| Orangeville City has a new state of the art fire station. Finishing touches are still being completed and the city council hosted an open house recently. |
Orangeville is the proud home to a new state of the art fire station. The city council recently held an open house where residents toured the fire station inside and out.
At the recent Orangeville City Council held on March 9, Mayor, Bart Cox opened the meeting by asking Sgt. Jeff Thomas to speak before the council to inform them about what the Emery County Sheriffs Office does for Emery County. Thomas has served the county for 19 and a half years. The sheriff’s office maintains four different crews at this time with four men on each crew with two shifts. The night shift does security checks on businesses, making sure they are locked and everything looks OK. A responsible party is contacted if that is not the case. They do property watches for residents who might be out of town or have had a suspicious circumstance. They help the drug task force. The day shift does basically the same including watching school zones, serving papers, the DARE program and other school programs. Of course the dispatch covers all special calls and many other helpful duties for the community. Thomas said there is one deputy that covers Green River and three to cover the rest of Emery County.
Loyette Holdaway representative for the Emery County Theater approached the council thanking them for their donation and support. Holdaway said productions are very costly and most of the time they don’t even come out ahead, so they are asking for a donation. The council donated $100 to the theater to help with the cost of the productions.
Patrick Jones who is overseeing the new fire department project came to the council with his report on the progress and cost of the building. Jones handed out a list of estimates and actual costs to the council. He explained there were some changes in cost due to changes in work orders, cold weather, architectural changes and a different color of block than they were originally quoted on. They were charged $10,000 to have a power pole and line put in by Utah Power and Light. Jones worked on getting that price reduced but was unable to do so. The cost will be spread out across five years. A $500 charge is billed for every time the architect makes a trip to the fire station. Jones said he will have to come down one to two more times to finish up.
Some money is left but Jones said he is trying to be cautious in the case that something was forgotten. He suggested that a natural gas generator be purchased with some of the remaining money. Jones said the generator will be self-contained, which will be a necessity if there should be a disaster in the area. The fire station will be an ideal place to reside if there is a disaster, it contains showers, bathrooms, kitchen and will have plenty of room to house people. Jones thinks the natural gas generator is their best bet.
The fire house is nearly complete. Jones said a hold has been put on painting due to the cold weather. The paint is toxic and explosive so the doors must be open to paint. Council commented on the nice facility and the good turn out at the open house.
Mayor Cox made the suggestion that the council start attending a work meeting a half an hour before city council meeting. He explained that the meeting would be open to the public although they may not comment at that time. He said that no decisions will be made at the meeting. It is just basically an information meeting. Council member Carole Larsen said that was suggested to the cities at the League of Cities and Towns meeting. She said that councils in the northern area are participating in them and as a result their council meetings have decreased in time lasting anywhere from a half of an hour to two hours now.
Comments were made, Councilman James Davis said he would get a hold of the cities and find out what they accomplished at the work meeting. The matter was tabled until further information is received.
| Former councilman Pat Jones speaks with city employee, Jack Davis. Jones was the overseer of the fire station project. |
Animal Control Officer, Dennis Tuttle told the council they have about 12-15 dogs in Orangeville that are past the licensing deadline. He said that the residents will be approached and will be able to license them on the spot. If no responds are made a citation made be given.
Tuttle also of the planning and zoning council said he had recently met with a resident pertaining to a new subdivision being put in on the south side of the Orangeville Cemetery, The subdivision could contain six to seven lots.
Doug Johnson, Land Use Authority brought up a matter that was discussed in their last Land Use Authority meeting concerning a resident who would like to sub-divide his lot in order to build another home. The city at this time is surveying that particular area in front of the property. The city is asking several residents along that block line to deed over the front of the properties in order to make a straight block line. So the question was if that resident would be responsible for the survey of the rest of his land. The council agreed that the frontage lines would be surveyed and paid for by the city and if the resident wanted the rest of it surveyed he would be responsible for the cost.
Mayor Cox said he has been asked numerous times what will be done with the old fire station, so he asked for Carol Ware, former city council person if there had been anything discussed before. She said they had talked of making it a history building for Orangeville or remodeling it and putting a stage in it for events in the park or maybe even making a place to hold receptions.
A resident said he was in favor of making it a history building in order to preserve Orangeville’s history. He said it is something they need to look at because of the importance of our history. The council will still be taking suggestions until a decision is made.
Councilman Davis told the council of his plans to fix up the baseball park. He said that he would like to knock out the remaining dugout and put a new one in. Including new chain link fence and benches. He asked that the snack building be repainted and a new roof put on. Also the girls softball field and skate park be fenced off. He said that the Tony Hawk’s program offers grants for skate parks for little communities and he will keep looking into it. There is a company called Dream State Parks that has built the top 10 skate parks which Davis will look into also.
Councilman Kelly Alton, asked if the city will be having greeters in the cemetery on Memorial Day again. He said that it is a neat program and they received tremendous comments. He said there were a few who disliked it but for the most part people liked it. The council asked Rue Ware to be over it again and he accepted.
The next city council meeting will be held on April 13.