Kathy Bence reports on the first meeting of 2024. Among other things, new planning commissioners were installed and the LDS Church will continue to be responsible for the July 24 Pioneer Day activities. Also, a temporary code enforcement officer is following up on complaints.

The public forum is back at every meeting, there’s a new city logo, and after 26 years of serving the city, Ty Bringhurst is stepping down.

Among other things, this meeting considered the appointment of two Planning Commissioners (4-yr terms), one Interim Commissioner (1-yr term), and two alternate Commissioners for 2024. After some recommendations and negotiation with the mayor, the choices were made and approved.

I’m not sure why the city has any fee for raising chickens. We don’t have a disabled chicken fund or an epidemic of chickens wandering the streets. Rather I think, these types of ordinances are plucked from other Utah cities and unceremoniously become law here. No process is really employed, input is not solicited.

Lori Cole reports on the Nov 1 meeting that included discussion on the new ER in Hurricane, possible future state mandates that would not please most Toquerville residents, completing the city code, updating the uniform fee schedule, etc.

The city recently removed the public forum from every other City Council meeting. I’m using this Sentinel forum to ask that the City Council reinstate the public forum for each council meeting.

If you’re a city, there are grants for everything! Grants were mentioned in almost every item covered. As residents, we’re happy to not pay, but cities like ours are certainly beholden to higher government powers.

There were a few interesting items that came up during this council meeting: code enforcement, salary increases, and the Shangrila zone change request.

As a follow-up to part 1 in this multi-part series on water, Selling Off Our Future for Short-Term Gain, this article focuses on recent progress on the county and state front.

As I perused the agenda, I noticed the time slot for public concerns had gone missing. After the meeting I was told that the City was only going to offer open time every other meeting. If true, this would mean a citizen might have to wait nearly a month to speak about something. Though it can be time consuming, public access is more important than saving a few minutes.

I left the meeting feeling that all this interest and growth is going to cost us dearly in higher taxes and our country lifestyle. And with all this growth and Federal money comes a whole new set of problems, rules, regulations and hooks. We need concerned citizens to be involved and informed!

The School Board combined the Capital Levy tax and the Debt Service tax into one account, the Capital Levy account. The good news is that there won’t be any more of those pesky bond initiatives, the bad news is we’ve lost our voice and handed over a blank check.

Spending works like a ratchet, it moves in one direction. The Washington County School District has been on a multi-year spending blowout that will lead to higher taxation in the future if it’s NOT scaled back.

Is the theme-park-proposal the lipstick on an RV-park-pig? In Hurricane, after the developer pulled out, their city council admitted that a proposed project they supported was just a ruse to get land rezoned to commercial to increase its value. Is this proposed project a way to get land rezoned to sell?

Besides an introduction to the Toquerville Sentinel and Toquerville Readiness classes to begin Sept. 14, there were many issues discussed which left me with an array of questions which require further research. Among these are grants to FEMA, land swaps, public infrastructure districts.

This short meeting included a change order for the Toquerville Parkway, more fine-tuning of the Nightly Rental Ordinance, and mention of an August 5 highway cleanup.

Some of Toquerville’s neighbors in Leeds have recently been debating whether housing should be built over former uranium mines. A brief background and deadlines for radiation exposure compensation might be of interest to Toquerville residents

There will be a hearing July 17 on a 3rd zone change application for the Shangrila valley. The application suggests that residents want tourists in this area, do we?

So I went to the show. I went to see what I might expect in Toquerville should a similar event happen here.

The City Council passed budget Resolutions. Of the most interest to this writer was the verdict on RV parks in Toquerville.