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Show Volume XXX Issue V The Ogden Valley News Page 3 October 15, 2023 Letters to the Editor Editor’s View Join Me in My Ride for for Kids! What is Eden Crossing? Hi friends, In September, I rode 150 miles in the Great Cycle Challenge to fight kids’ cancer! Why? Because right now, more children lose their lives to cancer in the United States than to any other disease. Sadly, 38 kids die every week. Kids should be living life, not fighting for it. So, I recently rode to raise funds to support these brave kids and their families as they face the scariest time of their lives. All funds raised will support Children’s Cancer Research Fund so they can continue their work to develop treatments and find a cure for childhood cancer. Thank you. for your support. Kathy Grandin, Eden Kathy Grandin of Eden. Please Vote for Weber Justice Bond Greetings Fellow Weber County Residents, We are excited to share our support of the upcoming bond issue that we’ll be voting for in November’s 2023 general election. Please join us in voting in favor of the Weber Justice Center bond. What is a bond and how does it help the Weber Justice Center? A bond is a low- or no-interest loan to a public entity. It allows the proposed project to be built immediately and repaid over a predetermined time. What is the Weber Justice Center & why do they need our help? First, we have a Weber County Sheriff’s Complex that consists of several buildings. Just to name a few, there are the administrative offices, the jail, the medical facility, the training rooms, and CSI. The Weber Justice Center will be a new building built at the Sheriff’s Complex on land already owned by the county. Why do we need this new building? This is where we start to get really excited. Let’s discuss recidivism. Recidivism is one of the most fundamental concepts in criminal justice. It refers to a person’s relapse into criminal behavior, often after the person receives sanctions or undergoes intervention for a previous crime. Recidivism is an ongoing battle in the justice system. According to World Population Review, Utah has a recidivism rate of 46%. That means 46% of all incarcerated citizens will return to incarceration. That presents a very troubling picture. Not only does recidivism contribute to increased suicide rates among the incarcerated, it also destroys families. Recidivism reduction is an ongoing and complex discussion. Yet, we feel the proposed Weber Justice Center will be a great boost in lowering recidivism rates and here is why. There will be free rooms available for accessible and appropriate local nonprofits to offer a variety of resilience training to every willing inmate. This will give inmates the opportunity to leave with necessary life skills to be productive citizens; thus, reducing recidivism and in turn improving lives of Weber County citizens. The new building will allow more space for medical needs, reducing the need for transport to hospitals and more space for those who come in with mental health concerns. All this enables our tax dollars to be utilized more efficiently. There will be more space for inmates; thus, reducing crowding, which will reduce jail violence. Another significant funding cost is transporting inmates to their court hearings that, at times, entails significant distances. The bond will fund a state-of-the-art video conferencing center that will allow court hearings to be done from the center. Once again, this will reduce costs, which then allows our tax dollars to be more efficiently allocated. This plan is so tax efficient that the Sheriff’s Office is not asking for additional operational funds to run the new facility. To sum it up, our taxes will simply be spent more humanely and efficiently by adding this facility. How much will this cost? Less than the price of an expensive hot drink. On average, it will cost $4.51 each month per household. For those of us who are concerned about another tax, let us just say, we are not in favor of greater taxes. We are in favor of smarter taxes. We are a community. Communities come together to take care of their own. This falls on us to take care of. The State of Utah won’t pay for it. The Federal Government won’t pay for it. This is Weber County business. We think it’s good business. Please vote with us in favor of the Weber Justice Center Bond on the ballot in the 2023 November General Election. Learn more at webercountyutah.gov/weberjusticecenter/. If you live in the western part of the Valley, you’ve probably heard of “Eden Crossing,” or seen new signs popping up that say, “No New Streets,” or “Hey John, More Park Less City.” A proposed Eden Crossing is why. Eden Crossing is a high-density development being proposed by John Lewis, which would be situated outside any of the Valley’s recognized village nodes, as outlined in our general plan. A narrative in a recent slick brochure regarding the proposed development reads, “Eden Crossing will be the community heart of the Ogden Valley just east of where highways 158 and 162 intersect…. We have the opportunity now to create a resort themed Main Street with a vibrant & cohesive design that ties the new grocery store with a hotel [100 rooms are being proposed!!!], restaurant, retail, commercial, family and small lots.” Laura Warburton, Director of Live Hannah’s Hope.org, Kathie Darby, Board Chair, Roads to Independence; Prior Ogden City Diversity Commissioner; OWCAP Executive Board Member; YCC & OCAN Committees KÜHL Cycling Team Donates New ForHelmets for Youth the third year in a row, the KÜHL cycling team, with several members living here in Ogden Valley, donates time and money to purchase brand new LEM bicycle helmets for kids and teens. Every fall the team fits and distributes these new helmets (valeed from $80 to $100 retail) for free at Liberty Park. Linda Lawless LaStayo has spearheaded the “Protectin’ Lil’ Noggins” offering each year and says, “We want to see helmets on every precious little brain in Ogden Valley.” When you see the kids riding with KÜHL new helmets, give a shout out of thanks to the KÜHL Cycling team. Perhaps the signs we are seeing around the Valley should say, “Hey John, don’t you already have a resort village at Wolf Creek?” Why does he think the county should go against the general plan and create a second resort village for him down the road, smack dab in the middle of residential and agricultural properties? Does he think he’s special? As a matter of fact, as noted in the OV general plan, we already have several large resort nodes in the Valley—the newly expanded Nordic Valley, Powder Mountain, Wolf Creek, and Snowbasin, not to mention the commercial centers of New-Town and Old-Town Eden. How much high-density, commercially zoned acreage and village nodes does one small rural, agricultural community need? Really? When you consider the farming community of Eden and its relatively small population, one has to ask how much commercial develop- ment is really needed to support it? Considering the already-mentioned commercial areas, if you add this new commercial node being proposed, what does the ratio of acreage zoned commercial and high-density look like compared to the amount of rural farmland, three-acre-plus lots, and our relatively small population? We don’t need “no more” dang, high-density development in Eden!!*##!! Give me a break! Hey John, this isn’t California! At a county commission work session held October 10, Weber County planner Charlie Ewert pitched Eden Crossing to the commissioners and recommended that they approve an amendment to Eden’s street-regulating plan that designates where high-density development can be planned. As you can plainly see in the accompanying map, Eden Crossing formally sits outside the current area. Thus, Mr. Ewert recommended that the commissioners pass an amendment allowing the commercial district to be shifted further east to accommodate Mr. Lewis, even though our Ogden Valley planning commission rejected the proposal to do so, recommending that the commissioners deny this hair-brained proposal. However, the commissioners are dead set on approving it so Eden Crossing can move forward! Thank you, Mr. Froerer. Why would you push for a proposal benefiting one man, which goes against the general plan, at the expense, and against the desires, of an entire community? “Planner” Ewert holds that when you look at Ogden Valley’s “measle map,” which shows, with red dots, the possible build out of an entire Valley, the goal is, per the general plan, to take those possible future residents of the Valley and shove them all into these commercial nodes… Wolf Creek, Powder Mountain, Old Town Eden, New Town Eden, Nordic Valley, and now Eden Crossing. There’s one huge, elephant-in-the-room problem with this fallback argument…. It would be a very, very slim, minute percentage of people who would agree to be driven off their family farms and actually smashed into these high-density, overpriced, tourist-catering developments. Why? BECAUSE THESE COMMERCIAL ZONES ARE ALL DESIGNED TO ACTUALLY ACCOMMODATE TOURISTS, NOT FULLTIME RESIDENTS OF THE COMMUNITY! These high-density, urban centers are all being designed to accommodate tourists and shortterm renters! Do you think your children and grandchildren are going to move into the 100room hotel being planned along the highway between the Valley Market and Carlos & Harleys in Eden Crossing? In the same county commission work session held October 10, Mr. Lewis stated that all he wants to do is to build a “cute little village.” Really? Look at the architectural renderings taken from one of his Eden Crossing brochures. Do these multi-story masses look like they belong in a small quaint village or next to a horse pasture? Or how about next to long-standing, single-family neighborhoods? Hey John… Hey Mr. Froerer, give us all a break! Go try selling ice to an Eskimo. Valley residents didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. We weren’t born yesterday, and pigs don’t fly! What makes you think we should swallow this “boondoggle” (an extravagant and useless project”) just so someone can make a buck off our, the taxpayers’ backs. Our taxes are already way too high. Go snow someone else! Take your “cute little village” and stick it up at Wolf Creek or, better yet, in California. Hey Ogden Valley residents, it’s time we come together and stand up for our property rights, including our vision for the Valley and not a developer and realtor’s! |