Busy Busy Week

There have been many interesting and important things happen this past week in conjunction with my West Valley City duties. In order to keep this post manageable in length I will resort to using a 'Top Seven' list to highlight these events. As always please feel free to contact me if you are interested in receiving more information on any of the following. My email address is simply corey@coreyrushton.com. Here is the list in no particular order:

1. Municipal Primary Election Day. Congratulations to all those candidates that advanced to the General Election with gratitude to the rest of the candidates that worked so hard with the best interest of our City at heart. I had the pleasure of conducting the Opening Ceremony at City Council meeting last night, and I chose to share a favorite poem of mine titled "The Poor Voter on Election Day" by John Whittier. If the poet's name sounds familiar it is because the first Hunter area school was named after him.
2. Energy Efficiency Block Grant. The City received over 1.1 million dollars from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to upgrade and convert some city lights, traffic signals, and HVAC to more modern and energy efficient models.
3. Bond Closing. As Chairman of the City's Redevelopment agency I spent an afternoon signing dozens of documents in sextuplet to pre-close on a 9 million dollar bond that will be used to kick start the financing within the City Center Valley Fair Mall redevelopment. I was excited about the extremely good rates that we received on the bonds due to realtionship between the current bond market and West Valley City's strong financial condition.
4. Jordan River Canoe Trip. I spent Saturday morning with a couple of elected officials and City staff canoeing down the West Valley City section of the Jordan River. While on this trip we experienced "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" aspects of the current state of the Jordan River. The knowledge gained on this trip will be very valuable in my role as City representative and co-chair of the Blueprint Jordan River Committee as well as the developments planned along the river at the UCCC.
5. Street Light Purchase. After years of negotiation the City has reached an agreement with Rocky Mountain Power to purchase their street light system within the City. As owners of the street light system we will now be able to save approximately $500,000 annually as we will be on a cheaper pay schedule.
6. Partnership with Salt Lake City to combat crime. With an inter-local agreement Utah's two largest cities have partnered in a cooperative effort to fight problems associated with drugs, prostitution, and gangs. Working cooperatively with Salt Lake City and partially financed by a COPS Methamphetamine Grant we anticipate that the shared information and resources will help put an end to much of these types of illegal activity instead of just scaring criminals back and forth between cities.
7. New Animal Shelter Grand Opening. This certainly falls under the last but not least category as the new facility on 4400 West and 3500 South is a modern and beautiful state of the art facility, that is dedicated to Community Preservation and Animal Service efforts. I was also pleased to see so many animal lovers, workers, and advocates at the Grand Opening.