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Show A Crucial Time For Our City Some of the issues brought to light in Mark Minchey's letter to the editor (4298) need to be addressed ad-dressed with facts that Escalante is facing. Esclante has been the focus of national and international attention atten-tion since September 18, 1996 with the designation of the Grand Staircase - Escalante National Monument (GSENM). Because of that designation, Escalante's citizens can choose to be either pro-active or reactive. When I ran for mayor, - my choice was to be pro-active. One of my greatest concerns was Escalante's six-year-old 1994 General Plan which was given to the GSENM Planning Team. With this in mind, the council recognized the need for community commu-nity members to address the most pressing issues facing Escalante today and amend its General Plan accordingly so that the GSENM Planning Team could catch Escalante's Esca-lante's current vision. The meeting Mr. Minchey wrote about was a "brainstorming" meeting to come up with issues which the city needed to address so those issues could be forwarded to the GSENM Planning Team before September 1998. Escalante will be holding a "Planning for the Future" meeting in May for all citizens to attend and provide their input as to what will ultimately be submitted to that Planning Team. Specific issues that arose from the brainstorming meeting were: Water, sanitation, managing growth, response to impact from' Monument tourism, emergency medical services, economic development, de-velopment, Main Street project, and affordable housing. The group discussed affordable housing and , as I recall, not once did I or Jens Munthe mention going go-ing to Washington to get affordable afford-able housing. I explained that the state of Utah has mandated that all communities must have affordable afford-able housing addressed in their General Plan by the end of 1998. I was hopeful that one of our local developers would be willing to help the community by developing develop-ing some affordable housing as mandated by Utah State law. Mr. Minchey expressed some concerns, so I lent him my Affordable Af-fordable Housing Manual that the state had issued to each community commu-nity explaining the law. Also, in this meeting, I mentioned men-tioned that the mayors of Garfield County had met with the county's commissioners where we had expressed ex-pressed concerns about the Monument's boundaries being so close to our communities without some type of transitional area separating the two. The mayors and commissioners agreed that the subject should be addressed with the GSENM Planning Team. Our Planning and Zoning Commission members are appointed ap-pointed by the Mayor and City Council and hold their appointment appoint-ment for seven years, our current members having received their appointments from past administrations. admini-strations. I feel that our members, mem-bers, ranging in age from the late (See Crucial Time. ..On Page 4A) A Crucial Time... 30's to early 90's, represent the diversity of our community. I've been very grateful to them for their willingness to give of their personal time to help our community commu-nity without any monetary compensation. com-pensation. Following the most recent election, our city council met jointly with the Planning and Zoning Zon-ing Commission and we agreed that it was time to enforce ordinances ordi-nances that were already in place. I do agree with Mr. Minchey that there are locations in Escalante Esca-lante on and off Main Street - that need beautification and our Main Street Project should address those sites. It is time for all of us to get involved not only in the Main Street Project, but with all of the needs mentioned in our brainstorming brain-storming meeting and become a committee member for the one day of the Planning for the Future meeting. I strongly urge all Escalante City property owners and citizens to plan on attending that upcoming upcom-ing meeting in May. This is a crucial time for our city and it is your opportunity to be involved and bring your own vision for Escalante Es-calante to be expressed in our General Plan. Sandie Hitchcock, Mayor Escalante City |