Legacy of Community Support
The school district has placed the monument expressing appreciation to the Glenn and Dorothy Dalling family for their donation of the land for the new Sugar-Salem Middle School. This generous gift of land is an amazing example of community support from a family that has a long history of such acts. There are so many in our city who serve and engage and support. I appreciate everyone's good efforts to keep Sugar City a wonderful place to live.
Easter Bunny Visits City Hall
The Easter Bunny dropped in to city council meeting with eggs full of candy for everyone--lucky for those of us who were there!
The Bunny also invited everyone to the Easter Egg hunt this Saturday (4/16) at 10am at Heritage Park.
Come and enjoy the fun, no matter the weather! And the Easter Bunny will be there for photographs as well.
Neighborhood Watch
Mayor Adams invites all who are interested in joining the Neighborhood Watch Program to come to City Hall on Monday (4/18) at 7pm in the Council Chambers.
At the meeting, you can get more information and join this great community safety program. There's even a program for up to $150 reimbursement for households who wish to invest in a video security system for their homes. Please attend the meeting for more information.
Garbage Rates Go Up 5%
If you attended or watched the latest city council meeting, you heard that garbage service rates are increasing 5%. PSI has been a good company to work with over the years. The increase is necessary to cover the increasing costs they are facing to provide their service. Here is part of the letter provided to the city to justify the rate increase that helps illustrate the situation:
In the past year everyone has seen unprecedented increases in fuel, labor, truck parts, container cost, and the general cost of doing business. To give you an idea of the drastic increasing in our cost of carts and metal dumpsters, 12 months ago we could purchase a semi load of plastic carts for around $27,000. Today that same load cost us $41,000. For metal dumpsters, a load of 63 dumpsters was around $50,000, today its $81,000. Labor cost to find quality employees has increased by more than 10%. Fuel has increased 38% increase. Our National data is showing an average Mountain West CPI of 9.7%. Typically it's been around 3%. This year we will be doing a price increase of 5% for both residential and commercial customers within the city. We are trying to be mindful and keep our rates as low as possible, but given the cost of doing business, there's no other way around it.
We all feel the pinch of these increases. The council is aware, and we do our best to keep costs for such essential city services low while still maintaining the quality of service we need.
Here are the new rates:
The "Fall Clean-Up Base Fee" will remain at $3.60 for now. This is the fee designed to cover the fall clean-up service as well as the city public dumpster. However, this fee does not cover the costs, and the city is discussing possible solutions and options regarding these city services. If you have ideas regarding the city-wide clean-up program and the city dumpster, please let us know.
"Where Sweet Things Grow"
As spring tries to arrive, I look forward to more people out in the parks, running, biking, and walking around the neighborhoods, planting flowers and preparing gardens. We live in a great community so let's enjoy it!