council & Firelight

Feb 29

by lori cole

The second February city council meeting on the 21st covered a variety of subjects at lightning speed but was still over 2 hours long. Here is a recap:

The Parkway/Bypass

Stanley Consulting was not present to provide an update on the bypass, but they sent a drone video of the progress which you can watch on the Toquerville site.

There has been a delay in the construction of the bypass (parkway) and we learned that the ground at the “slope” or “cut” has been “moving”, creating a landslide/rockfall risk. An engineering firm has been hired to evaluate the area and recommend actions to secure the slope. The city expects to have the recommendations in April and expects to act on those recommendations. It is estimated there will be three to four more months of additional construction before the parkway construction is completed.

The city asks that citizens remember that the area of “The Cut” (SR 17 between Cholla and Shangri-La) is still an active construction zone so please stay away from the area.

City Manager Afton Moore also provided some funding information about the Toquerville Parkway in response to a request for more transparency on the project. Recently, some residents asked who was paying for the cost overruns on the parkway project, presumably concerned that the funding was coming out of the city budget and our local tax dollars. Afton advised that the City of Toquerville is NOT paying for the bypass or any cost overruns; the money for the bypass is coming from the Utah State Legislature and the developer through a PID (Public Infrastructure District). The bypass is a public/private partnership. It can get a bit confusing when our city council is being asked to approve the payment of the money for a cost overrun, but the contract is such that both the Toquerville City Council and UDOT must approve all change orders and payments. Afton added that if any of us have further questions please call City Hall.

Law Enforcement

The Washington County Sheriff provided an update on their activities.

· There have been 512 calls for service in the city over the past 1-year period.

The city council asked if the sheriff’s office (SO) could provide a regular update on the number and types of calls for service for regular posting on the Toquerville City website, and he agreed to set that up. It will be like what the Hurricane PD provides for their community.

· There is a new training sergeant position at WCSO, which comes from a new Utah State program that hopes to ultimately place an “armed guardian” in all public and private schools in the state. Representative Wilcox has worked on the bill and modeled it on Florida’s “Guardian” program.

The citizen volunteers will be trained by county sheriffs and each school will be provided with one armed guardian on site. This state program is still in the planning stages and while the Sheriff will be responsible for training the volunteers, there will also be a state security chief and a local security officer to put the plans in motion and monitor the activity, etc.

· The Sheriff has added a third K-9 unit to the department. While the other two K-9 units are assigned to narcotics and patrol, this unit will be assigned to Search & Rescue and trained in cadaver scent and human tracking. A community group donated 15k to WCSO to obtain the dog for this purpose.

· The 450-bed Purgatory Corrections Center will be adding another 64 beds to the jail. The construction on the new wing will begin next month.

· The drug task force has conducted two operations in Toquerville during the past year, but he pointed out that we still reside in a safe community.

City Financial Report & State of the City Brief

· Toquerville City has passed the yearly audit and is on track with spending and the budget.

· The city has been asking for bids for a generator for Town Hall.

· Work continues to move forward on criminalizing the city code with special attention on these top five issues: Lighting, Vicious Dogs, Nuisances (including drugs), Unlicensed Nightly Rentals, and Land Use Violations (including Grading Without a Permit.)

Moore said we should have our new city attorney hired by March 6th. In addition to the new city attorney, we have a city prosecutor who has also been selected. The city is completing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the courts for when the new code enforcement officer begins issuing citations.

The State of the City address will include coverage of the various city plans to include the General Plan, the Capital Facilities Plan, the Annexation Policy Plan, the Water Conservation Plan, the Culinary Water Master Plan, and the Master Transportation Plan.

Also set to be covered are the completed city projects as well as those still underway, such as:

· The city has provided culinary water to Anderson Junction

· The AMI water conversion (water meters) is nearing completion.

· Westfield Park Phase 1 is still under construction, which includes the restrooms and site grading. Phase 2 will include the construction of the pavilion and the installation of grass, and Phase 3 will include the addition of pickleball courts.

· Phase Three (3) of the Toquerville Parkway (bypass) is currently underway as mentioned earlier.

· The water tank agreement with the State of Utah has been signed which provides the city with a $4.5 million grant to construct the new 2-million-gallon water tank on the west side of Toquerville. The Firelight development will be paying for any overages.

· The Sapp Brothers have begun the grading for the Travel Plaza at Anderson Junction across from Settler’s Junction.

Economic Growth

The City of Virgin wants to join our water district. The district advisory committee has recommended that Virgin first join the Ash Creek Special Services District. The Virgin City Council will discuss and vote on whether to proceed.

Moore advised that she and the mayor have attended several meetings including “What’s Up Down South” and the Dixie Transportation Expo held in St. George recently. The main topics of discussion among participants were housing shortages, economic development, and tourism.

One of the questions Moore and Mayor Sip were asked by other attendees was “How does Toquerville feel about a road to Leeds in the next 10 or 12 years?” Is there a need for an additional road other than SH 91 and I-15? I wonder how Leeds feels about another proposed road linking Toquerville and Leeds.

State Legislative Session

There are several bills in the legislature that city staff are following closely:

· HB 13 – Infrastructure Financing Districts

· SB 86 – How local governments bond

· SB 37 – Elections – Municipal and special district amendments

· HB 367 – Local government fee modifications

· HB 289 – Property rights – ombudsman amendment

· SB 185 – Residential building inspection amendments

· SB 168 – Affordable housing

· HB 61, SB 18, and a couple of un-numbered water bills, including one that would ban lawn and sod watering from October 1st to April 1st. This would only apply to the area of the Great Salt Lake for now, but we know how these restrictions tend to experience “mission creep.”

Many notice the contrast between Utah’s push for economic and population growth while continuing to enact even more policies that force current residents to ration water. Do we have enough water or not?

New Toquerville City Website

Our new website goes live on February 28th. Be sure to check it out.

Update on the FIRELIGHT (Sun River) Development—WATER RIGHTS

Moore advised that we have come to the point where we have to address the question of how Firelight is going to be serviced by the water district. My immediate thought was, WHAT?! We have a huge 1400+ home/commercial development going in without any agreement on where it will find the water required to service it. This is at a time when the current residents of Toquerville are already forced to follow water restrictions. Not to mention new water meters installed on our homes that can be controlled and monitored online so our water usage can be watched more closely, presumably to penalize us further.

Why must we give up more of such a valuable resource to a developer? The City is working on a plan to provide Firelight with the water they will need, and it includes a possible partnership between Toquerville and the water district, but it still seems to add up to current residents surrendering more of a scarce resource (water) to a developer. I have to wonder how much more than the base $55.00 per month we will be forced to pay for water.

Moore was peppered with questions about why the Firelight water infrastructure is only now coming up for discussion, why Firelight and the city have not already confirmed their water needs can be met, and why they have not already obtained their water rights. Developers are required to acquire their water rights before the City of Toquerville signs a contract with them, but apparently, that was not the policy when the deal for the Firelight Development was signed in 2008. ** Please see the excellent article written by Neil MacDonnell in the May 3, 2023, edition of the Toquerville Sentinel for more information.

Public Forum

No one spoke in the public forum this time. We need to do a better job of using this forum and encouraging more people to participate.

Business Items

Reading along with the meeting agenda provided by the city, a few other issues were discussed and tabled.

1. Ratified. Discussion and ratification approving a change order of $147.856.50 to the Toquerville Parkway (bypass) project to raise the road grade near the south end of the project. As mentioned earlier, the money for this is paid by UDOT and the contractor, not Toquerville City.

2. Ratified. Discussion and ratification on approving a change order to the Toquerville Parkway project for $180,000.00 to hire Applied Geotechnical Engineering Consultants, Inc. to provide solutions that will solve the geotechnical concerns on the Toquerville Parkway cut slopes. The money is paid by UDOT and the contractor, not the City.

3. Toquerville City Culinary Water Master Plan - Discussed and ultimately tabled. It’s a 97-page document that will have long-term effects on the city and cost a lot of money. There was a lengthy discussion, and as we are all affected by these water management plans, I encourage you to watch the video of the meeting. (This discussion is located at about 1 hour and 9 minutes into the video.)

4. Passed/fees waived. A request was made to waive the Town Hall Reservation Fee for Leif Bjarnson’s Readiness Meetings.

5. Item tabled. Grading Ordinance - there were only three city council members at this meeting and after some discussion, it was decided that because the grading ordinance is complex the issue should be heard and decided when more council members are present.

6. Sapp Brothers Travel Plaza – Passed. This is NOT a zone change – the zone is already commercial. Our current code is worded to require a “conditional use permit” for any building over 5000 square feet. The Sapp Brothers plaza will have two such buildings that have already been permitted overall, nothing has changed, but due to wording in our current code, they must go this extra step.

7. Commercial Business License Fee Schedule. Toquerville currently has no commercial business license fee. The proposed fee schedule was modeled after the St. George City model. Approved.

8. Passed. An additional Planning Committee Meeting has been added to each month, to be held on the 4th Wednesday.

9. City Cemetery Code – Tabled. Specifically addressed were defining the duties of the City Cemetery Clerk and revision of the process for the Burial of Indigents. The discussion was long and complex and involved incurring costs for the City which are not yet required by the state. I encourage you to watch the video at about the 2 hours and 15-minute mark.

10. Toquerville City Flag Display Policy (again): Approved.

Other

Be sure to check out the upcoming city events calendar.

The meeting adjourned at 8:40 PM.

Kathy Bence