The Pickleville Philosopher

Leadership

By Jim Stone, The Pickleville Philosopher

The honk, honk honkers were flying today.  Canadian honkers filled the sky today, they’re on the move. It’s kinda neat how migratory birds play on each other, it’s like they’re so intelligent.  When the swans migrate a lot of different species of water fowl and other birds take flight using the high sky winds and weather to their advantage.  They gain hundreds of miles by being fine-tuned into Mother Nature’s conditions.  Birds move in front of big storms and behind big storms the wind is their best friend if it’s blowing in the right direction.

I often think it’s not just weather and wind that triggers birds to migrate. Fish and their time to procreate are driven a lot by temperatures and time in a day.  It promotes them to make their journey to what instinct drives them to travel to. To me the birds are the same, when the sunshine is disappearing and days become short and cold, bang the trigger goes off.  

The birds have faith in their leaders unlike some of us about our leaders.  The birds follow their leaders with no questions asked.  To the birds getting to where they’re going is the main thing, but on their journey they trust their leaders to provide food, water, warmth and a comfy place to sleep. But if their health goes bad, they are done for.  

It makes me think that we all can provide most everything we need but we are smarter than the birds.  We have a government.  I think they should provide any thing we all need for our health and well-being like the birds.  We trust our leaders and us all being smarter than the birds we should only have to do just one more thing to be better; that’s take care of all people that need health care.  Money is a great thing but so many good, wonderful people aren’t so fortunate to have what they need to support and have a healthy family, it’s a shame.

Anyways it was a great day hunting geese. 

Winter in Fish Haven Canyon

Photo by Lauriann Wakefield, Little Starling Photography, Garden City

Twelve Hour Power Outage

Bobbie Coray, Reporter

Rich Civic Times

GARDEN CITY, Utah. November 18, 2017. Over 8,000 households lost power for 12 hours from Soda Springs, Idaho to Cokeville, Wyoming to  Evanston, Wyoming on a night when temperatures were freezing.  Residents called and texted neighbors to see if they had heat and flashlights throughout the night.  In Garden City, wood was taken to people who needed it.  ACE Hardware opened its doors to anyone who needed supplies after closing time and Summit Pizza offered hot pizzas to people who needed a warm meal since they had a generator.

The outage started about 5 p.m. Saturday evening and was restored in Randolph about 10 p.m.  Garden City got power around 5:30 a.m.

Acording to Ashley Stilson, KSL “The initial outage affected households in Utah at Garden City, Randolph and Woodruff, and in Idaho at Montpelier, St. Charles and Indian Creek.

A Rocky Mountain Power spokesperson said officials are still investigating the cause of the outage, though they believe it may be a problem with a transmission line.

Garden City Fire Board

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY,  Utah.  November 16, 2017. Brian House, Fire Board, called the meeting to order and turned the time over to Chief Wahlberg to discuss the building expansion that is to be made to the current firehouse building.  Wahlberg said he is in the process of drawing up some ideas to determine the size of the addition, the appearance on the front of the addition, and about how much materials will cost for this addition.  He estimates that it will cost between $90,000 and $120,000 for materials, contractors, and labor.

The extra bay that will be added to the building will be an open one so that vehicles can drive right through if needed.  He would like to add new doors to all of the existing bays so that they match which will certainly enhance the look of the building.  The second floor will put the height of the building up to 32’.  He said he would make up the floor plan and elevations in order to price out the building when putting it out to bid.

The 2018 budget was discussed.  Health insurance is, of course, going up like it has been in all companies.  It was determined that it will need to be at least 20% to 25% higher than last year

Property taxes will probably go up as well because the County will begin re-evaluation of properties during 2018.

The Fire Board has been discussing the need for impact fees.  After a brief discussion, the Board decided that they would need to get an engineer to come in and discuss what steps the Board would need to take in order to justify an impact fee or if an impact fee would not be the best direction to take.

The Board asked Chief Wahlberg to keep a record of all of his callouts from now on and go back through his files for callouts in the past.  This data will be very helpful in order to determine if impact fees would be needed.

All of the fire equipment is up and ready to go.  There were no requisitions for this past month.

There were 11 responses this past month:  3 carbon dioxide calls, 4 fire alarms, 3 medical calls, and 2 small structure fires in Buttercup.

Chief Wahlberg noted that he has done many short-term rental inspections.  It takes time, but it is necessary to keep homes as the City requires.

It was announced that the new ambulance for Garden City won’t become available until the first part of 2018. 

Red Sky At Night

Photo by Tiesha Hart, Garden City

Garden City Council Meeting

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times

GARDEN CITY, Utah.  November 9, 2017.  The State passed a new state law for home based businesses.  It went into effect last May.  If the business appears to look just like a home and doesn’t have extra parking, etc., no business license is required.  The City needs to change their ordinance to conform with the State.

Allen and Sherry Taylor want to encumber lot 4 of Bear Lake Meadows and lot 9 of Triangle Estates Subdivision.  The properties are adjacent to each other. The Council noted that there are two properties separated by different subdivisions.  They asked for a 30-day extension on this item in order to get in touch with the City’s attorney to determine if this is a possibility.  The Council has never encumbered property from two different subdivisions and asked for the time to determine what would be needed to encumber these two parcels. Mayor Spuhler asked that this item be placed on next month’s agenda.

A Resolution was passed to update water rates for any pipes larger than a ¾” pipe.  In such cases, that meter will have to be upsized as well.  This will have an impact on what the Public Works Dept. currently does.  There will need to be an impact fee as well as higher water usage costs.  Riley Argyle, Public Works, is currently working on this item to make sure that everyone is treated fairly.

Rod Stewart and Ted Holmberg appeared before the City Council to see if  Holmberg’s lot can be split.  They had gone to Planning and Zoning to change the zoning on this property from a C3 zone to a C2 zone.  The C2 zone allows storage units whereas C3 does not.  The Planning and Zoning Committee will probably give  Stewart a conditional use permit instead of changing the zone, but wanted to make sure the lot split was taken care of first.  Also, the Zoning Committee wanted to make sure that there is an entry/exit off of Highway 89.   Holmberg said that he had already been in touch with UDOT to take care of road access.  

Stewart noted that he will start out with about 150 storage units and then build up to 350 units.  He will make sure the area is secure, that there will be good lightening, and will plant trees around the perimeter to make sure the area looks inviting and neat.  The City Council suggested that these gentlemen contact the KOA to let them know they will be getting new neighbors to the south.  They also suggested that the Planning and Zoning Committee be sure to include all of the details in writing the conditional use permit.  They need to make sure all items required be included in the conditional use permit.

The City Council will canvas the election on Tuesday, November 14, at noon.  They will look through all the voting materials and make sure all of the laws were followed at the recent election.

Pat Argyle, Realtor, asked if the two-acre property on 350 South just off Bear Lake Blvd. (owned by Ned Calder) could be used to build three big barn type buildings on that lot.  There would be a big splash pad and other nice amenities provided.  Currently that property is zoned agricultural.  The Council noted that it couldn’t be turned into a subdivision, because a subdivision has to have at least five acres.  Also, a subdivision must have a certain number of lots--more than three.  Argyle indicated that she would look into this matter further.

Darrin Pugmire report that it is currently reasonable for the Third West road to move further south, and it is something that needs to be done.  Most of the land that will be gone across has already been deeded to the City. 

There is currently a problem out by Lana Hodges’ lot, Rocky Mountain Electrical Company is currently putting in a line up Hodges Lane.  However, they are not on the easement area and need an encroachment permit.  They haven’t contacted any of the homeowners in that area to find out necessary information about future roads and what would actually be the more convenient and proper place for this new telephone line.  This is a real problem because plans for Third West are involved with this telephone line.  It will be causing problems for the City in at least two or three places.