The prior decision to cut the program was apparently made during a budget meeting, and most council coun-cil members said they were not aware of the decisioa Parents said they could understand un-derstand the program being cancelled if it was not profitable or if the city felt it unfairly hurt In Business to Yihite Business; !IIIiMIii"im.iiiWWih i.,j.i,..mih.'..-."..-'. f"r " " ' J ., j WmmW m i nun"" m Ja Office 801.763.8887 TViy Fox 801.763.9627 H" Cfi; . Cell 801.372.4844 .m,. y L www.hunter-insuronce.cotn i rx ffiifir ra witi ,wm . 490 W 988 S Suite e-1 Pleasant Grove Ut 84064 v)).bootcampwithjess.com I "V f Carsten Barnett far right colors at the American Fork Fitness local businesses, but the city had an obligation to make those decisions before opening the program for the year. Closing the program mid-year is stressful stress-ful on both parents and the preschoolers pre-schoolers themselves, they said. Vilchez said her child had sometimes struggled with learning but thrived in the preschool program, which is helping to prepare her for kindergarten kin-dergarten next year. "It was the teachers that made it happen," she said. "It's a great school. The teachers are amazing." Kelley Barnett's 5-year-old son, Carsten, also attends the program. Barnett said the preschool pre-school benefits him and her. "I used to have to take my son kicking and screaming, but now he loves it," Barnett said. "This is a preparedness class for kindergarten that is beyond helpful. It is something that is needed. ... He is loving it, plus it gives me two and a half hours without him, which is always nice." I Barbara Christiansen contributed to this story. COMMUNITY NOTES Auditions planned There will be auditions for the play, wnuii m'" ' immw m bet NEW YEARS SPECIAL WW 1RT Ft ' ? J CRAIG DILGERNorth County during the preschool program Center on Dec. 18. "The Foreigner," Jan. 5 and 6, from 7-9 p.m. The auditions will be in the Community Room of the American Fork Public Library, 64 S. 100 East. The play will be produced Feb. 19 to 28. Choirs accepting new students Two choirs in American Fork are accepting nev students. One is a beginning group, for children in kindergarten through second grade; the other is for students in third grade through high school. The beginning choir is taught by Linda Seamons and meets Mondays from 4-5 p.m. in Room 3 of the art annex at the American Fork Fitness Center. Tuition is $10 a month. The concert choir, for the older children, is conducted by Ben Peterson. It meets Mondays from 4-5:30 p.m. at historic City Hall, 31 N. Church St. Tuition is $15 a month. Those who wish additional information on the choirs may contact the Arts Council office at 763-3081. New Year's Eve Dance at the Orem Senior Friendship Center The Orem Senior Friendship Center, 93 N. 400 East in Orem, will host a New Year's Eve V t4 JUL fc i Ltrnwlt, Shots, Adult NovtltIs, 1TO North Main Spanish Forh 30 TRAINING DAYS THAT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE! 641-6868 Dance on Wednesday, Dec. 31, from 9 p.m. to 12:15 a.m. Music and lights will be provided by DJ Nile Miner and a light buffet buf-fet will be served. Best dress is encouraged and there will be door prizes. Tables can be reserved in advance. Tickets are $15 per person or $25 per couple. Call 229-7110 for more information. Utah County Republican Women Elections Utah County Republican Women will elect new officers at the organization's Jan. 5 meeting at the Provo City Library, 550 N. University Ave., on the second sec-ond floor at 12 p.m. State president Darcy Kruitsboch will install new officers. of-ficers. Candidates for president are Elaine Bonham of Pleasant Pleas-ant Grove and Connie Smith of Springville. Candidates for other offices, running unopposed unop-posed are President-elect Marge Stolk; first vice president presi-dent Dallas Harris; second vice president Wendy Braithwaite; executive recording secretary, Robbie McArthur; treasurer, Reeta Ormsby. New and renewal memberships member-ships will be available. A light lunch will be served and visitors visi-tors are welcome. Call president presi-dent Suzanne Merrill at 787-9372 787-9372 for more information. Early deadline In preparation prepara-tion for the upcoming holidays, the American Fork Citizen will have early deadlines for submissions. sub-missions. Celebrations (weddings, (wed-dings, birthdays, missionaries, anniversaries, Eagle Scouts and others) need to be submitted submit-ted by 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 26, for the Jan. 1 edition. Public notices must be submitted sub-mitted by 5 p.m. on Friday. Classified advertising deadlines dead-lines are at 3 p.m. Monday and obituaries by 11 a.m. Monday. The North County Newspaper Newspa-per offices are located at 399 E. State St., Pleasant Grove, and may be reached at 756-7669 for anyone who has questions or needs directions. Bormally I'm preuy much a stick in the ,.A ITcnArinllv 1UUU. IJf vwv..v when it comes to snowy days, slippery roads and other challenges. I can be kind of critical when other people go to things that they don't have to when the conditions condi-tions are dangerous. danger-ous. All right, I admit it. Often those are things I wouldn't want to go to in the first place, but I still feel people shouldn't risk life and limb to do something that is optional. For me, lots of things are optional Barb's Wire BARBARA CHRISTIANSEN rather than necessary. neces-sary. I've been known to reschedule re-schedule a vacation when there are snowy roads so that we can come home a day later and be safer. We might leave a day sooner if there is a storm scheduled to come in. My guidelines changed a bit last Friday when the snowstorm descended on us, like a blanket, albeit not a warm one. I knew it was rather risky to purchase tickets to Neil Diamond's concert when it was in December. After all, that is a month in which it has been known to snow a bit in Utah. For a concert, it's pretty tricky to leave a day early and spend a night in a motel in Salt Lake just to avoid driving in the snow. Not only is it tricky, it adds considerably to the cost. And that's not an option this year, for us or most of you. On top of that, the storm covered the time for both before be-fore and after the concert, so there would have been motels for two nights. Not possible. We did the next best thing. We drove to Sandy (at about 20-25 mph), parked and took TRAX. I can see why this has been such a success. As opposed to buses, the timing wasn't bad at all. It was pretty pret-ty comfortable and TRAX went where we wanted to go. I figured we could vary our departure enough that we could get a train that was pretty empty, but I was American Fork Alan C. Carter dds, MS Rodney G. Northrup dds, ms 300 No Am Fork Located ol Iris 4-way stop sign, usl 2 blocks So. ol Am fork Hospital An Fat Hospital 50 So. Am Fork 1 100 N Gtrw Open your ears tfiis 'KoCufay Season toafiftojf (Better Hearing mtfi SIEMENS INTUISs Lfe INTUIS hearing instruments from Siemens, the world leader in digital technology, sets new standards in hearing ease and comfort. Integrating select key technologies in reliability and quality. With proprietary technologies to protect from earwax, sweat and moisture, as well as manufacturing innovations to ensure long-term performance, no other comparable solution offers as much ' as INTUIS Life. Now for only: concerned about thousands of people leaving the Energy Solutions Arena at the same time, many of whom would be trying to get on the train. As it turns out, it wasn't too bad. We were able to get on the second Sandy train to leave after we got outside. There were a few conditions to our getting on the train, however. The main one is that we had to stand. We were in a place where we didn't have a good hold on a seat to brace ourselves, but that wasn't a problem. We were packed like sardines into the train cars and there was no room for anyone to fall. It kind of reminded me of the start of the St. George Marathon, Mara-thon, but that's a different story. In conditions like that, you have to change your limits of personal space, but it turned out fine. Most of the people oh the train had just come out of the concert and we were on the same wavelength. wave-length. We talked about our varied experiences whether wheth-er it was our first time to see him, or our 10th. We talked about our favorite songs, what things were surprising to us in the show, and what things we had anticipated seeing. Some of the people holding me up were from Nephi; some were from Salt Lake. Some were young; many were nearly as old as I am (gasp!). But everyone was in a state of euphoria after the concert. There is a lesson to be learned from this. Despite our differences, we haye common ground that we need to discover dis-cover with our friends, neighbors neigh-bors and acquaintances. Especially during this Christmas season, when we try to focus on peace on earth, it's a good thing tore-member tore-member that all the world's people have so much more in common than we have differing differ-ing points of view. Remem- . bering this will help us all get along, and we can keep each other upright, even without a chair to hang onto. 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