East Carbon officials codify city guidelines

By Sun Advocate

For years, East Carbon officials have struggled to find up to date enacted resolutions and ordinances in the city’s files.
“We often had to look through many files and make sure we had the one that had amended another one,” said Mayor Dale Andrews during a regular city council meeting on March 22. “Now we will have it all in one place.”
Andrews said the process to put all the ordinances in one book began about eight years ago.
With the help of Sterling Codifiers, a company that specializes in assisting municipalities in straightening out laws so the guidelines are current, the final document was set before the council on Tuesday for approval.
The last time all of East Carbon’s codes were entered into one book was in 1981.
“This makes it so we now know what has been passed and what is current,” stated Andrews. “Anything that is to be changed in this book from now on must be modified by ordinance.”
Andrews also pointed out that the ordinances in the book are also in compliance with all state codes now as well. The overall cost of compiling all the information was about $9000.
Andrews then asked that the council if they could see anything in the new book that needed to be changed.
There were a number of suggestions from the council.
The suggestions ranged from informing the fire department that a quarterly report must be presented to the council to rectifying a section of the building code to change a value from $100 to $1,000 on the minimum amount requiring a construction permit.
“This will make it a lot easier to figure things out,” said councilmember Dave Maggio. “We used to have to look through files in a couple of different places and figure out what had been amended and what hadn’t.”
After minor alterations, the council voted to adopt the codified edition of the ordinances.
Another point of discussion at the meeting involved all-terrain vehicles that are being used improperly and speeding around the town.
“What a lot of people have to learn is that our ATV law that allows them access on city streets to travel to trail heads and other dirt areas does not give them the right to use the machines to go to the grocery store or to pick up their mail from the post office,” stated Maggio. “We need to get people to understand that.”
The speeding issue concerned councilmembers as well as the residents in attendance at the meeting. Certain areas of town seem to have more problems, with citizens reporting youth racing down the streets at speeds of more than 40 to 50 miles per hour.
“The speed limit in the dirt around town is 20,” said Andrews. “But on the streets, we have not had anything specific other than the posted speed.”
The council debated what speed to set on the streets. Several advocated five miles per hour, while others felt the suggested speed limit was too low.
Following the discussion, the council voted to set the speed for the machines on paved city streets at 10 miles per hour.
Later in the meeting, councilmember Joyce Caviness brought up an idea she thought could be helpful to the community.
“I wonder if we should begin to think about setting up some type of economic development council in our town,” suggested Caviness. “I just think if we got some people together, maybe some who are retired and have time to do some searching on the Internet or in other places, they could come up with some ideas for businesses that could be either started here or be moved here.”
“Many small communities have cottage industries that have started in their towns and maybe we can work toward that,” added Caviness
The council thought Caviness’ suggession was basically good idea, but asked how it could be coordinated with the county’s economic development program.
“Well, I think they could meet with Delynn (Fielding, county economic director) periodically and work with him on it,” said Caviness.
There was also discussion about the economic impact the new travel loop that has been created in the Nine Mile, Cottonwood Canyon, Bruin Point, Cold Springs route will have on East Carbon. But few on the council felt that impact would be immediate, and some down played it saying that with the proposed ATV regulations in Nine Mile Canyon, not much might happen at all.
“It seems the interest is more in gas development than in tourism,” said Maggio.
As for the committee idea, Andrews ended the discussion on one note.
“I just want to remind everyone that the city is not in the business of creating free enterprise,” he said. “But we do have an obligation to foster business so we need to research this idea for a committee and make sure it gets set up correctly.”
In one other order of business Sherry Agnew of Columbia approached the council about getting more money for Columbia Park. However, the council, at this point said things are too tight to deal with that right now.
“With the reduction in dumping at ECDC (East Carbon Development Corporation landfill) that reduces the amount of money that comes into the city’s treasury,” said Maggio. “We have a big bond payment due this summer and where that money will come from we are not sure. Right now things like money for that park are on hold until we can figure out how to resolve that.”