Rumor: North Logan City plans to prepare a new general plan.
This rumor is true! Please visit NLCPLAN.ORG for more information.
Rumor: The federal government is bringing VA medical services to North Logan.
This rumor is true!
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs sent notice to the Cache Valley Veterans Association that they intend to open a facility that can provide services and reduce trips to Ogden or Salt Lake for our Veterans who need medical support.
Rumor: The North Logan City Streets Department just dumps gravel on our roads every summer and then they sweep it up, just to give themselves something to do.
This rumor is false!
When roads get cracked and worn, some cities simply rip up the road and reinstall it. The cost to do so can run $500,000 or more per linear mile of road! A pairing of tried and true practices in road maintenance that allows us to extend the life of our roads are known as "crack seal" and "chip seal". A crack seal involves filling cracks in a road with melted tar. North Logan owns our own crack seal machine so we can perform this maintenance in house. A chip seal involves spreading tar or another adhesive on the road and coating it with a gravel-like material. Cars are then permitted to drive on the road for a period of time, which pushes the gravel into the adhesive. Then the road is then swept clean and a fog seal is applied to the top of the chip to provide additional adhesive power. North Logan works with the Cache County Roads department to provide chip seal services as a deeply discounted rate. These maintenance treatments extend the life of our roads by 10 years or more at a tenth of the price (or less) than road replacement!
This last summer, there were some issues with the quality of the "chip" material provided by our supplier, which led to excess gravel on the roads. That supplier and the Cache County Streets Department have warrantied the work from last summer and will re-do the chip seal on 1800/1900 North this summer. This will be re-done with chip and equipment that won't leave the same volume of gravel on the road that we experienced last summer.
So when you see the chip on the roads, please know that this isn't a new rite of summer, but simply that we are ensuring that our roads are well-maintained and will last, saving taxpayers money!
Rumor: I heard that the turf fields near Elk Ridge
Park are only for soccer and lacrosse players on specific teams.
This rumor is false!
The turf fields at Elk Ridge Park are a part of city park
facilities just like all of our other facilities. Sports teams, families, and individuals can
reserve the turf fields (just like the other fields in the city), and the
person or group who reserves them is entitled to use them. If there is no reservation on the field
(which is often the case) then anyone may use the fields. Of course, reservation or no reservation,
everyone needs to follow the rules for field use and practice good
sportsmanship.
Rumor: The city plans
to build 3100 North through to connect Green Canyon High School up to the East
bench.
This rumor is true!
In 2018, North Logan and Hyde Park were selected in a competitive process from local governments across Cache County to receive the funding necessary to buy the land necessary to build the road up to 1200E. Just recently, North Logan received additional funds to bring the segment of road from 1200E to 1600E up to our current design standards. In addition to the road, their will be a multi-use path for cyclists, walkers, joggers, strollers, and such. The project is currently operating in the land acquisition phase, and once the cities acquire the necessary land we will partner together to build the road.
Rumor: North Logan
City actually owns the RSL building
This rumor is false!
North Logan City owns the land on which the RSL building
sits. We signed a lease agreement with
RSL for 50 years. After that time, the
building will revert to the ownership of North Logan City. As part of the terms of our lease agreement,
though, North Logan City is granted office space in the facility for our Parks
& Recreation department, and we are granted a significant allotment of time
to use the RSL facility for city purposes each month. This time has allowed us to do hold exercise
classes, soccer clinics, and even just open play time for our residents. We appreciate and value our partnership with
the RSL organization.
Rumor: The City
Administrator, City Recorder, and City Treasurer are really voting on
everything.
This rumor is false!
The City administrator, recorder, and
treasurer are employees of the city, and like all of the other employees of
North Logan they act under the direction of the North Logan Mayor. None of those individuals have a vote on the
city council. Instead, they work to
implement the policies passed by the city council. As requested by the council or directed by
the mayor, the city administrator and other staff members will provide
information, conduct research, and complete tasks that help the city to make
the best decisions we can for our residents.
Rumor: North Logan
uses excess money from the water and sewer funds to cover the costs of other
city services.
This rumor is false!
In fact, state law prohibits using money from “enterprise
funds” like the water and sewer funds for any other purpose. So we cannot use water funds to buy library
books, and we cannot use sewer funds to support our recreation programs.
Our sewer funds are being used to maintain our existing system
and to pay North Logan’s share of the new water treatment plant that was
required do to changes in federal regulations.
Our water funds are used to maintain and expand our existing system. One example of this is the well we drilled a
few years ago. New state regulations require North Logan to increase the amount
of water we hold in storage, which will require a new reservoir in the months
and years ahead.
We often wonder why it costs so much money to pump water out
of the ground and let it run downhill to our homes. The production of the water isn’t the most
expensive part of this process—though drilling a well that can serve the city’s
system can cost a million dollars or more and treating the water to make it
safe carries some costs. The most expensive part is installing and paying for
the pipes and pumps that distribute the water through the system. While we sometimes take for granted that
these pipes are present and functioning, the infrastructure requires constant
monitoring, regular maintenance, and expansion as our city grows. The water fees are only used for the quality
water service that our residents expect.
Rumor: I heard that
people who are not North Logan residents cannot use the library.
This rumor is partly true and partly false!
While we don’t check IDs to allow people into the library,
someone must have a library card in order to check out any of the materials our
library provides. This includes books,
movies, audiobooks, and even the materials our library makes available through
online lending.
If you are a North Logan resident, you can have a library
card for free, and over 7,000 residents in our community have one. If you are not a North Logan resident, you
can get a non-resident library card but you must pay an annual fee for the
card. This makes it so that
non-residents do not receive a service that residents of North Logan are paying
for in our property taxes.
Rumor: Is it true
that North Logan has been trying to recruit Target to North Logan City?
This rumor is true!
We have reached out to Target on multiple occasions, but
each time they have indicated they do not have plans to locate in North Logan
or in Cache Valley any time soon. This
outreach is part of our general economic development strategy, where we reach
out to businesses that we hear our citizens our interested in. If you have a recommendation for a business
you would like to see in North Logan, please reach out to your elected
officials and let them know.
Our economic development strategy is not only based on
recruiting new businesses, but also in making sure that we are providing,
within the constraints of the proper role of government, an environment where
existing businesses can succeed.
Rumor: North Logan
City keeps increasing the tax rate.
This rumor is false!
Your tax bill includes taxes from the Cache County, the
Cache County School District, the Cache Mosquito Abatement District, and North
Logan City. The vast majority of
property taxes paid by our residents goes to the county and the school
district. The city portion of your
property tax is only about 13% of your overall property tax bill.
Under Utah’s Truth in Taxation law, if the value of homes in
North Logan increases (as it usually does), your tax rate automatically
decreases unless the city council takes action.
In the rare case that North Logan homes decrease in value, your tax rate
would automatically increase unless the city council takes action. The goal of the Truth in Taxation law is to
generate a steady amount of revenue from existing homes, and any increases in
revenue would come from new development.
Because we’ve had years of growth in value in recent years, tax rates in
North Logan have actually decreased for several years. Last year North Logan’s city council passed a
decrease in rate that was slightly smaller than would otherwise have been the
case to allow us to cover some of the increasing public safety costs for our
community.