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Show LETTERS j TO THE EDITOR Committee Piotest We feel that the public generally gen-erally should rise up in righteous indignation over the recent action ac-tion of the City Council in "ram-rodding" "ram-rodding" through, in a matter of minutes, a new 20-year power franchise to Southern Utah Power Pow-er company when only three councilmen were present, which is just barely a quorum. By what right can the mayor and three councilmen commit the city to a 20 -year contract without any public hearing or discussion? This matter had never nev-er been discussed in any prior meeting and no public meeting of any kind had been held. Was the mayor and council afraid to allow the public generally to know what was going on? It was reported In the Deseret News that the Mayor had advised "after "af-ter prolonged negotiations" a new franchise was granted. If the negotiations were "prolonged" "prolong-ed" they were only so privately in so far as the mayor was concerned, con-cerned, as they had never been discussed in council. The mayor has appeared to be a firm believer in the public meeting as he has held several on other matters which were inconsequential in-consequential compared to this one. The granting of a new franchise fran-chise is undoubtedly the most important im-portant thing this administration has done or will do and yet it is considered only a few minutes min-utes one night by the mayor and only three councilmen. In the reporting of this action in the various newspapers, much has been said about the franchise fran-chise granted not being exclusive or not preventing the City itself from going municipal. This is only the old dodge and at least the Power company officials know it. You can rest assured that no other private power company com-pany would or could come in anyway and the granting of this franchise would seriously hamper, ham-per, if not entirely prevent the city from working out its own power problems. The granting of the franchise could well entrench the local power company so that in effect the franchise" will be exclusive. If the people of Cedar City sit by and allow this high handed action by the mayor and three councilmen to go unchallenged then we are in a bad way indeed. Admittedly it is expected by the power company and possibly by the city officials that we will just meekly sit by and raise no objections to this action, selling ourselves down the river for at lease 20 years, even though we privately do not like it. Our committee com-mittee is offering to carry the ball in this program and we would appreciate your support. Then, after the people have decided de-cided this all important question, ques-tion, we can all sit back and abide by the result, whichever it may be. CITIZENS COMMITTEE |