Lost Surveys, Forty Dollar Chickens, and a Roadside Sermon

by brian McNary

Brian here.

Do you remember getting a general plan survey in the mail and filling it out about a year and a half ago? I do. I waited months and heard nothing about the results. I grew suspicious because that is my nature. I am also one of those people who will actually follow up on a project to see what the outcome is. In this case, I suspected that most of the residents of Toquerville were generally anti-growth.

I have spent a fair amount of my life dealing with urban sprawl. I could care less if I see another pay day lender, pawn shop, mattress store, car lot, or corporate drive-up window. I’ve seen enough. The fascination is over for me.

Land owners make money, developers and partners make money, a few successful businesses make money and the citizens are left holding the bag. The residents get the density issues, the taxing issues like adding fire, police, and city staff. Cars and office space. Crime and traffic issues rise.

This I am told is inevitable. Is that so?

I grew up in a town smaller than Toquerville. A day of fishing was ruined when we saw someone else on the Yellowstone. So when we found Toquerville, we fell in love. City Hall, a church, and a post office. No huge apartment complexes with giant parking lots. No traffic signals. No stores, no bars, no crime, no sprawl. Residents wave.

In late August I asked the city to see the lost survey. I was assured the results would be out in September. I have never seen the results. It’s time we find the lost survey and see what our community had to say.

The Forty Dollar Chicken

Last week I was perusing the Toquerville citizen’s page on Facebook when I came across a post where a commenter was asking whether or not it was true that the city now had an ordinance which was charging 400 dollars a year to raise chickens.

I laughed out loud. Really. The comments were equally as funny. Apparently the city has a formula wherein they determine the size of your lot which decides the number of chickens you can have. If you have a small lot, such as the original poster has, then you are only allowed one to ten chickens after the formula is applied. I did the math. Forty bucks a chicken. I can buy a chicken which is cleaned, plucked, and roasted at Costco for five bucks. Clearly not raised under Toquerville’s expensive new ordinance.

Now I come from chicken raising stock. In fact, I was convinced my grandmother hated chickens. Grandma was ruthless. Grandma would go to the coop, liberate some under performing hen, and woo it while carrying it to a large stump near the barn. Grandma would grab a hatchet and with the speed and dexterity of a meth addicted ninja, render it headless. I only witnessed this once. After that, when grandma told me to do something, I listened.

Now 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. I surmise all of this based on the fact that the Mayor raises chickens and I’m not sure he knew how much it was going to cost him.

A Roadside Sermon

On Thursday at precisely 11:01 a.m. (because I had just looked at the car clock) I was northbound on SH 17, about 1/2 mile south of the Toquerville post office.

A southbound car, a Mini Cooper, left it’s lane crossing the centerline and entering our lane. I sounded the general alarm in a way that I cannot describe on a family blog. My wife was instantly alerted. To avoid a head on collision, I had to swerve left into the southbound lane and pray that the Mini Cooper driver did not suddenly become aware of what was happening and over correct back into the lane she was supposed to be in- the one I was now occupying.

As we passed the Mini Cooper, the car left the northbound shoulder, struck a big boulder and became airborne. It rotated in the air and slammed back onto the shoulder just as we were passing. The car was completely destroyed, every panel.

I parked our car and asked my wife to dial 911 while I went back to the Mini Cooper which was lying on the driver’s side. The driver, an older gal, was conscious and alert. Not as bad as it looked. Someone else was talking to her. The only fluid spill was coolant so no urgent need to extract the driver.

We dutifully waited for the ambulance and sheriff’s office to arrive which I must say, seemed like it took forever. I would give a statement of what happened and then we would be on our way.

When the police arrived, I was completely caught off guard. A deputy I think, about 30 and bald, seemed to appear out of nowhere. He walked toward my wife and began lecturing her. My wife was taking video of the scene. He told her to quit videoing and added that this was the worst day of the victim’s life. The driver was still in the car and not visible due to the deployed airbags.

There are so many things to do at an accident. Securing the scene, locating witnesses (like us) and obtaining statements, preserving evidence. In a free country, like the one I grew up in, we let onlookers and the press film and talk to people just so long as we could accomplish our tasks. Sometimes I would contact reporters later if I thought their film might help with the investigation. The advent of cellphones where anyone can record anything is relatively new. I retired the year the “I” phone came out. Though it is common and widespread now, I just don’t see myself excoriating someone over it. Policing is hard. There is no reason to make it any worse than it is. I eventually turned my statement into the UHP.

The driver we were told, is a Toquerville resident. We are fine. I hope she is too.