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| Photo by Bryce Nielson |
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Public Hearing on CDBG Jan 10
PUBLIC HEARING NOTICE
The Garden City Town Council will hold a Public Hearing on
Thursday, January 10, 2013, at 4:45 p.m.
The meeting will be held at the Garden City Office, located at 69 N.
Paradise Parkway, Building C.
AGENDA
1.
Roll Call
2.
Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) 1st Public Hearing
Notice: The
Town of Garden City, Rich County, will hold a public hearing to consider
potential projects for which funding may be applied under the CDBG Small Cities
Program for Program Year 2013.
Suggestions for potential projects will be solicited, both verbally and
in writing, from all interested parties.
The expected amount of CDBG funds for this Program Year will be
discussed along with the range of projects eligible under this program and a
review of previously funded projects. The hearing will begin at 4:45 p.m. on
January 10, 2013 and will be located at 69 N. Paradise Parkway, Garden City,
Utah. Further information can be
obtained by contacting the Garden City Office at 435-946-2901.
3.
Adjournment
Posted this 27th day of December, 2012
Help Solve a Moose Murder
Someone shot a beautiful moose and left it for dead in the Sweetwater Hillside. There are rules against hunting on the Sweetwater Golf Course and Hillside. This also violates State hunting laws. We need help in identifying the arrows.
Historical Books at Library
Cathie Rasmussen, Librarian
The Garden City Library received a wonderful donation on Wednesday for their Special Collection. Two books containing genealogy, biographies, and Utah history were donated. “Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah: Portraits, Genealogies, Biographies Men Who Came by Wagon Train and Hand Cart 1847-1868” and “History of Salt Lake City” can be perused in the special collections room of the library. At a time when the Library Board has been calling for donations of local history and artifacts for the collection, this generous addition is much appreciated and will be an asset to many history buffs.
Cisco Sonar
By Bryce Neilson
One last observation that most of us have seen is Grandma
hanging out her clothes in the middle of the winter only to have them freeze
solid and then dry. This dynamic
activity is called sublimination which is when water goes from a liquid to a
solid and then due to cold from a solid directly back into a gas.
Bear Laker's
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| Bryce Neilson |
Winter has arrived at Bear Lake. So far my predictions of above average snow
made by observing the number of pine squirrel invading my yard is holding
true. I am just relieved that I don't
need to hear about drought and climate changes when the news stations have
nothing else to report on.
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| Mist On The Lake |
Winter in Bear Lake has a number of characteristics that
don't change from year to year. The fog
is the most prominent one. Now a quick
lesson in thermodynamics. As the surface
water temperature on the lake is warmer than the air temperature condensation
starts to occur. Lots of people will say
"the lake is steaming" which is incorrect. Vaporization occurs when a liquid is heated
to its boiling point at which time the liquid turns into a gas. Condensation is when a gas turns to a liquid
by cooling. On a cold winter morning, evaporation is occurring on the lake as long
as it is liquid. Evaporation is when a
water surface turns from a liquid, directly to a gas. Another unique characteristic of water. The water from evaporation is turned into a
liquid from gas by the cold air. These
little droplets or ice crystals form the fog we see.
We will see this cycle occur frequently as the winter
progresses and the lake approaches freezing.
Depending on the day, wind and temperature the whole Valley will be
filled with "cotton" as you look at it from the over look. Some days, the fog will hang over the valley,
drift to the valley floor during the night and when it lifts in the morning
everything is covered with hoarfrost.
Hoarfrost occurs when condensation (when the lake is evaporating and
cooling) freezes to solid items whose temperature are below the dew point. That is why when we have these spectacular
mornings with hoarfrost on everything you can actually determine which
materials hold heat better. Dark limbs
have less than light colored limbs and so on.
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| Fog on the Lake Photo by Bryce Neilson |
You get to experience a lot of things living next to a large
temperate lake. Luckily water is such a
unique matter and a more extensive education in physics and thermodynamics will
help you understand why or just read RCT.
I hope you look a fog and winter days differently now.
Rich County School Board Meeting
Anita Weston, Reporter
Rich Civic Times
RANDOLPH, UTAH-December 19,
2012. At the beginning of the meeting
there was a minute of silence out of respect to Newtown and the tragedy that
had occurred there.
As the Board was signing checks,
Ralph Johnson indicated that he felt all employees should be paid monthly, not
every two weeks. That would save a
tremendous amount of office time and save the District money. This item was to be placed on next month’s
agenda.
Jaren Wadsworth was present
at the meeting with his wife and three daughters. He teaches math and science in the Rich
Middle School and had not been able to get to any of the other Board
Meetings. He was introduced to the
Board.
The Travel Guidelines Policy
was discussed. There were some wording
changes and the motion was made to adopt the travel reimbursement Policy.
There was a request to home
school which was approved.
Rich County School District
and one other district are invited to attend a dinner the first night at the
EMI (school insurance company) meetings.
It will be held at Little America Steak House on January 10, 2013, at 5
p.m. There will be time set aside for a
question and answer session.
Mr. Saby is the new School
Board Member. He has already attended the new school board member workshop
meetings and will be attending the school board meetings beginning in
January.
The Utah High School Athletic
Association held a Public Hearing concerning changing the boundaries of what
schools play each other. Rich High
School would like to keep the current way things are going but may have some
other schools added to the division.
This would mean there would be play- offs in the division prior the
state competition. That adds additional
travel and addition games where more school class time would be missed. The discussion is still open and no final
decisions have been made.
Four additional basketball
games have been added to the middle school schedule. Two are home games on Thursday nights. The other two are away but close enough that
the players will be able to travel after school to these locations.
Tributes were paid to Blair
Francis for all of his good work on the Board these past few years. Everyone noted their appreciation for his
efforts and wished him well with his future plans.
Calling Out Students Who Don't Do Homework Works Says Motta
Anita Weston, Reporter
Rich Civic Times
RANDOLPH, UTAH- December 19,
2012. Kip Motta, Middle School Principal,
reported that the school holds students to high standards. Homework is necessary for students to attain
the goals that are set. Currently about
25 percent of the students are not performing up to the required proficiency
level. Every Monday morning, Motta calls
out the names of the students who need to remain after school to complete their
homework and move closer to the desired levels.
There are already five students who will be going to summer school this
coming summer.
Some parents have complained
that they do not like the name of their children called out over the loud
speaker. Motta said that this is one of
the ways that get the students working harder, because they don’t like their
names being read aloud. This practice
has become a real incentive for students to get their homework done. The staff supports the policy, and most
parents like to know weekly where their children are as far as grades and
homework goes.
Students who attend summer
school and do not pass are required to take their last year of school
over. Having the student remain at the
junior high for one additional year before they move on to the High School
sometimes works. Sometimes it doesn’t. However, at the high school level, if they
are not successful, they will be given a certificate of attendance, not a
diploma.
It was suggested that Motta
use the student’s ID number instead of their name in calling out the students
who need to remain after school. He
indicated that he would be more than happy to try this and see how it
works. However, if the students don’t
respond as well using this method, he will probably go back to reading out
names because this policy has been very effective in the past.
Governor's Education Budget Discussed
Anita Weston, Reporter
Rich Civic Times
Christine Kearl was to be
present at the School Board Meeting and was listed on the agenda. She, however, had been held up in meetings at
the Governor’s office. Superintendent
Lamborn told the Board that she wanted to report on the way educational items
are being released from the Governor’s office that is supposed to fund and
foster education.
She was also going to talk
about a committee called Leadership of Prosperity made up of businessmen. They are particularly interested in getting
young people in Utah with enough background and education to step into the
business world. There is also an
Excellence Commission who has set as their goal to obtain a 90 percent average
graduation rate. They have established
an eight-year long-range plan to try and accomplish this.
Several days ago, the
Governor presented a budget plan indicating that next year’s budget would be
kinder to education. However, he had
$1.67 million set aside for education. The
Committee of businessmen had asked for $2 million in order to meet the goals
that have been set. Hopefully, the
Governor will rethink this issue and at least fund education to the needed
level to move the State forward.
Most people want to see Utah
grow. If this is to happen, more money
has to go to education. People moving here
to work want to have good schools for their children. Schools and their reputations are usually
some of the first items people check out prior to accepting work in the
State.
One-To-One Technology Initiative
Anita Weston, Reporter
Rich Civic Times
Rich Civic Times
RANDOLPH, UTAH- December 19,
2012. The Middle School and High School
both would like to move toward having a computer for every student called
one-to-one technology. Currently the
High School will be at that point with the purchase of the 30 computers that
have already been approved for the coming year.
The Middle School, however, is not that close.
The current trend is to load
all textbooks onto the computers as well as necessary classroom and drill
software. This is the direction things
are going. There are actually two
different operating systems, the Apple and the Windows environment. Currently, the school has the Microsoft
Windows software because it is set up to control and work with groups of
students. This would be a suggested way
at the present time. The school would
not have to buy nearly as much software because management of the students and
classes is already in place. The devices
that work with the windows environment are called net books.
Casey Johnson, the technical
person for the District, had both an Ipad and a net book to show to the
Board. He noted that the textbooks will
have to be bought and downloaded but that there would not be additional
software purchased. With the Ipad, there
would need to be approximately $500 for software for each of the machines
purchased.
Canvas is currently the
software used by most post secondary schools and would be ideal for the submission
of assignments and things from the students.
Not only is it efficient, but would make going away to school much
easier for the students.
It was noted that several
districts have gone to one student, one computer. Each student is assigned a machine which is
theirs throughout their schooling. This
means that as they take care of the equipment, it continues to work well and do
a good job for them. If they are
careless or damage the machine, they are required to make restitution if it is
their fault. Seniors will be given the
oldest machines since they only have one year left. The new machines will be given to freshmen to
use for the next four years. There are
still lots of questions to answer and problems to work out.
The Board asked Johnson to
continue to investigate and refine what is needed in order to move forward with
technology in the Rich County Schools.
Winter in Bear Lake Valley
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| Doug and Elaine Alder |
By Doug Alder, Historian
The original settlers to Bear Lake Valley knew they would
encounter intense winters. That is why
Brigham Young chose Salt Lake Valley over Cache Valley and Bear Lake Valley
that some fur trappers recommended as preferable for the Mormon settlers. The
church leaders waited for 15 years before considering Bear Lake seriously. Then
they undertook the effort partly because the 1862 Homestead Act could have
attracted “outsiders” there. They wanted
the valley to be part of the Mormon empire.
Knowing that the winters there could be severe, they undertook it
anyway. The winters indeed fulfilled
their expectations but they also provided a greater supply of water than
elsewhere in Utah.
In his book A History
of Rich County, Robert Parson includes this report of continuing
winters: “A resident of Laketown
commented in 1884 that ‘never, even during the experience of the oldest
inhabitants, has there been so much snow upon the ground as at present.’ Two to three feet of snow covered the valley
with drifts up to eight feet deep. This
kind of precipitation, occurring for a ten-year period from the mid-1870s to
the mid-1880s, made supplemental irrigation in some cases unnecessary.” (p.79)
Nearly a century later my wife, Elaine, and I were invited
to Laketown to speak to the high school students during the winter. As I recall, there were six of them in the
senior class. When we got to Garden City
in freezing weather, we turned south.
The snow was piled high on the side of the road, higher than the roof of
the car. We were frankly
frightened. We did not know if our old
car would make the return trip. We
confided that to the principal. He had a
colleague address the problem. He put a
large piece of cardboard over the front of our radiator so that the freezing
air would not get into the engine on the trip home.
As we watch the news each evening in St. George, we have
kept close track of the snow level at Bear Lake for 35 years. We know that our friends there have often
seen three feet of snow, especially on the Sweetwater Hill, and that they have
to get professional snow plowers to clear roads so they can get to their
homes. That is likely why the population
of the county is still modest and why summertime visitors enjoy the quietude
and richness of the vegetation when we arrive in the spring. Please keep shoveling.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
Have a Merry Christmas!
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| Garden City Second Ward Nativity 2012 Photo by Lauriann Wakefield
Christmas
Ann
and I were born and grew up in Utah but moved to Seattle, Washington in September
of 1956 when Ann was nineteen and I was 21.
We had a brand new baby, born in August, a brand new job paying $1.75 an hour,
no money in the bank, no arrangements for a place to live, and a hazy future. I headed to Seattle without Ann so that I
could get processed into my new job and find a place we could rent. Ann and the baby stayed with Ann's parents while
I was house hunting, and while she was recovering from the birth plus the shock
of moving away from her family right in the middle of trying to learn the ins
and outs of motherhood.
I
probably wouldn't have made it those first few weeks except that my dad gave me
twenty dollars to help me with expenses as I was leaving for Seattle. Even then the only thing I could afford was to
rent a bed in an attic room shared with another fellow who I didn't know. There were no cooking facilities and so I
just bought a sandwich wherever I could find one at a price low enough to
afford. Once I had gotten my first pay
check I found a little two bedroom house to rent for $95/month and sent for
Ann. Her parents moved her, the baby,
and all our belongings to Seattle. It
took one very small U-Haul trailer and a few things in the trunk of their
DeSoto car. We lived in the Seattle area
for the next fifty years, but we drove to Utah almost every year to spend
Christmas with Ann's family in Porterville, a little farming community just outside
of Morgan, Utah. Vic and Zylpha Shaw,
Ann's parents, had lived in that little 150-year old house since early in their
marriage.
Over
the years the roads we traveled between Seattle and Porterville varied from dry
to wet to blizzards to solid ice, but every year we returned to Porterville for
Christmas .... like lemmings to the sea.
One Christmas we wrecked our new car, but pushed on to Porterville by
bus because that was our tradition.
Spending Christmas anywhere else was unacceptable to us and our
children. The home of Ann's parents, were
we stayed, was small with one tiny bathroom, but the kitchen was big and so was
the love that we all felt there. Christmas
eve was hot, homemade chili cooked on a coal stove, and pan-fried bread made
fresh from dough rolled and kneaded by Zylpha on the kitchen table. Outside it was cold, but inside it was warm
because Zylpha carried buckets of hand selected coal and tended the big
fireplace that heated the front room.
Napping on the floor in front of that fireplace was a warm and
delightful way to spend a lazy afternoon.
Remember
that Christmas is first about Him whose birthday we celebrate, and then it is
about family and tradition and caring about others. To Quote Thomas S. Monson, "...our opportunities to love and give
of ourselves are indeed limitless, but they are also perishable. Today there are hearts to gladden, kind words
to say, deeds to be done...." So
from the Muddled Male and Ann, his wife, we hope that you have a Christmas
filled with the happiness of family and traditions of love. And if you are faced with challenges we wish
you understanding and hope.
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Ice Center Party, New Year's Eve
Mon, December 31, 7pm – Tue, January 1, 2013, 12am
WhereGeorge S. Eccles Ice Center / 2825 N. 200 E. / North Logan, UT (map)
The George S. Eccles Ice Center will host a New Year’s Eve celebration for all ages. Three live bands will play 60's, 70's and 80’s music all night. There will be dancing, ice skating and entertainment for the children. The cost is $10 per person.
There is an optional dinner which includes a steak or chicken fajita bar, rice, beans and dessert catered by Café Sabor for an additional charge of $10 (advanced notice needed). Please go to www.ecclesice.com for more details. Bring your date, bring the neighbors and the kids and come help bring in the new year with the community at the Eccles Ice Center.
A Science Festival in Logan for Kids
Thursday, December 27, 6:30pm – 8:30pm
WhereWhittier Center 290 N 400 E Logan, UT
4th Annual Faraday's Holiday Event - A Festival of Science for Kids!
Exciting, Hands-on Science Activities for Kids of all Ages!
Keynote speaker: Amber Stokes, USU Biology Graduate Student
Suggested donation: Kids (5-15) $1 / Adults $2
www.starhousediscovery.org
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