Amending The Way We Amend The General Plan

Council Notes 9/19/06

By Dian Woodhouse

A minor panic of sorts transpired this afternoon when someone revealed that tonight's agenda dealt with amending the way we amend the General Plan. This amendment seems, however, to be all for the best, as you will see.

The first item of note was a proposed Resolution (2006-25) honoring the 75th anniversary of El Monte Golf Course. The first round of golf was played there in September of 1931, and for twenty years, El Monte was the only golf course in what is called "the Top of Utah." El Monte's clubhouse is on the Historic Register, and the view to the east is over cottonwood trees that are over 100 years old.

Todd Brenkman, who accepted a copy of the framed resolution, is restoring the Clubhouse and collecting memorabilia. Saying that the restoration had been a fantastic opportunity for him, he thanked Ogden City, the City Council, and George Binford for helping make this possible.

The resolution passed unanimously.

The next order of business was approval of the minutes. There were quite a few of these tonight, and after amending those reviewed by Councilwoman Jeske who had some grammatical and typing corrections, all were approved.

Next came a Common Consent item, which I will reproduce here:

"Budget Opening. Proposed Ordinance 2006-58 amending the budget and CIP Plan for Ogden City for the fiscal year July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007, by increasing the anticipated revenues and transfers for gross increases of $396,141.00 from sources as detailed in the body of this ordinance; and increasing the appropriations for a gross increase of $396,141.00 as detailed in the body of this ordinance."

After a moment for public input, of which there was none, a public hearing on this matter was set for October 3, 2006.

The next item was a Planning Commission Report, and this was the one concerning the change to amending the general plan. From Greg Montgomery's presentation, and in a short post-meeting chat with Councilwoman Wicks, it was revealed that part of this ordinance had to do simply with making the municipal code conform with the Utah Code, which we have already been following. "...to put into writing with our zoning ordinance the current procedure which is State Law," Mr. Montgomery said. The information from Councilwoman Wicks was that State Law, as it now stands, does not require that a City Council hold public hearings regarding amendments to the General Plan, only that the Planning Commission hold them. This ordinance (2006-59,) also requires the City Council to hold public hearings regarding plan amendments.

The ordinance was unanimously adopted.

Next was a public hearing, Fillmore Street Vacation, Proposed Ordinance 2006-60. Dealing with the same type of issue as the one last week, this also had to do with the fact that the streets were originally platted to be 99' wide. As this width is not necessary, the city will vacate "16.5 feet along the west side of Fillmore Avenue between Swan Street and 23rd Street; quit claiming the property within the vacated portion of said Street to the abutting property owners as their interest may appear, etc."

Mr. Montgomery here made a public apology to the petitioner. Evidently, this petition was ready to go in June of this year and then, for reasons unknown, did not. Evidently, other petitions filed later were then dealt with ahead of it, and Mr. Montgomery stated that, although they had tried to find out and track down why this had occurred, they were unable to, and did apologize to the petitioner for the delay.

The next order was New Business. There was none. Nor were there any Public Comments. Nor Administrative nor Staff Comments. Two Council Members, Councilman Stephens and Councilwoman Jeske, again complimented El Monte golf course.

The meeting then adjourned.

After adjournment, it was informally revealed that tomorrow night's Special Meeting for interviewing applicants for the vacant Council Seat will be more involved than I, at least, had previously thought. Applicants will answer the four questions and have four minutes to do so--this we knew. But then, the Council will go directly into Closed Executive Session and discuss the applicants they have just seen. After deliberating there, they will then re-enter the Council Chambers and vote on the five individuals from which they will pick the replacement.

So we'll know who they are by tomorrow night.

Update 9/20/06 9:26 a.m. MT: We'd like to direct our readers' attention this morning to a new feature which we've added to our upper-left sidebar. Within the capsule labeled "Local Government Toolkit" you'll find a new "Dian's Council Notes" link, which connects to an archive page containing a complete compilation of Dian's highly-detailed and excellent City Council Notes Series. We'll also continue to add all future articles, so long as we're fortunate enough to have her contributing here.

We invite everyone to explore her accumulated work-product. It's a quite remarkable body of of articles. We believe our readers will find it to be a very useful resource.

We'd like to thank Dian once again for her generous contributions to our community. She does this all without any pecuniary compensation whatsoever, we'll add. There can be no doubt as to Dian's dedication to her native home town.