Bountiful – Pursuit of Liberty

A Current Example of Being a Good Legislator

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Last night I attended a town hall meeting held jointly by my state senator, Sen. Dan Liljenquist; my state representative, Rep. Becky Edwards; and the neighboring district representative in Bountiful, Rep. Sheryl Allen. I came away from that meeting with a number of impressions that I will be sharing in the coming days, but the one I wanted to share first was what a good example Sen. Liljenquist was of a legislator as a communicator, specifically in communicating with his constituents on an important issue.

Almost as soon as the meeting was opened up for comments and questions from those in attendance it became very clear that a majority of the people there were public employees who were not very thrilled with the work that Sen. Liljenquist has been doing to change the pension program for state employees. They expressed their disappointment with the directions he was going and their concerns with the future ramifications of the changes the he is advocating.

He listened calmly over and over but as he spoke it was very evident that he had put a major investment of time and energy to arrive at the best available solution. He politely but decisively explained why the changes were necessary and what he was doing to protect current employees and the fiscal future of the state.

I don’t know if many people at the meeting were swayed as he spoke, but I very much respected how he tackled this difficult issue head on and did not bend to the myopic perspective of some vocal constituents by choosing the irresponsible option of punting the decision to the future.

When Mandates Are Not Optional

I generally do not favor government action that places a mandate on citizens. I don’t believe that it is the place of government to decide whether citizens should recycle or not, but if the options are between mandatory recycling and no recycling option after the citizens have overwhelmingly favored optional recycling it makes sense for the city to choose mandatory recycling. This appears to be the case in Bountiful.

The motion to proceed from Council member Beth Holbrook rescinded the “opt-in” proposal passed May 27.

Reasons cited were a change by Allied Systems, the previously chosen provider. It wanted a guaranteed minimum participation level and a four-year contract, and would start charging the city to maintain the 200 West recycling bins, at an estimated cost of $30,000-$35,000 each year.

With a price-tag of $3 per month I don’t think we’ll see too much protest over this. Of course my position might be affected by the fact that I have lived with mandatory recycling in Lehi for a few years and I liked it. We generally had more recyclable trash than we did regular garbage so I thought the service was very worthwhile.