Show I'll A4 Sanpete Main Street including parking ?ms7 It's too bad the discussion about Main Street parking deteriorated into an angry exchange at the last Ephraim City Council meeting In recent months the city stall has prepared several intelligent scenarios for improving downtown parking The city council has had productive discussions about the options The dialogue needs to continue In fact it needs to be broadened to consider infrastructure and aesthetic of Main improvements the Street from to the South Towne Theaters Clearly Ephraim needs additional convenient parking to serve Main Street businesses The best option developed by the city staff called for developing a municipal parking lot behind businesses east of Main Street The proposal called for the facility to stretch from the parking lot behind city hall to land behind Statewide Funding The option would require the city to demolish Forest Service structures it inherited when it acquired the city hall site The city was planning to tear down some of the old buildings anyway but some are still serviceable and arc being used by the Public Works Department If all of the structures were demolished lor parking the city would face building new public works facilities in another location potentially on land directly east of city hall Of course building new structures is an expensive proposition Most of the rest of the land that would be required for the parking facility is privately owned Some of the land is blighted — covered with weeds and trash Some of it is in nonconforming use ( lorses are being kept on one piece) A privately owned garage sits on another pail of the parcel It would have to be acquired and demolished Overcoming all of these obstacles is be i hnFW V priority going to be difficult and take time Possibly the parking facility would have to be developed in phases Financially any municipal parking development should be a partnership between the city and businesses That’s how municipal parking projects have been handled in Richfield Cedar City and other communities In fact businesses should bear the lion's share of the costs But creating a large municipal lot behind east Main Street businesses with access from the lot into the rears of the stores should be pursued We suggest establishing a advisory panel to hash out the "hows” of getting the job done Cities that have jumped in to support businesses (Richfield and Cedar City being examples) have been able to stem the tide of businesses evacuating to strip malls that surround big box stores Cities that have not been proactive have ultimately faced huge redevelopment costs as Main Street buildings have become blighted and boarded If Sanpete County has a hub or the potential of developing one it is Ephraim A healthy commercial district in Ephraim is critical to the whole county Which brings us to Main Street in general Travelers along Heritage Highway US89 and visitors who may be considering investment in the county will glean their impressions from traveling the whole length of Ephraim's Main Street Besides a commercial area many historic homes along Main have for sale signs in front Some are vacant and deteriorating The city council has scheduled a meeting in January to review the recently updated general plan and set priorities Main Street preservation and revitalization should be at the top of the list Wednesday December Valley Edition Messenger-Gunniso- 1 2004 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR RULES: Sanpete Messenger invites letters to the editor from our readers Letters must be in good taste and submitted with the withhold we not be published name hometown and phone number The telephone number Occasionally the author's name from publication so long as the author reveals his or her name to the newspaper Letters are limited to to an 500 words We publish a maximum of one letter per person every four weeks We ask that writers limit themselves Issue or aspect of an issue that they have not addressed before We reserve the right to edit letters for space grammar clarity and taste Opinions in the letters to the editor section do not reflect the opinions of the newspaper or its staff The author’s Explosion is youthful prank nothing more In reading your front page story from Nov 24 about the ticket booth bomb at Manti High School my first impression was that the tendency will be to overreact because of today’s climate of angst about terrorism Remember that teenagers do stupid things like put firecrackers in mailboxes I’m guessing that the ticket booth stunt was of that ilk though obviously more serious While such pranks should not go unpunished I hope that the lighter side of human nature will come to bear in the sentencing and that the severity' of the punishment will not exceed what is deserved because of sensitivity to terrorism Teens do dumb things the sum of it nothing more I seriously doubt they are planning another more grievous attack Rather they are probably crapping their pants afraid that they will get caught for this last That’s trick they pulled Sterling D Allan Ephraim UT Don’t suffer as we did - get it in writing We just wanted to write to tell people what happened to us so that it won’t happen to them This concerns when we moved to 509 South 500 West in Mt Pleasant and all the work we did inside and outside the home Our only mistake was trusting an upstanding man someone we had known for years with just a handshake We recently went to small claims court with a dispute over our agreement with this individual and to see if w e could get back the carpel we had placed in the home or get reimbursed for the money w e spent on it We lost because we had nothing in writ- - ing only the word of the upstanding man The thing that really bothers us is that in court in front of a judge this upstanding man swore to tell the truth nothing but the truth so help him God Then he swore under oath that he didn't remember us doing anything to the house and if we did it was so little he didn't notice We have learned a big lesson from this We used to trust people We were full believers that the only thing you have is your word and without that you have nothing We also believe that what goes around comes around If you can't trust some- - one you’ve known for years who is supposed to be an upstanding resident of Mt Pleasant who can you trust? We hope this person and his family — and he knows who he is— can hold his head up high in' public and sleep at night Maybe he is able to tell God when he sleeps at night “1 can’t remem- ber” If anyone has seen this house before and then after we moved in and saw the work we did we w'ould like to hear from you Jake and Vicki Jacobson Mt Pleasant Likes Ephraim’s Christmas decorations l have seen a lot of municipal Christmas decorations over the years and while like most of them I have to congratulate Ephraim Cits on this year’s street decorations night Approaching Ephraim in the you aren't sure what you are seeing at a distance it looks like two eagles maybe hanging over the road As you get closer you see they are snowflakes But because over they appear to suspended the road without support the effect is just plain exciting Your fHloiidmy Music Stt&tfiom I congratulate the committee members who said “Let’s try this this year Though simple it is one of the prettiest decorations I have ever seen decoration Thanks Lloyd Call Ephraim Ephraim! |