Six Days Of Unremitting Snow And Counting....

Snow Trees
Photo by Lauriann Wakefield
 

Garden City Planning and Zoning

Randall Knight & Anita Weston, Reporters

Rich Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY, Utah.  February 5, 2014. A public hearing was held to allow the public an opportunity to have questions concerning Water’s Edge answered by the developer, Norm Mecham.  It was noted that all proposed structures meet City ordinance requirements.  The footprint is larger with the new design than with the original one with a higher roof line presented at prior meetings. 

The opportunity for the public to ask questions about the proposed trails and parks plan was also made available to the public.  

The Planning and Zoning meeting was held as scheduled at 5:00 PM.  The board members in attendance were: Lance Bourne, Jim Stone, Mike Schiess, Susan House, Pat Argyle and Dewayne Gifford. Nate Gracey was absent. 

Dewayne Gifford was sworn in as a  new board member.  

Norm Mecham reviewed the new Waters Edge design submitted two weeks before the meeting date. Several questions were asked and answered and the main discussion focused on the number and locations of handicap parking and access to the hotel.  An agreement was made on the specific location of where the building height would change from 35 ft to 25 ft high.   A proposal was made to accept the plans as presented with the understanding they are conceptual and will be updated as the plan matures.  The conceptual plan was approved. 

The Parks and Trails Master Plan was discussed. P&Z member, Mike Schiess, requested the document include a list of goals and objectives for future citizens to understand what was intended when the document was written.  Gary Cox, the new city administrator, had not had time to become familiar with the plan.  Schiess also requested a method to monitor and repair the trails that are damaged by erosion.  Because the city plans are encouraging people to come to Garden City to enjoy the bike path and number of trails available from town and the local area, he thought a comment should be added about the bike path eventually going around the lake.  A question was asked on how much money the City spends on the bike path.  Riley Argyle reported the city spends about $60,000 per year to maintain the bike path.  A question was asked about what the RV/OHV restrictions are for highway 89/30.  That matter needs to be investigated.

Ted Wilson, the owner of the access road/trails to Hodges and Richardson canyon, recommend the trails be closed in the spring to prevent excess erosion by four wheelers.  He said the public is abusing the access by destroying his signs, fences, and having open fires.  Mr. Wilson stated in some places the trail is within 45 ft of the spring which provides culinary water to him and the city so a new access needs to be provided. This would especially be needed if the city starts to promote these canyons as off-road trails to Logan canyon summit. He also opposes the city spending city tax dollars on projects outside the city limits.

Darin Pugmire asked the board to review the parking ordinance requirement and specifically the 10 parking spaces for a 10,000 sq ft building and 1 additional parking stall for every 200 sq ft above the 10,000.  He said with an average of 3.5 people per car, his parking requirement would be for 35 people even though his business cannot handle that many, so the requirement does not make sense.  He thinks the city should take a more active roll in creating additional parking areas to reduce the parking on Hwy 89/30.  He submitted a list of 4 areas that needs the parking requirement reviewed.  The board also agreed there needs to be clarification added to include employee parking spaces. 

Pugmire also asked the board to review the new setback requirement from Hwy 89/30 and the side setback of  6 ft versus the old requirement of 4 ft.  Pat Argyle stated that because Pugmire is a City Council member the policies and procedures need to be followed.  Therefore, the board agreed he needed to go before the Variance Committee to resolve his concerns.

Riley Argyle, City Public Works,  updated the board on the bonding ordinance requirement based on what the City’s attorney told him.  The attorney said ANY improvements and not just infrastructure improvements need to be bonded.  Bonds are required for the total project and not just the various phases.  Pugmire said he called eight cities to see what they do.  They reported that bonds are required for phases and not the total project.  He said Heber requires cash only bonds and the performance bond money goes to the city if the development isn’t completed.  Lance Bourn, Chair of the Planning & Zoning, said a public hearings and town council meetings need to address this new requirement.

Under miscellaneous discussions, Argyle said the current ordinance does not allow rodeos, only livestock auctions.  He introduced two owners of a livestock company that is proposing to bring a rodeo to the city.  Their plan is to hold more than one rodeo during the summer months.  This would require an arena to be built and the proposed area would be north of the city office buildings.

The Planning and Zoning Committee decided they needed to hold a work meeting to update and work on City Ordinances.  They want to look at zoning areas of taller buildings, bonding, parking, and so forth.

Bourne noted that there are several areas in town where cleanup is needed.  He mentioned that the area around the Chevron Station is not very welcoming to people driving into the town.  He noted that the individuals involved have been contacted and asked to tidy up that area.

It was suggested that everyone google Prince of Wales Hotel to see what can be done when views of the area are preserved.  Garden City is probably late in doing such a thing, but hopefully, some views can be opened up or obtained.

It was noted that Harbor Village Light House is 75’ high and doesn’t appear to be extremely tall.  This might be included in the height discussion ordinance.

 

 

 

Part-Time Job Available

HELP WANTED:  Rich County Recorder’s Office seeks part-time deputy.  Must be able to operate standard office machines including typewriter.  Must be able to communicate effectively both verbally and in writing.  Applications may be picked up at the Rich County Clerk’s office M-F 9:00– 2:00, 1:00-5:00 or printed from the County Website.  Send Application and Resume to P.O. Box 322, Randolph, UT, or submit to dames@richcountyut.org.  Position will remain open until qualified individual is found

January Sheriff's Report

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times

RANDOLPH, Utah. January, 2014.  There were 85 incidents during the month of January.  There were 39 in Garden City, 12 in Laketown, 3 in the north end of the County, 23 in Randolph, 1 in the south end of the County, and 7 in Woodruff. 

Garden City had 6 Citizen Assists, 4 Alarms, 4 Civil Processes, and 4 Traffic Hazards.  There were 2 each of the following:  Agency Assistance, Animal Problems, DUI alcohol or Drugs, Traffic Accidents with Damage, Suspicious Persons/Circumstances, Thefts, and VIN Serial Number Inspections.  There was 1 each of the following:  Abandoned Vehicle, Child Abuse or Neglect, Controlled Substance Problem, Fire, Lockout, Traffic Accident with Injuries, and Traffic Violation. 

Laketown had 3 Traffic Hazards and 1 each of the following:  Agency Assistance, Alarm, Citizen Assist, DUI Alcohol or Drugs, Juvenile Problem, Medical Emergency, Suspicious Person/Circumstance, Theft, and a Wanted Person. 

In the North County were 2 Citizen Assists and 1 Traffic Hazard. 

There were 5 Traffic Accidents with Damage, 3 Criminal Histories, and 2 Suspicious Persons/Circumstances, and 2 Citizen Assists in Randolph.  There was 1 each of the following:  Agency Assistance, Booking Prisoner, Child Abuse or Neglect, Citizen Dispute, Civil Process, Domestic Disturbance, Harassment, Juvenile Problem, Traffic Hazard, Traffic Violation, and Transportation of Person/Property. 

There was a Lockout in the south end of the County. 

There were 3 Traffic Accidents in Woodruff.  There was also 1 each of the following in this Community:  Fire, Lost Property, Missing Person, and Suspicious Person/Circumstance. 

There were 26 Traffic Citations and 24 Violations.  There were 16 Citations and 21 Violations in Garden City, 3 Citations and 3 Violations in Laketown, 5 Citations and 6 Violations in Randolph and 2 Citations and 4 Violations in Woodruff. 

Of the 34 Violations, 21 were for Speeding.  There was one each of the following:  Possessing Paraphernalia, Operating Vehicle without Insurance, No Proof of Insurance, Driving Under the Influence, Open Container/Drinking Alcohol, Right of Way Stop/Yield Sign, No Valid License Ever Obtained, Possession of Marijuana, Domestic Violence, Theft, and Intoxication.  There was also one Warning/Violation in Woodruff, and an additional warning for speeding.

The Muddled Male

Truth???   Or a Double Dog Dare?

 

By Bob Stevens, The Muddled Male

        I was standing on my deck the other day trying to shovel snow in a freezing wind when I began

to think about June, a warm month considered by many to be the month for brides.  If June is the brides’ month, then the preceding May might be considered the groom’s last month.  Now I don’t mean to imply that getting married for men is like dying.  I just mean that the month before the nuptials is the last time the groom will be allowed to stand around and freely swap tall tales with a bunch of friends.  Men, you see, feel comfortable exaggerating just a little if it makes the story better.  Most women, however, demand total accuracy of facts, right down to the most minuscule of jots and tittles.  I was once regaling a group with a really funny story about driving when I said, “I must have been doing at least 200 miles-per-hour.”  Before I could begin the punch line Ann, my wife said, “Actually he was doing less than fifty because we were on a sharp curve at the time and besides, he never drives over 40 because he is a doddering old man who drives most of the time with his left turn signal on.”  Then she said, “Go on with your story dear, you had just started to tell us the funny part about what happened when you were driving faster than your ability.”  Well, by now everyone was focused on “doddering old man with his left turn signal on,” and began to wander away.  So I gave up and decided that from that point forward I would always tell the complete and total truth. 

        Which leads me to the gauntlet thrown down recently in this very paper by the Un-Muddled Mathematician in an article dripping with the same type of sarcasm used by my kindergarten buddies when they found that I was afraid to climb to the highest point in the playground monkey-bar set.  My buddies were also afraid to climb to the highest point, but they still delighted in standing below on firm ground singing, “Bobby is a scaredy-cat, Bobby is a scaredy-cat.” 

        You may remember that the Mathematician’s gauntlet consisted of a double dog dare for me to be roped together with my friend cautious-Kam and walk out onto the frozen lake at least as far as the Rock Pile where Chris, the Mathematician, and Scott, the fish counter, would be angling for fish through a hole in the ice.  If Bobby, the scaredy-cat, and cautious-Kam would do that then he, the Mathematician, would donate $50 to a college scholarship fund he was setting up to help some deserving student from our area pay their college tuition. 

        Well, to show that an engineer can’t be out flanked by a mere mathematician, I am hereby accepting the double dog dare and will contribute $60 to the fund provided that the following conditions are met prior to my daring walk: Condition-1 our mutual friend Mark will drive Scott’s favorite camouflaged pickup truck out to the Rock Pile and back to check the structural integrity of the ice prior to my walk.  Condition-2 Chris and Scott will hold hands as participants in the annual Polar Plunge and jump into the icy water of the Marina together while singing one verse of that famous 1943 novelty song by Milton Drake, All Hoffman, and Jerry Livingston, Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey.  A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe.  To avoid embarrassment I suggest that they jump in fully dressed rather than to stand there in only a swimsuit and goose bumps. 

        In keeping with my new goal to always tell the truth, I am admitting that I made some of the above up.  I leave it to you to determine which part.  Those wanting to contribute to the College Fund should contact the Mathematician prior to the plunge. 

Ed Note: I will make the first donation if all conditions are met! The Mathemetician has met his match!

Rich VS Westside

Photos By Tammy Calder

 

 

 

Jordan Comes To Garden City

Chris and Bobbie Coray are hosting their friend Osama Al Ghanam from Madaba, Jordan.  He will be opening boxes of treasures from Jordan on Friday, February 8 at the Bear’s Den in Garden City from 2-3:30 many of the pieces will be for sale.  This is his story. 

A Sign with a Story

From the Blog Lifestyles: Mosaic in Madaba-The Other Osama http://lifestylesabroad.wordpress.com Author not stated.

“A life lived in fear of losing your child…not from bombs, violence or unrest. But from a genetic disorder. As I’m handed a cup of tea and sit down, the streetlights cast shadows around us. The narrow streets of Madaba are slowing down, shops closing as night grows deeper.

  I had passed Osama’s and Malik’s mosaic shop earlier that day. Just another curious wanderer, I stopped for a minute to admire the brother’s workshop. Malik stepped out, greeted me and after hearing I was from America hurriedly rushed inside.

He returned moments later proudly holding a framed document; a letter from the American ambassador to Jordan, thanking Osama for his mosaic gift to the office, saying it had drawn many compliments from visitors.

He asked me to stop by later. So I did. And this is the story he and his brother shared with me:

Osama (Malik’s brother) grew up in Jordan and worked as an engineer in Jordan’s Air Force. After marrying at the age of 22 in the traditional Muslim manner, he and his wife decided to have their first son. Two years later. Mohammed, as he was named, was born with a rare form of cystic fibrosis and autism. Mohammed had trouble speaking and walking and had to be fed through a tube.  Doctors did not expect him to live long.

I would use the term “sadly,” if not for how Osama viewed his son’s condition. But I’ll save that for the end.

Desperate to do anything he could to help his son live, Osama and his wife took Mohammed to the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Kids in the U.K.  They stayed there for one year, where Mohammed took 12 medicines a day. Osama found a job working night shifts in the hospital and he and his wife lived in a basement flat. Osama continued to ask for financial support from his tribe and community in Jordan. He struggled to pay the 1,200 pound weekly fee.

It became clear that Mohammed, if he lived, would need someone to look after him if something happened to Osama and Huda. So Osama and his wife decided to have another child, one that would hopefully be able to look after his/her older brother as time went on.

Before he was born, they named their second son Bashir – an Arabic name meaning “bringer of good news.” At the sixth month of Huda’s pregnancy the doctors advised the young couple to “get rid of the baby” because the fetus had stopped growing. Osama and his wife could not do it.  And after Bashir’s birth they found he had the same rare combination of disorders as Mohammed.  It was a genetic disease.

Throughout this time Osama’s brother, Malik, was working back home in Madaba, Jordan. He had struggled financially as well, trying to pay for his tuition at the University of Amman where he was studying business. Malik realized that one way to make money was working in the main industry of his hometown: mosaics. After two years of observation, study and apprenticeship, Malik gained professional certification as a mosaic artist. He graduated from university and opened his first mosaic shop outside of Madaba.

Back to Osama – after putting both of his children through two more years of treatment, he returned with his family to Madaba. As his kids grew, they still took daily medication. Their symptoms didn’t change much. But Osama remembers when Mohammed was 6 months old; one day after being breast fed whispered “Al-hamdu lillah” which in Arabic means “Praise be to God.” They were the first and last words Osama has heard his son say.  But since then, Osama has seen his children play with an iPad, quickly figuring out the basics of the tablet computer and operating it easily. And though Mohammed cannot speak,  his youngest is speaking some sentences in English for some reason, Osama thinks it is because he spent the first three years in the London hospital where the nurses would spend a lot of time with his little one. It is simple actions such as these that give Osama joy every day. But he also lives with the knowledge that his children may die soon.

He says, “I’m happy. If you ask why, it’s because my God, He is like me. Because He gives me something special, something He doesn’t give to all people. I’m happy because He knows me; He had a plan for me and my kids before we were born.  He gives me a weight, knows I can carry it. At the hospital, when I was given kids, He knows I take care of them. For me and my wife, He gives kids to take care of.”

He doesn’t waver in his present day happiness and love. Limited with language as we were, he used a very simplistic example to explain it to me. He asked what I would do if a friend ran up and asked me to look after his treasure. “Hopefully,” he said, “You would look after it and take care of it until the friend came back”. Osama compared that to how he viewed his situation: God had given him two beautiful children to look after…and when God came to take them back, Osama would be able to God that he loved them and took as best care of them as he could.

Having only met me an hour ago, at this point I heard Osama speak to me with pure raw emotion, having come to terms with the reality that his children may die in his arms someday, potentially in the near future. But he had accepted that grief, letting it live within him alongside the love he felt and expressed to his children every single day.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Having learned from his children that handicapped people can still interact and thrive in their own way, Osama was inspired to act on that knowledge. So he approached his brother Malik with a simple idea: Why not teach handicap people how to create mosaics? Why not teach them to be mosaic artists? And so they did just that.

Malik started teaching handicapped people in his community. Here is one of his favorite recollections from the past years:

Hassan was a 35-year-old dwarf (little person) with hobbled knees. He couldn’t afford education, so he came to Malik and said “I need help from you.” Thus Malik taught him.  Three years of hard work passed by, and Hassan now has a wife, a child, and a car. He has reached the point where he is proudly piecing together mosaic table-tops.

A few years passed and the brothers noticed that many of the people they were teaching were unemployed. So Osama approached Malik with the idea of opening a mosaic workshop to organize the now growing group of handicapped artisans. And so they did just that.

PEACE Mosaic Workshop is now three years running and stands across from Malik’s 2nd shop in downtown Madaba. Osama employs around 35 artists, all handicapped in some way, 25 of whom work from home.  13 of the artisans are women.  Malik has taught every one, free of charge, buying completed pieces from them and reselling them in his or Osama’s shop. They work at their own pace, sometimes 4 to 5 hours a day, as assembling mosaic pieces is tiring for the eyes.

Both brothers emphasize that when they first meet many handicapped people, they find them to be shy, ashamed of their conditions and lacking in self-confidence. Osama and Malik believe their work helps these people fight depression.

Working alongside Malik who teaches the art of mosaics, Osama shares physical therapy exercises he learned while in London.

Osama has been asked to send his medical blood tests to research centers in Singapore since his sons’s disease is so rare. He thinks it won’t change anything for him or his family, but that it might help the global community eventually find a cure for cystic fibrosis and muscular dystrophy. He sends it as a case study, to prevent future patients with similar rare scenarios from going through the extensive tests he endured.

A spontaneous meeting of strangers.  Tales over tea.  A pair of new friends that I’m so grateful to have and look forward to staying in touch with.  But most of all, a lesson of love I hope to learn from, hopefully never having to experience the same grief.  An inspiration, a proud father, one that I will now forever remember when I hear others speak of 'Osama.' "