StandardNET/Standard-Examiner:S. Davis mayors discuss recreation consolidation

I'm wary of any idea proposed by Joe Johnson. He wants to move, several, Davis County City recreation programs under one head.
StandardNET/Standard-Examiner:S. Davis mayors discuss recreation consolidation

deseretnews.com | Rocky, North Salt Lake clash over foothill land

Yesterdays clash over the land owned by NSL has been reported on by the Deseret News. It seems that Rocky is trying to be a NIMNBY (Not-in-my-neighbors-back-yard) over the land; an innovative kind of activist that doesn't care as much about what happens in his backyard as he does in his neighbors. He didn't have the support of the Salt Lake City Council when he proposed condeming a portion of the land which would make it impossible for NSL to develop.

"'It's my back yard, and I'll tell you one thing — we will do our best to preserve it,' Briggs said. 'We won't turn it into what they have turned (the Avenues) into. That's our promise. Our promise is open space. We will deal with it, and we will justifiably make it beautiful.'"

deseretnews.com | Rocky, North Salt Lake clash over foothill land

Update: KUTV has more on the story. Apparently Rocky's offer for the 13 acres of land he wants condemned is $51,188.

KSL Blog: Crashing Rocky's Rally...

KSL Blog is talking about Rocky Andersons Rally, held today, that I've talked about previously. Apparently, Mayor Briggs, and his supporters, crashed the party, and some arguments insued. Rocky spoke about condeming some of the land within Salt Lake City boundaries eliciting heckling from, none other, than Kay Briggs himself. Rocky is losing his grip on reality.

KSL Blog: Crashing Rocky's Rally...

Committee eyes changes to jail funding :: The Daily Herald, Provo Utah

The Daily Herald is reporting that a legislative budget committee is planning to better reimburse counties that house state inmates. However, they want to stop reimbursing for medical and transportation costs. How they are able to spin this an increase in funding is a mystery to me. Although they would add a 10% cushion to the county fund, they are cutting enough funding as to make the increase negligible. According to Rep. Eric Hutchings, R-Kearns, "I don't understand how you ask services be rendered and then just decide you're not going to pay for part of it."

Committee eyes changes to jail funding :: The Daily Herald, Provo Utah

StandardNET/Standard-Examiner:New tax approved to fund south Davis rec center operations

As covered on this blog previously Tom Hardy, 'unpaid consultant' for the Recreational District, wanted to charge for maintainance of the Rec Center before it is built. The Recreational District just approved a tax increase that will do just that! The tax goes into effect a full year before the facility will open.

StandardNET/Standard-Examiner:New tax approved to fund south Davis rec center operations

Salt Lake Tribune - Utah:County board to offer to help buy N. Salt Lake land

Salt Lake Counties Open Spaces board wants to offer a meager $300,000 to North Salt Lake for the 80 acres of land to insure that it remains open space. North Salt Lake says the price tag is closer to $16 million. On the other hand Rocky has tommorow's rally planned in which he will reveal one of his fingers--again. Guess which one?

Salt Lake Tribune - Utah:County board to offer to help buy N. Salt Lake land

Clipper:Rec pool may still make a bigger splash

The Recreation District has reduced the size of the Bountiful pool in order to deal with escalating costs, covered in a previous post, but some members of the board would like to increase funding in order to accomodate a pool of the original size. It would take an investment of $1 million divided between the five cities. I've anticipated that costs would escalate given the creative accounting ideas suggested by Tom Hardy.
Clipper:Rec pool may still make a bigger splash

The Tax Foundation - Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR): The Cure for "Ratchet Up"

TABOR is an interesting concept. I don't think any reasonable person thinks we ought to completely eliminate governement revenue but, TABOR says, that any increase greater than the population increase plus inflation is too much.

The Tax Foundation - Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR): The Cure for "Ratchet Up"

deseretnews.com | Rocky calls rally to protest plan for housing on North S.L. bench

I am tired of Rocky Anderson trying to sway public opinion in his fickle favor when his interest in the dispute is entirely political. In this case political interests do not equal moral, or ethical interests. What North Salt Lake does with their land is not up to the citizens of Salt Lake City. There are enough legal reasons that SLC ought not to be involved in how the land is used that this issue should be decided by the officials and electorate of North Salt Lake City.

deseretnews.com | Rocky calls rally to protest plan for housing on North S.L. bench

Utah Planners' Corner: Can they do that?

Wilf Sommerkorn has an excellent piece on the controversy surrounding the 80 acres of land that North Salt Lake would like to develop. Sommerkorn questions the legality of Salt Lake City zoning the land as 'open space', essentially, taking the property.

Utah Planners' Corner

WX passes '06 budget

Woods Cross City is setting the example for it's surrounding cities on how to set a budget. This years budget is a 9.56 percent decrease over last year. They are anticipating lower revenues over previous years. It reminds me of, yesterday, watching Chairman Greenspan testifying before Congress. He said that every entity that recieves funding from the Government should be subject to review by Congress. He said even if the Federal Reserve, the entity he chairs, could not justify it's existence then it should be dismantled. What was that? The Federal Reserve Chairman is okay with losing his job if it means a balanced budget! What works for the Federal Government should work for State, County, and City levels.

WX passes '06 budget

StandardNET/Standard-Examiner::Davis School District approves pay wage increase

Davis County School district has found a novel way to increase it's reserve fund--by increasing spending on the overall budget through a pay raise, and an administrative spending increase. The article cites an increase in spending for salaries by 4.42% from last year. Most employees will benefit from a 3% increase in pay. Pay raises aside, I think the real story is buried in the reserve fund. The law says the reserve fund can be 5% of it's overall budget so the district has opted for a bigger budget as stated above. They are not asking for any new tax increases now, which would have to go to a vote. They never do ask for a tax increase until the pork barrel is bursting.

StandardNET/Standard-Examiner

slSites: Local listings for the Salt Lake Valley

Davis County Watch has been added to a directory of the 'best' websites in Salt Lake Valley. According to the site, "Salt Lake Sites is the largest open directory for Salt Lake City, Utah and surrounding communities. It has over 4200 listings in over 264 categories." I'm excited about all the new local sites that are finding their roots in Utah.

slSites

deseretnews.com | Crowding weighs on jail workers, inmates

I went on a tour of the county jail just before the jail expansion bond went before the voters, and while I don't think that jail-time ought to be a pleasant experience, the expansion is needed so those who should be behind bars, aren't sent away. At the Davis County website, you can see the jail roster. An intersting exercise is to see how many inmates are there, and the arresting agency that got them. Currently, there are 518 total inmates for a jail with a capacity of 496. A handful of these were arrested by I.N.S. and the U.S. Marshalls. How many of these are actually being housed for the Utah State prison? How can we get the State to pay the 75% required, for these inmates, rather than the 50% they are paying?

deseretnews.com | Crowding weighs on jail workers, inmates

Dynamic Range

John Dougall has a new blog called Dynamic Range that I like a great deal. In particular, note his recent post on recomendations given to the Tax reform commitee that was recently formed by the Legislature.

deseretnews.com | Land-use debate grows in North S.L.

I think it may be time for me to work up a petition for Mayor Briggs, and the NSL city council to ask them to develop what land they can in the 80 acres of land in SLC boundaries. According to Stan Porter, of the Planning Commision, "It would go better if we had public support," Porter said in an interview Wednesday. "We don't know what the public support is." Unlike Porter, I think that Mayor Briggs, and the Council have been very communicative with the community. I attended the focus group, and I believe the entire Planning Commission were there to answer questions.

I'm ready to weigh in my support for the development of 30 acres of the total 100 covering both NSL and SLC boundaries.

deseretnews.com | Land-use debate grows in North S.L.

SLC Trib:SLC votes to keep open space on bench at northern border

The fate of eighty acres of land, twenty of which NSL City is ready to sell for development, may have to be decided in court. I am one that hopes that the land is developed. It will recover revenue for North Salt Lake City that can go to pay for our Golf Course, a firestation, as well as more parks, and trails. This will preserve the character of NSL as a pristine , healthy, city. As it stands right now, is trespassing allowed on that land? If so, there are quite a few Salt Lake City Council Members that need to be told to stay off the land.

Salt Lake Tribune - Utah

The Tax Foundation - Flat Tax Debate Rages in Utah

The Tax Foundation has their eyes on Utah, and included the LDS church's statement on tax reform in their piece.

"The state tax system should continue to provide tax deductions for charitable giving—including religious contributions. Charitable contributions help provide for society's poor and needy, education and the arts, and other important social needs."

The Tax Foundation - Flat Tax Debate Rages in Utah

NSL Cities Water Conservation Plan

How is North Salt Lake City planning on handling the problem of water conservation, and the added cost of flouridation? Especially, since they are considering the development of more Parks? One quote from their plan interested me greatly. (Hat tip to Steve Rawlings for pointing this issue out to me.)

"Maximizing the amount of secondary water used for outdoor water use within the City has multiple benefits. These benefits include smaller increases in required volumes of culinary water in future years and reduced cost in developing new culinary sources.

In order to maximize the use of secondary water, there are several steps that should be completed:

• Require all new developments to include secondary water where available.

• Enforce watering restrictions during the hottest part of the day by issuing tickets with fines that increase if the offense is repeated.
• Provide educational materials that discuss how to determine the amount of water necessary for a healthy lawn.
• Determine the amount of water necessary for healthy landscaping at City Parks and the golf course. It is typical for such locations to be overwatered by anywhere from 25% to 50%. Correcting any overwatering done by the City will reduce the demand on the irrigation system and reduce waste.

Conclusion: Secondary water saves an enormous amount of culinary water from being used in outdoor watering. This resource needs to be maximized by being made available to as much of the City as possible, and by using this resource in a manner that is educated and non-wasteful."

Meeting with Steve Rawlings

I met with Steve Rawlings this morning, and it was a pleasant experience. I learned some things that I will summarize below.

• The State of Utah is paying, roughly, half of what it should to Davis County for housing the 100-150 Prison inmates at Davis County Jail. They've committed to pay 75% of the total cost.
  
• The County plans on using many of the Jail inmates to landscape the new Jail extension to save money.
• Davis County pays about $10,000 a year into Cable 17.
• Davis Counties population will be at 500,000 in about 30 years (not 5).
• Those parts of the County that only have culinary water are paying extra, thanks to the added cost of flouride. (North Salt Lake has especially high cost in taxes because the Golf Course is watered in this fashion) North Salt Lake residents pay an extra $40 average, whereas other areas with secondary water can pay as low as $1 extra.