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Show 1 Vnte Is 267-216 J panguitcli Voters Reject Municipal Power By Katie Thomas Editor Panguitch City voters rejected a proposal to bond for a municipal power system Tuesday 267 to 216. The 483 voters, representing close to 60 percent of all registered voters, voted 55 percent against the proposal and 45 percent in favor. Utah Power & Light Co., which has been under contract for the past 23 years to provide the city's electrical elec-trical power, was successful in a high-powered effort in the past few weeks to continue that service to Panguitch. UP&L's contract comes up for renewal in 1990. After studying the possibility of going municipal for several years, the city council decided to put the question to local voters this year. City officials said a municipal system would permit the city to take advantage of a Colorado River power allotment, which is a source of cheap electric power. A decision was required before an October deadline that would make the Colorado River source unavailable. Despite unanimous agreement among the five city council members and Mayor Jon Togerson, and after a feasibility study showed a municipal system would be a practical prac-tical move, the city's voters rejected the plan. In past weeks, Utah Power & Light sponsored a series of economic eco-nomic development seminars for residents and business people, 'sponsored Saturday night's fundraiser barbecue for the Panguitch Pangui-tch Bobette drill team trip to Japan, ran a scries of ads and distributed flyers raising questions company officials claimed were not answered by the council. They questioned whether the city's staff could efficiently effi-ciently operate such a system, challenged the council's estimated lower power rates, raised questions about revenue shortfalls causing taxes to go up, and promised to remain in Panguitch, win or lose, to compete for consumers against the city's system. In rejecting the proposal to issue general obligation bonds in the amount of $1.95 million to con- struct the municipal system, Panguitch Pan-guitch voters appeared to have been convinced by UP&L's arguments creating questions in the voters' minds about risk. Disappointed at the lack of voter support for their proposal, the city council, meeting Tuesday night, said that the people had spoken and they would get on with other community business. |