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Show Page 2 The Ogden Valley News Volume XXIX Issue XIV June 1, 2022 The Ogden Valley News Staff: Shanna Francis Tel: 801-745-2688 Fax: 801-745-2688 Cell: 801-791-4387 E-Mail: slfrancis@digis.net Jeannie Wendell Tel: 801-745-2879 Fax: 801-745-2879 E-Mail: crwendell@digis.net crwendell@msn.com Opinions expressed by advertisers, columnists or letters to the editor are not necessarily the opinions of the owners and staff of The Ogden Valley News. Guidelines for Letters to the Editor Letters should be 300 words or less. Letters must be signed and the address of the writer submitted. The Ogden Valley News reserves the right to edit or decline printing of any submissions. Announcements Sought As a community service, The Ogden Valley News will print local birth, wedding, obituary, anniversary and missionary farewell & homecoming and Eagle Scout announcements free of charge. We invite residents to send their announcements to: The Ogden Valley News PO BOX 522 EDEN UT 84310 If you would like your submitted items returned, please send a stamped, selfaddressed envelope. The Ogden Valley News, while respecting all property received, will take no responsibility for lost or misplaced items. Please remember to keep a copy for yourself. Invitation for Articles The staff of The Ogden Valley News welcomes the submission of articles by our readership. We invite you to submit local historical accounts or biographies, articles pertaining to contemporary issues, and/or other material that may be of interest to our readers. We also invite you to submit to the paper, or notify the staff of local events. Awards that have been earned by the reader, family members, neighbors or friends are also sought. While the staff of The Ogden Valley News invites the submittal of information and articles, we reserve the right to select which material will be considered for publication. All material, to be considered, must be submitted with the full name, address and telephone number of the person submitting the material. Letters to the Editor Commercial Storage Units Don’t Belong in a Single-Family Neighborhood We would like to thank the over 900 residents who endorsed/signed the letter that formally provides notice to Weber County of the opposition to Weber County Zoning Application Zoning Map Amendment (ZMA) File number: ZMA 2022-01. If this application were to proceed, it would result in the building of a 193-storage-unit facility in a residential area of Eden and expand commercial space over 14 acres in the community of Eagle Ridge and its surrounding communities. We will be accepting more signatures to add to the public documents in opposition of this amendment. This proposed use is not the highest and best use of this property. The area is too beautiful and valuable to put storage lockers on and will be visible from the top of the divide look- Joy Thompson, Rebecca Skordas, and Citizens Against Eagle Crest We Don’t Need More Polluting Development As a developer myself, I am sometimes amazed at the brazen greed of my fellow developers. Are these developers offering to pay the county for the increased value of the property (due to the rezone) and for polluting the Valley with more rarely occupied second homes for out-of-staters? Say the property value by the rezone value is increased by $10 million… are they real partners of the community and therefore willing to write a $9 million check to the local school? That would be more interesting. I still think we shouldn’t sellout the community of Eden, however, and its remaining undeveloped lands. Are the county commissioners and planning commissioners just going to agree to a rezone and get nothing back from the developers but minor fees, mostly empty second homes at great environmental cost, more boats clogging up a disappearing Pineview Reservoir, more lawns to mow and water, and, frankly, an uglier upper valley? I read the developer’s statement regarding the Nordic Valley proposal and am unimpressed by the benefits they believe their project will provide. Increased jobs? All the contractors are booked out for years already; Utah doesn’t have a lack of work in the construction industry. We’re already the fastest growing state in the U.S. Does this development offer affordable homes for working Utah families or is it environmentally low impact—for instance, using xeriscape landscaping throughout? Nope. The projects will be almost exclusively second homes for out-of-state owners who will barely occupy the properties and which, of course, will still need to be heated, have their grass watered, and areas plowed. What a waste of precious building materials, ongoing energy costs, and human energy. It is obscene at this point to allow any new development in the valley that isn’t for the people of Utah almost exclusively. It is plain stupid to subsidize such development by rezoning to accommodate developers who paid a price for what the property was already zoned for, not for what they could wheedle out of this community. This rezoning will just give the developer windfall profits. Don’t approve it unless they write an additional huge check that gives the county 90% of the increased value caused by the rezone. Every ton of cement and masonry put into this new development means about a ton of CO2 (think of the volume of that!) released into the air. Does it even make sense or is it ethical/moral that we allow people to have second (or third) homes that sit empty 80% of the year? Steel rebar (every 1,000 lbs. of rebar production creates 2,810 lbs. of CO2 emissions). The developers couldn’t care a bit about that. Is it even desirable that a third-rate ski area and fourth-rate golf resort be allocated any additional housing and commercial development? Do third-rate ski and golf resorts even deserve our precious water resources, and do we need to diminish those finite resources by encouraging additional housing units to out-ofstaters and one-percenters? Do we need to scar our open space with more development that gives the community pretty much nothing that it needs right now? How will this impact our designated dark sky next door in North Fork Park? We used to be a “dark sky” Valley, but this is changing. Also, do we need to create more self-storage (as being proposed in the Wolf Creek area) for folks whose collection of possessions is so out of control that they need even more square footage to store their vehicles and “stuff” in concrete/ masonry/steel (all equals additional tons of unnecessary CO2) storage facilities that again, will mostly be rented to those who only live here seasonally? Do we really need to create more boating storage so that we have even more noisy gas-guzzling boats on Pineview, a reservoir that is already shrinking into a pond most years and choked already with boat traffic? In any case, the uncertainty of the water situation alone should halt all frivolous development in the Valley. Allowing additional development and increased density is reckless and shortsighted. Weber County doesn’t need to do a thing; they don’t need to rezone and accommodate these distinctly greedy developers. We don’t need them and we don’t need their self-storage and we don’t need their additional housing. In fact, if anything, please downzone and reduce the density of their current proposed projects. EDEN WOMAN cont. from page 1 engineering, and computer science. • Winning a Best of State Gold Medal this year in the Charter School Division. • In 2018, being the highest scoring school out of all Utah public schools. • In 2021, won a national award, out of 11,389 U.S. school districts, for earning the distinction and being awarded the Safest School District in the Nation (Niche.com). Due to careful planning, direct communication with stakeholders, and the by-in of students and faculty, during the 2021 school year, NUAMES never experienced a soft closure, during the COVID-19 pandemic. NUAMES was one of only two public high schools in Northern Utah to remain open the entire school year. NUAMES students were able to access a meaningful education, without interruption, during a time where most schools were experiencing one or more soft closures creating a disruption to the students’ learning. NUAMES has grown in student enrollment over the past four years, from 750 students to 1,300. This increase happened during COVID. While other schools were experiencing enrollment decline, NUAMES was experiencing the opposite. During this time, NUAMES was able to maintain a 100% graduation rate on both campuses, have over 50% of graduating seniors earn an associate’s degree a month before earning their high school diploma as well as maintain the same level of academic excellence that NUAMES is known for. NUAMES consistently has been one of the top performing high schools in the State of Utah for the past eight years. This is accomplished by NUAMES adhering to the four promises it makes to its students: small school environment, teaching excellence, university partnership, and a focus on STEM education. This results in a motivating and supportive environment, where individual students discover that they are capable of achieving far more than they ever thought possible. • Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology: Academia/Research — Bruce Gale • Governor’s Medal for Science and Technology: Industry — Christopher Gibson While a teacher at Northern Utah Academy for Math, Engineering and Sciences (NUAMES), the charter school was the first high school to ever win the Governor’s Award Medal. NUAME is recognized for several achievements, including: • The first Platinum Designated STEM School in Northern Utah. • Ranking as a #1 high school in the state of Utah for the last eight years. • A premiere school for math, science, The OgdenValley News’liability on account of errors in, or omissions of, advertising shall in no event exceed the amount of charges for the advertising omitted or the space occupied by the error. The Ogden Valley News does not endorse, promote or encourage the purchase or sale of any product or service advertised in this newspaper. Advertisements are the sole responsibility of the advertiser. The Ogden Valley News hereby disclaims all liability for any damage suffered as the result of any advertisement in this newspaper. The Ogden Valley News is not responsible for any claims or representations made in advertisements in this newspaper. The Ogden Valley News has the sole authority to edit and locate any classified advertisement as deemed appropriate. It also reserves the right to refuse any advertising. Note: The contents of The Ogden Valley News are copyrighted. To protect this publication and its contributors from unlawful copying, written permission is required before any individual or company engages in the reproduction or distribution of its contents, by any means, without first obtaining written permission from the owners of this publication. The deadline for the OVN June 15 issue is June 1. ing down on Ogden Valley. Industrial storage units simply do not belong in a single-family residential neighborhood zone. We want to thank you—the community—for all for your continued support of this opposition. shannafrancis.com Thomas Moran, Huntsville |
