In The Middle of Everything City Hall – 7505 South Holden Street • Midvale, UT 84047
The Heart of the Matter
MIDVALE CITY DIRECTORY City Hall Finance/Utilities Court City Attorney’s Office City Recorder/Human Resources Community Development Public Works Ace Disposal/Recycling Midvale Historical Museum Midvale Senior Center SL County Animal Services Police Dispatch Unified Fire Authority Fire Dispatch Communications
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MIDVALE CITY ELECTED OFFICIALS MAYOR Robert Hale Email: Rhale@midvale.com
801-567-7204
CITY COUNCIL District 1 - Quinn Sperry Email: qsperry@midvale.com District 2 - Paul Glover Email: pglover@midvale.com District 3 - Heidi Robinson Email: Hrobinson@midvale.com District 4 - Bryant Brown Email: bbrown@midvale.com District 5 - Dustin Gettel Email: dgettel@midvale.com
WHO TO CALL FOR… Water Bills Ordering A New Trash Can Reserving the Bowery Permits GRAMA requests Court Paying For Traffic School Business Licensing Property Questions Cemetery Water Line Breaks Planning and Zoning Code Enforcement Building inspections Graffiti
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EMERGENCY OR DISASTER CONTACT Public Works Fire Dispatch – Unified Fire Authority Midvale Police Precinct or Police Dispatch Unified Police Department EMERGENCY
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Here comes Autumn! We all have looked forward to cooler days and nights. I am so glad to have four seasons! I was so happy for the harvest days when those came, weren’t you? Other than squash bugs in the crookneck squash (which delayed the fruiting and ripening), our produce was bountiful. I know those 30+ quarts of peach halves my wife bottled will taste so good on a winter’s day -- with a light coat of heavy cream (Oh, now my mouth is watering!) I share now with my fellow Midvale residents a bit of a melancholy forecast: You have no doubt noticed the hundreds of “Help Wanted” signs around town; some even advertise the available hourly wages. One even shouts, “Competitive Wages.” The apparent shortage of employees is economy-wide! Here is my observation and prediction: There are too few laborers working in our society to maintain the level of commerce we had grown accustomed to. Even Midvale City has had a much higher level of turnover among employees as higher paying jobs become available elsewhere. Our Unified Police Department is bracing for what has been coined “Wage Wars” among municipalities in an attempt to attract applicants from an ever-shrinking labor pool. My prediction is that our economy will tighten while attempting to attract more employees than are typically available. Then what? It may once again become necessary, if not fashionable, for many in the labor force to work two or more jobs. Perhaps in this cycle not necessarily to make the mortgage or rent payment (though those have also increased at an alarming rate!) but because more flexible people are needed to keep essential businesses open!
OCTOBER 2021 CITY NEWSLETTER By Mayor Robert Hale
What will this mean for fathers, mothers, and employees of all stripes? I hope business owners and management will be able to effectively evaluate the thrust of their particular industry and provide meaningful employment, wages and working conditions for those willing to work that extra job just to assure business doors remain open. I think we will all individually and unitedly help define which commercial ventures are truly meaningful to our society based on which businesses are able to attract sufficient staff to perform/ produce. I believe a focus on self-sufficiency will become primal in all decisions individuals and families make through the rest of this decade. I’m not talking about the “bunker mentality” of the 1950-1960’s, where people built underground hideaways capable of withstanding a nuclear attack. No, I mean getting out of debt. Developing small home industry capable of producing and preserving home-grown vegetables. Community gardens have become the topic du jour lately. What level of interest in these is there in Midvale households? Many apartment dwellers have limited space to grow vegetables. Perhaps linking resources with others who have a small plot of ground, water, and sunshine would be advantageous in the long run. This could include Cityowned properties. The long run is the best outlook to have. A short sprint to the grocery store is vital in so many cases. Yet we are all aware that when distribution systems become disrupted for even a short time, chaos results. Yes, we need to be more like the proverbial ant which stores foodstuffs all summer, and less like the grasshopper, which eats and eats and stores nothing, only to suffer from lack of food or warmth when winter arrives.
Water Meter Replacement As with many things in this world, water meters can slow down or fail over time. The result is that they begin to under-register water usage or estimated reads are required. Since February 2020, Meterworks Services (the City’s contracted installer) has been replacing water meters throughout the Midvale City service area to ensure the meter is registering water use accurately. Meterworks is scheduled to replace a total of 3,268 meters over a three-year period. Not every meter meets the replacement criteria, so your neighbor may receive a new meter, but you may not need one. FAST FACTS • The Installer. Midvale City has contracted with Meterworks to install the new meters. Their crew members will be wearing jackets or shirts bearing their company name, and their vehicles will also have the Meterworks logo. The meter technicians may be out as early as 8:45 a.m. to start changeouts. They try to avoid peak morning hours.
• The Plan. MeterWorks started replacing meters at the end of September and anticipates installing the third-year meters (1,364) by the end of November. • What you need to do. The installation process is simple and there is only about a 15-minute interruption to water service. Customers do not have to be present during the process. When the technician arrives at a home to replace the meter, they check to see if the water is running through the meter. If so, the technician will knock on the door to let the homeowner know the meter is going to be changed out and water will not be available for 5-15 minutes (generally closer to the 5–10-minute range). Pre-COVID, the meter technician would knock on every door. However, they found that most people did not want strangers knocking on their door in a COVID world and want to maintain social distancing. QUESTIONS? For questions or more information regarding the contractor or process, call Midvale City’s Utility Billing Department at 801-567-7200 option #1.