Midway City Council met Tuesday night with afull agenda. They discussed a couple of annexations, received an update on mental health resources and the city's financial state.
Midway City Council talked about hot springs in their recent meeting. The Whitaker Family wants the City to consider annexing their private land, including natural hot pots, along the Pine Canyon Road. The family doesn't have a current plan to develop the property. Midway City Council Member Jeff Drury said the family asks for annexation because they're interested in access to Midway's culinary water.
“The hot pots have been there for quite a while. You know their initial intention is just to provide some culinary water and increase some of the hot pot capacity there. I don't know that it would be a publicly available spot, but it's something that the council felt was worth further consideration. We wanted to go a little further down the process. One thing that we didn't see was a concept plan of what may be done on the property, so we requested that that be a part of our further consideration.”
Council discussed and will further consider the Dance annexation request.
“This property is looking for also attachment to the culinary water system. It’s adjacent to the Cascade Springs subdivision here in midway. So it's a fairly small property. Initially they're asking for one lot with the possibility of making that into four homes and I believe it's on 6 or 7 acres.”
Cindy Wilmshurst presented The Utah Strong Recovery project. The organization is run by the Utah Department of Substance Abuse and Mental Health. Drury said they are concerned about the community's service workers, many of whom are struggling with the pandemic's challenges.
“They were just making the council aware of some of the issues as well as providing resources for people who need assistance. It's tough to be alone and isolated all the time and I think the Utah Strong Recovery Project has provided resources. There's over 50 counselors providing free counseling. They have call in numbers and various things that they can do to help people during the pandemic with mental health issues.”
Drury said the ice rink has had great attendance in the past year but that many special events have been canceled, such as the City’s Swiss Day’s celebration. He said, despite the economic impacts from COVID-19, the City is in decent financial shape.
“We’ve had financials that are similar as far as tax revenues. We’ve had some unexpected expenses and expenses that didn't happen. As you know Swiss Days is a pretty popular event in any way and due to the pandemic, that was cancelled. So that has an effect both on our tax revenues as well as the expenses of the city. Overall, we received a good financial report.”
The Council held a long discussion, finally granting conditional approval on the Edelweiss Meadows Sub-Division. The major sticking point was road access. The development plan shows six, 1/2acre lots. Drury said the big concern is the road connection and how it fits into its overall road plan.
“We granted approval with the condition of working on some of those issues, asking a couple of parties involved, to move forward with some additional discussions as a condition of that approval.”
Drury said the council plans to review and update the city’s road plan.
A link to the next Midway City Council meeting February 2 can be found here.
