Provo Lakeview North Neighborhood Meeting Report

Tonight we had a good-sized turnout (maybe 50 residents plus dozens of scouts from the local Boy Scout troop) at our Meeting. Notables included Don Allphin, our retiring neighborhood chair, our city council Sherrie Hall Everett, and our Mayor John Curtis.

Most notably on the agenda was the election of our neighborhood chair. Two were nominated: former city-wide council candidate Carl Mayo of Cobblestone Village subdivision and Brandon Seamons of the Reese Estates subdivision. Each chose a co-chair to run on their ticket. The vote came out an even tie: 20 votes each which resulted in a call to the city attorney by Louise Jorgensen of Provo City who was there to conduct the election. Three options were given for us to choose a winner: a coin flip, a second vote, or a vote in two weeks. Attendees expressed concern they were being unduly limited to those options, but the discussion was quickly cut off by Hall Everett and Jorgensen who insisted on the neighborhood voting for one of the three options. In the end, the neighborhood settled for a second vote in two weeks; so if you missed the meeting tonight, stay tuned for another opportunity to vote!

Mayor Curtis spoke on the shortfall of the city budget due mainly to the decrease in sales tax revenue: we still need to cut $600K from this year's budget ending FY June 30th. He asked for patience from the neighborhood in getting the $1M Lakeview Park built under these financial conditions. When completed, Lakeview will have tennis courts, a playground, and restrooms.

Dave Graves spoke about the Lakeshore Bridge (you can see the etched lines for the road connecting Lakeshore Drive to 3110 W at Center St on this Google Maps.) The Lakeshore Bridge caught many residents by surprise including chair Allphin (see SL Tribune articles: 01/20/2010 and 03/03/2010). A driving impetus for the bridge at this time seems to be the unexpected low bid cost of $1.8M--a projected $1M savings from a few years ago when the construction industry was booming. The bridge is being funded through impact fee ($1.3M) and gas tax (balance); these are restricted funds and cannot be used to balance the city budget. The bridge will be the same width as Lakeshore Dr. and have a pedestrian sidewalk. Traffic on Lakeshore is expected to increase dramatically from currently 1,000 vehicles per day to 6,000 or similar to the current traffic on 620 N. When the northwest connector is eventually built, traffic should alliviate to 3,000 vehicles.

Dave Gardner who is building Lakeview Fields subdivision at the very north end of the Lakeview North Neighborhood along 2000 North proposed changing the development agreement to allow basements to be included in the homes. Basements are a hot commodity in Utah and should allow the homes to sell quickly as they are built in twos in two different phases for a total of 51 homes. Gardner has put in a storm drain system to alleviate concerns of flooding. The city must still approve his request as water tables fluctuate. Chair Allphin held a raised-hands vote noting that the majority of those in attendance were in approval of Mr. Gardner's request.

Near the conclusion of the meeting, the owner of TKO storage spoke up and voiced his concern that while his business was in the geographic boundaries our neighborhood, he had no voice or vote as he wasn't a resident of the neighborhood. He seemed to have a valid point that was noted by council Hall Everett.

In his concluding remarks, Allphin noted how the government was illegally forcing cap-and-trade on us through EPA regulation and encouraged us to stay involved, particularly locally where we could make the greatest difference.