New Spring City Council approves upgrade
for firefighting equipment
By Doug Lowe
Staff writer
1-30-2020
SPRING CITY—Newly elected Mayor Cynthia DeGrey took the oath of office, as did the three re-elected councilmembers—Cody Harmer, Craig Clark and Joe McGriff—at the council’s first meeting of the new year.
Virtually everyone at the meeting then expressed appreciation to Neil Sorensen, for his recent service as mayor as well as for his many more years of service on council.
One of Sorensen’s last duties was calling the meeting to order. In his final remarks as mayor, Sorensen first complimented those councilmembers and volunteers “responsible for all the Christmas decorating that made the town look absolutely awesome.”
Sorensen thanked the city’s employees and department heads for the service during the past year, and singled out the first department for special praise, saying, “I have never seen a better, more awesome fire-fighting team than what Spring City has right now…and I joined our volunteer fire department when I was 16 years old.”
Later in the meeting, with the newly installed mayor at the helm, fire department matters received a great deal of discussion before the expenditure of some $26,000, already in the budget, for upgrading equipment that included replacing leaky hoses and out-of-date protective clothing.
The city’s dual Police Chief and Fire Chief, Clark Christensen also reported that some 20 members of the volunteer fire department will be going to St. George over the weekend of Jan. 24, “for training at the Winter Fire School being held there.”
When the annual audit of city finances was presented by the auditor Greg Ogden, the newly constituted council gave the report’s two findings and financial figures close attention. The term “findings” in government audits actually means flaws, faults or weaknesses. In Spring City’s case, they were not too serious, but still were serious enough to be cited.
The first finding was the city exceeded it budget when it used a $30,000 donation from the Friends of Spring City to pay off a bond ahead of schedule. Upon receiving those monies for that purpose the city should have legally amended its budget, so that the unplanned expenditure would not have made it appear that the previously established budget had been exceeded.
The second finding was a cash management report, due semi-annually, has been submitted to the appropriate website of the state without being saved in that location, so the most current cash management information did not appear there as it should have. Learning from those two mistakes, the responsible city officials—elected, appointed and employed—all committed that those mistakes would not happen again.
After going thru the audit report in considerable detail, Ogden summed up his findings by tell the mayor and council members, “So, financially, the city is in really good shape.” Happy to hear that remark, more than one councilman repeated the words, “in really good shape.”
Tim Beasley, from CentraCom, addressed the council to ask for the city’s permission to construct either “a 40 foot-high metal tower or power pole” in order to broadcast RF (radio frequency) signals to some areas on the edge of the city where the company’s fiber optic cable is not available. Recalling how Verizon pays the city for its tower location, members of council asked if CentraCom was proposing something similar. “We are not Verizon, but we can reduce the cost now paid by the city for our current services, and possibly help get some cable run up the canyon to get some real-time metering of the town’s spring-produced water,” he said.
Some area resident within and beyond the city limits expressed hope that erection of a CentraCom tower would considerably improve their cell phone and internet service—at a lower cost. And, after hearing for all concerned, Beasley was asked to prepare a more detailed proposal for council to consider at their next meeting on the first Thursday in February.
