9/11

This might be a little different blog than normal, as I am not updating you on street improvements or other items happening in the city; but I do believe that this topic is as relevant to our community as any is. I hope we all took a few minutes yesterday to reflect upon and stand in memoria of the events that occurred ten years ago, on September 11, 2001. No doubt we all remember where we were and what we were doing. For me, it was living in another community. I was delivering my kids to school and in an uncharacteristic way, turned on the car radio that morning. Like many of you I was pretty well numb as the days events unfolded.

The memories of 9/11 are forever seared into our memories. From burning towers and collapsing structures, to the site of emergency personnel entering buildings and never returning. I remember the pictures of average citizen heroes reaching out to help people they didn’t even know. We were stunned at the gaping hole in the pentagon, moved by the crater in Pennsylvania and inspired by the cheering of the crowds as the emergency and heavy equipment rolled into New York. It was a time of varied emotions.

I never knew anyone personally who lost their life in those events that September, but in the last ten years it is hard to find anyone who has not been affected by that day. For me, it was watching a brother-in-law enter the war-zone in Afghanistan. He was later injured in a road-side bomb but was one of the fortunate ones who came home.

Those who perpetrated the attacks on that beautiful fall day wanted to break our spirit and destroy our way of life. They wanted to replace our sense of community and association with a state of chaos and disconnection. I think you will agree with me, that on the days following 9/11 just the opposite happened. We all pulled closer together, took more time to appreciate our relationships and drew strength from one another.

I love the concept of community. The idea where we collectively come together for the common good. Certainly one of the enduring messages we should take from 9/11 is how important it is to remain connected with one another and how important it is to strengthen the relationships we share with one another as a community, a state, and as a nation.

Telegraph Road Update

I thought I would give you an update on how things are progressing along Telegraph. We are in our home-stretch and should be completed by mid October. Street lighting has been installed throughout the project. The planter boxes, which are the work of a local artist Mike Upwall, are being installed and planted. These planter boxes are a unique design feature which will not only house large, shade producing trees for our downtown but will provide sitting benches for those who desire. The sidewalks are being installed at the bridge deck and then they will begin to do the beautiful rock work on the parapet walls of the bridge. Turn lanes are being installed and they will be of a stamped, colored concrete. All intersections will have turning capability. One of the final items will be the staining of a portion of the all the sidewalks. I believe that you will really like the final product of this long-awaited project.

I hope you have paid attention to the installation of the old bell tower. We look forward to making the chimes a permanent part of the downtown when we officially open up the new Telegraph Street. We have had some interested businesses watching the development and making some inquiries about our downtown.

We believe that the downtown will be inviting to new businesses but still maintain that small community charm that makes Washington "feel like home."

Sustainable Community

In local government these days we use the word "Sustainability." The definition of this word can mean "conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources." We believe that one of the most attractive qualities of Washington City, is its natural beauty, clean air, and good quality of life. It has been our desire to preserve these wonderful attributes even as we have grown. In fact, we believe that this is largely one of the reasons Washington City has been one of the top five fastest growing communities in the state.

The avoiding of depletion of natural resources is so important to us that we have one of the most stringent Hillside and Ridgeline building requirements, so as not to deplete the natural beauty of our bluffs and mesas. Our recently constructed buildings include the use of natural lighting and the burning of our own waste oil, generated by our vehicles, for heating. We are doing all that we can to reduce our carbon footprint and be good stewards with our natural resources.

CNG Pump at Washington City's Fueling Station.

A significant sustainability issue that Washington City has been working on for some time, is the conversion of our city vehicle fleet from oil dependent gasoline to more cleaner natural gas. We partnered up with Clean Cities Utah and secured grant funding to open a natural gas fueling station as well as convert a large number of our fleet over to gas. This conversion not only will preserve our clean air and help reduce our oil dependency but it has come with some substantial cost savings. To give you an example, after the first month with having only six vehicles converted to natural gas, the city has already saved over $800 from what would have been paid for gasoline or diesel fuel. This means that once this first round of fleet conversions have occurred, we should be regularly saving about $3,200 per month by using natural gas rather than fuel.

We look forward to continuing to make steps to preserve all the beauties that this area has to offer and to be a responsible government with our resources. If you have other ideas that the city can pursue, please let one of us know. After all this is our home as well and we love it!

The Old Bell Tower

It is pretty hard to miss all of the work that is happening on Telegraph Street. This street widening and beautification project is very large in scope and comes with it some sacrifice on the part of the local businesses and citizens. We are confidant however that your patience and understanding will pay off when it is completed. This project should improve visibility and exposure to our downtown businesses as well as make traveling easier for the general public. Thanks for your patience!

Through all of the dust and traffic cones you may not have noticed however a new addition to our downtown. This new addition is actually the restoring of an "old friend" to the downtown. This old friend is the bell tower on the old school. This new tower is built to the specifications of its predecessor. As part of this project, we will be adding a carillon system to this tower. This bell system will be used to ring out the hours and special occasions throughout our downtown area.

The old bell tower was part of the history of our community. There is some uncertainty as to what happened to this tower but by using old photographs we were able to build a replica that matches closely to the original. This restoration project was discussed a number of years ago by Mayor Terrill Clove and has been supported by the City Council and Washington City Historical Society. The carillon system will be completed in the next few weeks and we look forward to sounding these bells when the Telegraph Street project is completed, sometime in October.

I am confident that this restoration project will only enhance the other improvements that will be done to the downtown area of Telegraph Street. I believe that these enhancements will make our downtown a place that will attract business, pedestrians, and families within our community. We want our downtown to be a gathering place, a town square if you will. The restoration of the old school tower and bell shows that we can remember and maintain our past, while accommodating for today and planning for the future.

Washington City Strategic Plan

There are a variety of plans that a city needs to have in order to function. We are required by law to have a General Plan, which guides us in our growth and development. We have plans that are developed to help us plan and install needed improvements in the city, i.e. water lines, sewer lines, power lines, roads and storm water facilities. We can have so many plans that unless we have an over-riding strategy to coordinate these they can become disjointed and confusing.

This past week, the City Council approved the the Washington City Strategic Plan for the next five years. This plan is a revision of the original plan that was created in 2008. The original plan was meant to communicate to our staff, elected officials, and citizens the mission statement, vision statement, and values that we adhere to. The plan was organized in four areas of interest: quality of life, quality of service, managed growth, and economic development. Specific goals and strategies were then developed for each area of interest. Over the past three years we have accomplished a majority of these goals and felt it necessary to revisit this strategic plan.

Over the past several months a committee has reviewed future needs, concerns by our citizens, and goals established by city departments. They then revised this plan to carry us into the next five years. Our areas of interest have changed to include: embrace economic growth, ensure financial integrity, enhance public service, elevate citizen experience, and enrich cultural awareness. With specific goals for each of these areas.

I hope you will take some time to review this new Strategic Plan, to offer us advice on how to best accomplish the goals, and join with us in reaching these goals. We believe, as Councilman Bill Hudson acknowledged upon approval of this plan, “...if we could accomplish all this in the next five years we’d definitely be better off as a city.”


Click Here to download and view these plans.

Washington City's Technology

Recently the local newspaper featured Washington City and our conversion to a "paper-less" city council. This project culminates effort for many years to bring us to this level. It also just the tip of the iceberg on what has happened technologically speaking to our city hall in the last five years.

By providing iPads to each of the council members we not only give them more tools in their hands as they make decisions but we save money in doing so. We recently estimated that going paperless will save approximately $2,500 a year in paper costs, labor to package their materials and delivery. Not to mention the efficiency of them having access to city codes, previous minutes, and resource materials as they make decisions.

As I said, this is the tip of the iceberg. In the past five years Washington City has made huge improvements in our technology. What started out six years ago as a couple of rebuilt computers has grown into a vast and powerful network of services and features. The great part of this is that this has grown in a very cost effective manner. Many services we use in the city are either free or have minimal charges. A good example of this is our conversion to Google Apps several years ago. This low cost option has given us many benefits including: greater security and redundancy, cloud collaboration tools, off-site access, and the savings of being able to avoid expensive annual licensing costs. In fact Google Apps (cloud computing), is what made this transition to paperless much more effective and efficient. Our website is another area of great improvement as we work to bring more and more services to our community through this medium.

So what will the future hold for us? Well, we will continue to look at ways in which technology can improve the way we deliver services and improve your quality of life as citizens. We will look at those services in which it is not needed to have a "personal touch" and can be provided in a more mechanical, less expensive way than with human resource. These services we will continue to enhance through technology thereby shifting our resources to providing the best quality human resource where it is needed. If you have any ideas that you would like us to explore regarding this, let us know.

In the meantime, please enjoy the features that we do provide through our website, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, Youtube Channel, Xpress bill pay options, on-line applications, etc. It is our goal to continue to make working with Washington City as enjoyable as possible.

Budget

The other night the Washington City Council approved the tentative budget for fiscal year 2011-12. This approval establishes the proposed budget, makes it available for public review, and sets the public hearing for the final budget adoption.

I encourage all of our citizens to at least take a look at this budget and see what it takes to provide services within our community. You can review the tentative budget for 2011-12 on our website at washingtoncity.org/finance. Since you may still have some questions about how a municipal budget works, we have also made a short video about this budget and how it is put together. I think this video is very informative and entertaining (as entertaining as a video can be about municipal finance). I hope this little presentation will give you a better idea of what makes up our budget. If, after looking at the tentative budget and viewing the video, you still have questions; we would love to answer those. Please don’t hesitate to contact myself or our Administrative Services Manager, Kimberly Ruesch at 656-6307.

I am proud of the services that we are able to provide to you and for the cost effectiveness of how we do that. Our budget, like your personal budget, has been challenged over the past few years. We have made changes such as: downsizing the organization, freezing wages (this will be our fourth year of doing that), postponing capital investments, and cutting across the board all expenses. By making these changes we believe that we have weathered the most challenging part of the economic downturn.

We are seeing some improvements on the horizon. Sales tax (our largest revenue provider) is improving. Property values have begun to stabilize and we are starting to see more activity in our business community. These are significant revenue indicators for us.

I appreciate the fiscally conservative legislative body that leads and guides our city; for their guidance and direction through this budget process. I also appreciate the hard-working staff that share those same ideals. I believe, this year, that things will continue to look up, not only our community but in the lives of each of the citizens that call Washington home.