Council, Fire & sheriff

By lori cole

Aspen Mirror Lake by Lori Cole

October is such a lovely month in Toquerville, don’t you agree? The temperatures are cooling off, the leaves are changing, and we begin to see some easing of traffic.

bypass nearly complete?

Speaking of traffic, the news at the October 2 city council meeting this week was that the south side of the Toquerville Bypass is within 2 to 3 weeks of being completed. For those of us who still see a massive pile of rocks and what appears to be a still-unstable hillside, we are both relieved and skeptical.

There was more discussion on the problems with the north side of the bypass as well. A “sand pocket” has stalled construction there. Repairs have been scheduled (they will fill the area with large rocks) and two change orders are in the works to accommodate the necessary fix.

A new video of the bypass construction was presented in the meeting. Hopefully, that will become available for viewing on the city website.

hurricane valley fire district

There will be a Public Hearing on Monday at 6 pm at the Hurricane Fine Arts Center

The other item that took up most of the time was the issue of funding the Hurricane Valley Fire District.  The district has submitted a request for a 52% increase in property taxes which only applies to that portion of our property taxes paid to the fire district. This is less than the approximately 90% increase in fire district property taxes they asked for last time, but it is still an amount that many would struggle to afford on our fixed incomes. Not to mention that a large part of the increase in services that the district is providing is for non-residents, i.e., tourists.  The fire district reported that 29% of their services, about 6000 calls, were non-resident related.  

The answer to prevent the huge increase in property taxes on citizen property owners is a small increase in the sales tax. The sales tax increase would amount to 1/3 of one cent and would not be assessed on grocery items or medical services. It would apply to restaurants and hotels and would bring in more money than the proposed property tax increase.    

While most of us would rather not pay any higher taxes, a small increase of 1/3 of a penny for “non-essentials” would be easier to bear. It would put the additional tax burden largely on the tourist industry which would be very small per person. It would also pay for a continuation of the present level of emergency services in our district.  I hope that when the sales tax increase for EMS funding comes to a vote, we will all pass it.

from the sheriff’s office

Other things of note: The sheriff is asking for money that will add a medical wing onto the jail, which will be able to house medical offices and bed facilities for inmates needing medical care. I didn’t catch how they are planning to pay for it but I will look into that later.

On the plus side, this addition would relieve some of the burden on the Hurricane Fire District as medical staff at the jail could provide in-house care and treatment rather than treating and transporting prisoners to outside clinics and hospitals.

I also learned that the sheriff has been providing a quarterly report to the council regarding the number of calls and has been asked to break down where they are seeing the increases. For example, the sheriff reported calls to Toquerville increased by 276 calls in the last 12 months. We would like to know what type of calls are increasing. The city council has previously asked for a monthly report (viewable on our city website) which shows what types of calls Washington County is receiving. Hopefully that will be forthcoming.

YouTube and the Microphone

There were some additional tidbits of information provided, and I encourage you to watch the YouTube video. I believe they have also identified why the microphone sound cuts in and out and will be fixing that shortly. Yay!

Happy October everyone, and another council meeting update will follow in a couple of weeks.