Garden City Council meeting

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY, Utah.  April 11, 2019.Tami Leonhardt ,Convention and Visitor’s Bureau,  noted that she works under the County Commissioners.  The area that is covered by this bureau goes from Georgetown, Idaho, to Woodruff, Utah.  There is a ten-member board—one from each of the Cities in that area.

Leonhardt works with advertising, budgets, grants and so forth.  She works with three budgets—her payroll, the Visitors’ Center, and advertising.  She also works with getting grants and works hard to promote the area from Montpelier to Woodruff.  She does things that encourage people to come to this area.  She is especially working on more activities that can be held during the winter months.  Snowmobiling is one of the big areas that is growing quickly.

Currently there is a film made about the area that will be released soon.  There are a lot of advertisements in magazines and on the internet.  She is also working with the Oregon Trail Committee on several ideas.  She enjoys her job and thanks the Council for allowing her to come and let them know about her job and how it is having an impact on the area.

The Council was given a review of the bids for the water system and who gave the lowest bid of $724,000.  This bid was for the Town of Garden City Water System Improvements.  A 24” pipe will be laid all the way to the highway.  The City will be able to utilize the full grant and the City will make up any short fall that may occur.  The bid went to CTI (Troy Peterson).  The motion was made and passed to move forward with this project.

Rhonda Menlove presented The Family Place Presentation which included a Proclamation for Family Month. The Utah Family month will be from Mother’s Day until Father’s Day.  The Council Members signed the Proclamation after the motion was made and passed.

Menlove reported that there are three Family Support Centers, Logan has three service areas.  There are DIs in Smithfield, Hyrum and Logan.  Family Place has permission to raise money.  This idea of an organization for Family Place has been very effective with the legislators.  Cache Valley has the program in place, and it is doing well.  Rich County needs to create some program here.  Currently there are some items such as diapers and some baby back packs in the Library food bank. There will be a meeting May 11 to help parents see the value of the program and how it works. 

There is a shelter in Cache Valley for abused children.  There will be some fund-raising activities for that facility. Menlove wanted to let people know that  donations will be going for a good cause.  This organization has a moto which is “Be Kind Utah”.  This organization is hoping to get at least one million acts of kindness during family month.

Business Licenses were granted to Ber Necessities Co, DBA Ber’s Shakes N’ Sodas.  The business is located at 70 W Logan Road.  The owner is Amber Clark.  The Waffle Den also located at 70 W Logan Road was given a license.  This business is a restaurant owned by Diane Foester.

Bear Lake Water Adventures requested that he be allowed to conduct a Concessionaire business located on the Garden City Park Beach.  He will rent non-motorized water vessels.  This is the fifth year Leo and Melissa Spuhler have rented out the water vessels.  The license was granted.

Long Ridge @ Bear Lake requested the final approval for Phase I, which includes 13 lots west of Cherimoya Subdivision.  Jeff Jorgensen was making the request.  After a brief discussion, the motion was made and passed for Jorgensen to begin Phase I of this Subdivision.

Dave and Claudia Cottle, Bear Lake Watch, were at the meeting and discussed ways that need to be followed and worked on to take care of and save Bear Lake.  They noted that 50 percent of the water going into Bear Lake comes from Smith Fork and Thomas Fork. 

The Cottles have created a Bear Lake Resolution that was passed by the legislature.  They noted that this was a real learning experience for them.  However, there are still problems concerning the lake.  The Cottles said "We certainly don’t want to lose the lake."

A goal from the state needs to be written and approved concerning this body of water.  This goal needs to show why preservation of Bear Lake is important.

The lake is beautiful and needs to be kept healthy and beautiful.  Goals need to be written and defined.  Reasons why and how to protect water quality should be investigated. Stake holders in Bear Lake need to be involve in this process. 

Currently there is a declining level of the Great Salt Lake.  The individuals down there have done an economic value study that states the Great Salt Lake must be maintained at its required level.  Bear Lake is one area where water could be drained to maintained that level.  They have evidence that millions, even billions of dollars, will be lost if the Great Salt Lake level continues to fall.

Cottles noted that there are studies, ideas, policies, and several other items that should be investigated.  They suggested that all the studies and information that can be found will be needed in the future to save the lake.  They asked that Garden City help as much as possible in this endeavor.

Garden City Council reports

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY, Utah. April 11, 2019.  Council member Darrin Pugmire said that roads in the lower section of the possible Third West have so many property owners that he didn’t think the City would be able to afford to go that way.  It will be a better idea to go higher into the mountains.  He will continue working on this item.

Kimball Lane is not compliant for a roadway.  The power lines are right in the trees along this road.  The lowest bid to bring the trees down in this area was $14,000.

There needs to be some work done on Hodges Canal.  Some areas are out of water.  The road from Hodge Canyon to Kimball Lane doesn’t work with the property between these two roads as it would have when the idea was first presented.  The road will need to be closer to the canal than originally planned.  It would be a good idea to work with an attorney about what the city can do because of the HOA that are now built where the road was originally planned.

Council member Howard Pope noted that he hasn’t been able to get out on the trails during the winter.  However, he is going to get a new side-by-side and will begin to go over the areas and see how the trails are standing up and what changes and repairs will be needed.

He reported that Richard Monk, Pool Manager,  is working well at the swimming pool.  Currently the pool seems to be going smoothly.

Council member Pat Argyle said that the bathrooms for Heritage Park went out to bid.  The lowest bid was $278,000.  She wondered if the City should use their own contractors and have a neutral inspector to get the restrooms built. Some of the City workers are licensed.  They could probably do the job for $100,000.  She also reported that the City needs to find porta potties.  Those in Garden City are already in place and in use.  She will have to start making calls to find where to get some others for Raspberry Days.

Raspberry Days seems to be going well.  Everything seems to be coming together.

The gentleman who wanted to bring in Concerts every Friday and Saturday night was told that perhaps he could set up this venue with the Conestoga Ranch.  The concerts would be on private land and in a pretty good location.  The City park can’t be closed all summer on both Friday and Saturday night.  It was also noted that work on the Heritage Park needs to move forward without having to stop work every weekend.

It looks like the stage that is being built at Heritage Park will cost approximately $150,000.

Ken Hansen noted that the library is doing well.  There will be a rummage sale again this year at the City Park the last weekend in June.   The Library has been given a $20,000 donation to get a screen for video conferencing.  The screen is 45” wide.  This item will make conferencing and interaction with organization and people in other places without them having to come to Garden City personally.

Garden City staff reports

 Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY, Utah. April 11, 2019.  Glenn Gillies noted that there is a lot of building going on in Garden City.  Currently there are nine new building permits.  He reported that there is some soil packing work being done on the Norm Mecham property.

A new circuit for the hot tub in the swimming area was received last Friday.  The boiler is working well.

A representative  from engineering firm JUB reported that there are a lot of developments that are moving forward.  He noted the three most active at the present time are Waterdance, Long Ridge, and the LDS Property.

Construction on the water system will soon begin.  The attorney is reviewing the plans and a full construction meeting is to be held in the next week or two.  Agreements and bonding are being completed. There will be a schedule made.  Right now, it appears that the work will begin down by Harbor Village and Raspberry Patch.  Some areas are still too wet.  They will be worked on toward the end of the project.

Heritage Park restrooms have been put out to bid.  The bids that have come in are much higher than expected.  The City will have to reject the high bids and then rebid this project.

Cloud Angels

Photo by Carol Ann Dyer

Garden City ordinance changes

Anita Weston, Reporter

Rich  Civic Times 

GARDEN CITY, Utah. April 11, 2019.  Discussions about several ordinances and how to keep or change them was held.  The first ordinance, #19-06, there was a discussion of updating the beach development zone height to 35 feet.  Just the week before, Planning and Zoning had decided to keep the beach zone at 25 feet.  However, the City Council didn’t think it would make that much difference and changed it to 35 feet.

The next ordinance, #19-07, was updating the definition of an accessory building.  It was determined that an accessory building could not be placed on a lot until a home had been built on that lot.

Ordinance #19-08 was discussed concerning home building heights.  Apparently, several homes built recently are higher than the City allows.  Nothing has been done to stop this from happening, but the Council thought that a different way of measuring this height should be determined.  After a brief discussion, it was suggested that the measurements should go from the basement floor at the lowest level.  That would give them an exact point to work from.  The Council decided that they should investigate this matter further.  It will be on next month’s agenda.

Ordinance #19-09 is an ordinance updating the short-term rental requirements.  Fire Chief Wahlburg was present and noted that the original inspection of a home should be done by the Fire Chief.  There are several things that the Fire Chief needs to check that would be missed if the homeowners did their own checking.  He noted that there are also fire grills, and pits that should be included as well.   He reported than when he does a first inspection, there is a 40% to 50% failure rate on his first visit.  The fire Chief also does all the inspections for businesses.  He noted that there are certain businesses that need to be inspected yearly.  The Council accepted this suggestion and noted that they will rewrite this ordinance.

Ordinance #19-10 dealing with a Conditional Use Permit in Zone 3C was discussed.  It was   decided that Churches be added to this ordinance.  A motion was made and passed.

Ordinance #19-11 is an ordinance creating an overlay zone specific for food trucks and food truck locations and setting regulations for conducting such businesses.  The motion was made passed.

Ordinance #19-12 is an ordinance dealing with updating the transient merchant license requirements.  It was determined to take out food trucks since they have their own zone.

The motion was made a passed.

Ordinance #19-13 Is an ordinance creating the food truck overlay zone.  This item will need to be sent back to Planning and Zoning for their approval.

A resolution #R19-01 is a resolution updating the annual renewal fees for short term rental properties.  After a discussion of this matter, it was determined to increase the TRT tax by 1%.  This item will need to be brought back next month because raising taxes requires a public hearing.

Herald Journal article on Logan Canyon Road speed changes

By Matilyn Mortensen, Staff Writer
Herald Journal

In an effort to increase pedestrian safety, the speed limit in Logan Canyon near the Stokes Nature Center has been temporarily reduced.

“It’s really scary to walk along that shoulder, crossing with your 3-year-old hoping that they don’t decide they want to run into the road because they saw a cool rock,” said Megan Dettenmaier, the valley resident who led the petition for a lower speed limit.

Dettenmaier is the parent of a child who attends the Stokes Nature Center preschool, located in Logan Canyon to the south of U.S. Highway 89 across from the Cache National Forest sign.

In order to access the center, or the River Trail located next to it, individuals like Dettenmaier have the option of parking in the pullout area on the north side of the road and crossing the highway, or parking on the south shoulder and walking along the highway.

“In a perfect world we would have a school zone there during those hours,” Dettenmaier said. “But because Stokes is not a traditional school in the sense that they receive tax dollars like Wilson Elementary would, we can’t qualify for having a very severely reduced speed zone.”

Because Highway 89 is a state road, Dettenmaier’s petition was taken to the Utah Department of Transportation. After considering the issue, department officials decided to place pedestrian signs on the road near the center and reduce the speed limit from 50 to 40 miles per hour for six months.

Utah Department of Transportation representative Vic Saunders said after six months of reduced speeds, the department will conduct a traffic study. A new speed limit will be set for that area of the road based on the speed 85 percent of drivers are traveling, plus or minus 5 miles an hour.

“That 85th percentile speed is the one that most people feel as they drive a roadway, that they can make all the maneuvers required to safely travel that road,” Saunders said.

According to Saunders, it's important to use this method to ensure speeds aren't set too low.

“If the speed limit is set artificially low, people will exceed it irrespective of what it is posted,” Saunders said.

Dettenmaier said she is mildly happy about the reduction, but doesn’t see it as the solution to overall pedestrian safety.

“It is a step in the right direction and we have a long way to go to get pedestrians off of the highway,” Dettenmaier said. “And the way we do that is we provide alternative means to get to that trail that are as efficient and that are readily accessible and that are easy to get to.”

A few such pedestrian options might include a highway underpass or overpass option.

Although there are two underpass options in the canyon right now, interim executive director of the Center Emily Blake said neither option is a good solution for children using the center.

The first underpass is at First Dam, which requires users to hike for about a mile before reaching the center.

The second one is located at the Cache National Forest sign, which is much closer to the center, however pedestrians parking on the north side cannot access the underpass because there is no way to cross the river.

Blake said if there was a bridge, there likely wouldn’t need to be a reduced speed in that part of the canyon.

“That would be the same distance of a walk for the nature preschoolers, we just don’t have the infrastructure or the funding to build a bridge over the river,” Blake said.

Cache County Trails Planner Dayton Crites said other options for increasing pedestrian safety in the canyon may include making the road feel less like a highway.

“The solutions I would like to see considered is how do we change the structure of that highway in terms of narrowing it, in terms of adding medians in the center, in terms of beautification efforts to add plantings and other things to the side that make it feel a little less like a high-speed highway and more of a scenic drive,” Crites said.

In the meantime, both Crites and Dettenmaier hope people will heed the new the speed limit signs so the temporary reduction can become permanent.

“If people don’t pay attention to the speed limit, if people ignore them flat out, they may end up putting it back just as high or higher,” Crites said. “So we certainly hope that’s not the case.”

KSL honors Rich volleyball coach

Paul Swensen, KSL News

SALT LAKE CITY — Cindy Stuart, the long-time head coach of the Rich High School girls’ volleyball team, will retire from coaching as the winningest women’s high school volleyball coach in the state.Stuart, who coached high school volleyball from 1986 through 2018, will retire with 722 wins and 15 state championships.

Although Stuart will retire as the winningest volleyball coach in Utah high school history, coaching the sport wasn’t always her plan.

She grew up in Oklahoma as a basketball player, playing at both the high school and collegiate level. After transferring to play basketball at UNLV in 1977, Stuart’s team faced off against Utah State. The Rebels destroyed the Aggies, beating them by nearly 100 points.

Utah State’s athletic office took notice, offering Stuart a job as the women’s basketball head coach after finishing her time at UNLV. She took the job at only 21 years old.

Stuart coached the team at Utah State from 1978 to 1982, meeting her husband, Bill Stuart, along the way. Bill, a cattle rancher, moved the couple to Rich County where Cindy began coaching at the high school level in 1986.

Upon starting a family in Rich County, Stuart said she wanted her daughter to grow up playing basketball because of the impact the sport had on her life.
“I couldn’t even imagine my daughter not being able to play basketball, 'cause it pretty much saved my life,” Cindy Stuart said. “I was from a really poor town in Oklahoma, so I got a scholarship and got a chance.”

To Stuart’s surprise, Rich High School approached her about coaching at the school, but it wasn’t going to be with a basketball team.

“They wanted me to coach their volleyball, and I said, ‘Well, I don’t even know how to keep score in volleyball!'”

The high school didn’t have a women’s basketball program at the time, but the school offered a compromise with the former basketball player. She was allowed to start a women’s basketball team at if she would also coach the volleyball team.
While Stuart only coached the Rebel basketball team for four years, she would remain with the volleyball team much longer.

“I was just in the right place at the right time,” Stuart explained. “That’s what’s so unique about it. I had never played volleyball, so it was a real challenge, but I’ve enjoyed it. I love the game.”

Stuart gives a lot of the credit for her coaching success to the man she calls her mentor, Carl McGown. Despite knowing very little about volleyball, McGown helped Stuart hit the ground running. McGown, a volleyball legend in the state of Utah, is best known for coaching the BYU men’s volleyball team for 13 years from 1989 to 2002. He also coached in multiple Olympics and is a member of the AVCA, Utah, and BYU Sports Hall of Fame.

“He would come and tell me to do these things and I’d just look at him like, ‘Why?’ I had no idea, so I’d just listen to everything he told us to do,” Stuart said.

She went on to coach the Rebel volleyball team nearly every year from the time she first took the job until today. A brief job in Evanston, Wyoming, took Stuart away from Rich High School from 1990 to 1994, but after returning in 1994 she would only miss one season, 2007, when she stepped down to give more attention to her family.

Stuart said some of her best moments from her coaching career came when she was able to coach her daughter, Sammi, to four straight high school state championships. Sammi, who now works as an assistant coach with the women’s volleyball team at Utah State, began playing for her mom in third grade.

“It’s hard playing for your mom,” Sammi Stuart said. “But it was so worth it. The lessons she taught me and all the girls that have gone through, playing for coach Stuart, that’s the biggest thing people take away from her, the lessons that you learn."

Those lessons go beyond the volleyball court, extending into the lives of all the girls Stuart has coached over the years.

“She taught me how to compete," Sammi Stuart said. "She taught me how to work hard. She taught me that I am a young woman who has worth and value.”
Along with coaching the women’s volleyball team, Cindy Stuart has taught both high school and elementary aged students each year. She currently teaches sophomore health, high school PE, and elementary school PE, allowing her to interact with more than just the girls on the high school volleyball team.

“She’s had a tremendous effect on volleyball, but the effect she’s had on kids in school that didn’t play volleyball is bigger,” Sammi Stuart said.

“Having her in Rich County, Utah, has made Rich County a better place.”

While Cindy Stuart will be retiring from coaching, the long-time educator plans to continue teaching for at least a couple more years. She’s also looking forward to the additional free time.

“I’ll keep teaching and hopefully I can get my husband to go on some trips in the summer and in the fall instead of coaching volleyball,” she said.

“Other than that, I’m probably going to help raise the grandkids and the calves.”