by brian McNary

“Rainbow Over the Mesa” by Lori Cole

Well, I started this snarky post last Friday that has gone missing. Perhaps I didn’t hit the save button. That was probably good fortune smiling down on me.

I am going to skip most of the department reports. Nothing earth shattering to report.

Ordinance enforcement

Jason Leavitt, Public Safety Director, has been making good progress on ordinance enforcement with only one or two residents digging their heels in. A few residents were upset about blasting on the bypass and getting dusted.

Housekeeping

This week’s council meeting can only be summed up with one word. Housekeeping. It lasted nearly 3 hours. Little did I know that the high point of the meeting was when Mayor Sip asked Ryker Steglich (former planning official who left for a job at Sunrise Engineering last month) to state his name for the record.

There was one zoning change granted for a landowner near Anderson Junction from highway commercial to business manufacturing. There was no discussion about what the owners would be manufacturing.

Ryker spent about a half hour+ updating the subdivision ordinance to comply with state law. Sunrise Engineering has been helping several cities clean up their ordinances.

Buzzkill

What I would like to do now is offer an example of why people do not attend city council meetings. This is business item 3. An immediate buzzkill when uttered at any cocktail party.

“Discussion and possible action on Ordinance 2024.XX Amending and restating Toquerville City Code 10-15D-4: Zoning Districts to modify the permitted uses within the extraction industry overlay zone.”

I do not have a clue what this is. I can tell you that it was approved. As were the following 5 business items on the agenda, all similarly written in Greek. The second to last item was a proposal waiving the 500.00 dollar water meter installation fee for Shangri-La. It was approved.

I think I fell asleep briefly, around 8 PM. Maybe 5 minutes is all. It wasn’t a deep REM sleep or anything like that but I did have a feeling of lost time.

Request for proposal

Item last was the RFP (request for proposal) for another in house attorney. Council members said we only had one applicant, and they were mostly unsure if that applicant met the full qualifications as set forth. There was some banter about what to do next.

Reporting Crime

I would like to mention that Councilman Sands threw out the idea of reporting crime on the Toquerville Sentinel. I like the idea. The problem of course is how we would obtain timely information from the City or Sheriff. If we could work through that issue- we could open a crime tab and update it. It could be done in a professional way that wouldn’t identify or embarrass residents on the victim side. So, we’ll see if the City website does it or whether we do it.

The meeting adjourned at 8:45 PM with a closed session.

Community Readiness Meeting- Thurs., Sept 12, City Hall at 7:00 PM.

Fall Community Clean-up is Monday, Sept 23 to Wednesday, Sept.25.

Council Housekeeping