Provo City Council Meeting 12/6

Here are my thoughts on last nights Provo City Council meeting:

(1) A private non-profit group called the Utah Valley Earth Forum was allowed nearly 10 minutes to promote their environmental extremism agenda under the guise of given a Stewardship Award to Mayor Curtis.  The speaker touted the opt-out recycling program and the Switch-It program.  The group likes Curtis so much they even promote him on their front page.  Pretty disgusting stuff especially when considering citizens are only allowed 3 minutes.

(2) Pork-barrel parks scored big last night at the expense of citizen's pocketbooks.  Council approved 7-0 expansion of 3850N Timpview Park taking an understandable $170K from Park Impact Fees and an unacceptable expense of $170K from the general fund.  Also approved about half of a $90K appropriation for a pocket park 300W Center St.  Finally they took $0.5M from the savings in the Lakeview Park and instead of returning it to the citizens in from of Iprovo tax relief threw the money at the a Slate Canyon Trailhead project.

(3) Mayor got his rebranding pork approved 7-0 to the tune of a quarter million.  Mayor and some council have stated they had to spend the money in part because they felt a multicolored bar on the flag promoted the LGBT agenda.  Funny, to me a rainbow has always meant God's promise to Noah.  The logo update was sold as a "good investment" and the mayor commented on how all steamed he was just having visited all these major cities promoting Provo but couldn't announce his new $250K pet logo.  What a waste!  Take the citizen's money and flush it down the johns at city hall.  Additional note:  notice (left) the lack of communication in an attempt to abscond the dollar amount on the mayor's blog:  I posted a comment on 10/6 asking for this information and never got it.  I can post private subsequent private emails between me and the mayor in which I repeatedly asked for these dollar amounts and never got it either.

(4) Council Hall-Everett got one of the issues she has been advocating since back when the property tax hike was being discussed last summer:  $250K for wayfinding signage.  The amount is exorbitant and with a parking map available online a totally unnecessary expense for a city which just had to raise taxes in order to avoid bankruptcy from the Iprovo debt which fell back in its lap.  (Funny how those 20yr bonds come back to haunt you.  Good thing the city practices the teachings of the LDS church to "get out of debt and stay out of debt" NOT!!!)

(5) Mayor Curtis tried to pull a fast one by touting the fiscal responsibility of the city because of the poor condition of the carpet in council chambers.  In my comments I mentioned that this was not fair because the council has already appropriated the money for a huge upgrade to the council chambers.  Other members of council got fed up with public comment and either directly or indirectly insulted the citizenry for not having facts to back up their comments or for not attending all the budget meetings that they had (of course they're paid to do so, we're not).  One council member did apologize privately afterwards.  No one including new council Garrett showed any spine for taking a fiscally conservative approach to government; every single appropriation passed unanimously.

It's a sad day when the city government in Provo is as liberal as New York City.  Maybe it will help when we elect a new mayor who doesn't promote the agenda of his former Party:  big government, big spending, and massive tax increases.