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Show City studies Manila Water Co. acquisition By MARCELLA WALKER Pleasant Grove City City Tuesday night decided to make further study of a proposal from the Manila Culinary Water Company for the city to take over the water system. In unprecedented action, the mayor had to break a tie vote on the motion for further study after two other motions had died for lack of a second. Two councilmen voted yea and two voted nay and one abstained setting up the tie vote. Previous motions to accept the proposal as presented, except deleting the section asking for each Manila Water Co. stockholder to have an $800 credit on their water bill, and one to seek a franchise agreement with Manila Water Co. to avoid instances when two water lines would be installed on the same street, were not passed. The proposal to take over the water company was discussed at a public hearing two weeks ago. At that time the council indicated that the main hangup they felt with the proposal was for the reimbursement to the stockholders, noting that to allow this would not be fair to the rest of the Pleasant Grove water users who would have to make up the difference. The proposal also asks the city to take over the indebtedness of the company which the city council had indicated it was willing to do. In addition, there would not be any hookup fee charged to those presently using the Manila water system. Two citizens in the meeting felt that since they had bought the shares as stock they should get a return on their investment. Council members pointed out that the money from sale of the shares had been used to develop and maintain the system and at no time were stockholders told that they would receive dividends or reimbursement reim-bursement for their shares. Mayor David Holdaway added that when the shares were purchased pur-chased it represented much the same thing as Pleasant Grove water users did when they paid for their water hookups. He said that in both instances, the benefit was that the user had water available at the turn of a tap. If the city took over the water system, the stockholders would still have the same benefit, the water available when they wanted it just like before. He noted that this type of stock was different from that where a commodity is involved which exchanges ex-changes hands and the stockholder has it no more. In this case, the stockholder still has the commodity, it is just administered by another entity. The mayor stated that the benefit to Pleasant Grove City from acquiring the water system would be the orderly development in the north area of the city without water lines overlapping. An advantage to the Manila Culinary Water users would be that Pleasant Grove water rates are lower than theirs. In addition, in coming years as maintainance and development of water sources becomes necessary, the city would be more able to handle it because of its size. Councilman Lloyd Ash made a motion that the city inform the Board of Directors of the Manila Culinary Water Company that they are concerned and would like to make further study and have more discussion on any proposals the water company would like to make. |
