Academic All-State Awards

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times

RANDOLPH, Utah, November, 2013.  Five students were recognized for receiving academic all-state designations.  The state selects the top ten students throughout the state who participate in athletics.  Four students from Rich County, Caden Bathlome, Dakota Clark, McKay Jarmin, and Isaac Hopkin were selected in football and Vance Weston was selected for cross country.  The Rich County School Board was very pleased to think that Rich Schools had four of the ten in football and another in cross county, a good showing for such a small school district.

South Rich Elementary was recognized for the second year in a row because of the student growth in academics. 

Garden City Staff Meeting

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times

GARDEN CITY, Utah.  November 14, 2013.  Cindy Gooch from JUB reported on the progress being made on grant applications.  She reapplied for the Tiger Grant and wasn’t satisfied with the reason the grant wasn’t funded.  She had been told that she hadn’t interacted enough with regional leaders.  She contracted Senator Hatch’s office and sent copies of both of the previously submitted grants and asked why Utah is not getting any of the federal dollars that are available.  It was determined that there was no current funding for the Tiger Grant and that other grants could perhaps be pursued;  Gooch  gave a list of several possibilities and was encouraged to move forward with them.

There is an EDA grant that must be applied for prior to March.  Gooch indicated that she would get the papers ready and have the senators read the papers and introduce them.  She also noted there was a TAP fund due in January concerning trails and sidewalks.  They could be used to improve trailheads and sidewalk safety.

Jan Murray of JUB reported that the current water impact fees are not high enough to pay for the expense of connecting someone to the water system.  He indicated that the water study model is nearing completion and much better and more reasonable fees should be put into place.  Buildable lots on the hillsides are a smaller number than originally estimated.  There are about 4,000 possible lots currently in the hillside zoning area.  Of these, about 1200 to 1500 are in areas of under 25% slope.  This, of course, changes the number of units that will actually be needing water and will impact the fee schedule.

It was noted that reasonable water rates along with future replacement costs and future projects need special consideration to make things fair and equitable within the city.  Water distribution and storage are additional issues that need to be studied.

Riley Argyle reported that a MOU with the County has been signed concerning the gun range.  Additional studies dealing with sound issues on the gun range need to be undertaken.

The Bear Lake Water Company well is a dry well.  Nothing can be done with it.

Buttercup made a 2.9 acre trade with the City and the City now needs to fence the area that this subdivision has requested.

The roads in Buttercup need shoulders.  Currently, they edges are crumbling.  The Subdivision are willing to move the ditches so that the city had put in the required gravel on the shoulders and save the asphalt.  It will be done in phases so that everything won’t be in turmoil.  The first phase will be done this coming spring.

A pellet stove has been installed in the swimming pool area.  This has added to the comfort of the swimmers.

Water needs to be piped at Heritage Park.  Water will not flow down the current ditch, and it will require about 120 feet of pipe and a head gate to get water to flow to the right channel.  .  The Council Members didn’t think it was the City’s responsibility to take care of this problem.  It was noted that the Canal Company requires people with shares to be responsible for getting the water from the canal to their property, thus that should be the case in this situation as well. No final design has been completed for Heritage Park

The kiosk is complete except for the frame to be placed in the center of the structure.  .

The Council asked Argyle to look into the price of a large grader with an angled blade.  It would be good for pushing snow and other jobs around the city if the cost was reasonable.

Andy Stokes reported that something needs to be done concerning the city animal ordinance.  Dogs are often out and about, and he receives quite a few calls about them.  He noted that it costs $25 a day but feels the City needs to do something more in order to handle these animal problems.

Wildlife At The Lake

Geese 
Photo by John Spuhler
 

Eagle
Photo by John Spuhler
 

Rich High School Rebels

This team really went for it with a try for two point conversion.  Lots of heart guys!

Photo by Tammy Calder

NOT A Muddled Mathematician

27 Per Week

Chris S. Coray,  NOT a Muddled Mathematician

Chris S. Coray, A well dressed
 Mathematician

Just for the record, I formally state that while I am male, I am not muddled.  That’s one of the differences between a mathematician and an engineer.  Math guys are not muddled.  We are often socially inept (98.7%), prone to staring off into space, make strange jokes, dress poorly, and live in mental monasteries where few choose to enter.  Most people would vaccinate themselves against us if there were such a vaccine.  There isn’t.  Further, have you ever thought to ask just who the NSA is hiring to do all the real work at the giant new NSA snooping site in Utah and the existing sites around the world?  The answer is mathematicians.  The “Revenge of the Nerds” movie is coming to your world but not as fiction.  For better or worse, we are taking over the world.  You won’t feel a thing.  Do not adjust your dial.  It’s too late.

For myself, I personally blame my current condition on ducks.  My father, who was a lawyer, loved to hunt ducks.  It was impossible for me and my brother (1 year younger than I) to avoid being initially caught up in the enthusiasm.  When I was 12 we would get up in the dark every Saturday morning beginning in October, drive in our 1953 Oldsmobile from Salt Lake to a small pond on some guy’s farm west of Brigham City, wade out to our homemade blinds, and blast away at the migrating birds.  In those days the limit was 6 ducks a day but if you had 3 ducks that were pintails or widgeon you could shoot 9.  There were lots of these bonus ducks on the little pond.  The hunting was great and so on Saturday night we would return with a gunnysack containing 27 dead and feathered ducks.  On Sunday we would spend hours picking, cleaning, and on occasion using paraffin for pinfeathers until we had all 27 ducks ready for the kitchen.  In those days nobody had a freezer, in fact, early in my life some guy brought a block of ice to our house each day to put in the refrigerator, which was therefore always stuffed with, well, you know, ducks.

I thought that bringing all this provender home would delight my mother.  Wrong.  While her family of Nimrods were all so puffed up with testosterone and pride, she had to figure out what to do with the 27 ducks before the next weekend.  We were 5 in number so one option would be to eat duck every night from Monday until Friday.  Every week.  For months.  You can only cook a duck so many ways, none worth fossil fuel.  It wasn’t too long before I learned to hate ducks as food.  You hate beets? Turnips? Liver? Mush? (I note parenthetically that on mother’s oatmeal box there was a skull and crossbones that she covered up).  Try duck ala daily, flavored with lead shot, for the entire season known as fall.  But we just kept shooting them on Saturdays.  Soon we began to give them away but after a little while it was literally the case that people who were our friends and potential duck sinks set up watch posts for our car and would close curtains, turn off lights, and hide in storm cellars when we hit their street.  We were bringing the plague of ducks to them.  If only these had been pheasants.  In my mother’s exchange rate 1 pheasant has the same value as 2,342,132 ducks.  And a goose, why it’s nothing more than a morbidly obese duck.  And the trunk of our car smelled like a dead, wet duck.  The aroma of cooking ducks bonded with the wall paint in our house and was not removable.

The upshot of all this is that I became a mathematician because I spent so much time counting ducks and people we knew, figuring out all the permutations of how many birds we could shed with each soon-to-former friend.  I began to appreciate and understand the concept of infinity.  May there be no duck eating in heaven.