Roger Eggett attended a special committee meeting to discuss Farmington City's guideline for the newly hired engineer. Roger proposes an alternative route than option 3. Here is his report:

I was invited by the Mayor to participate in a committee to outline the guidelines for an engineer the city hired to perform a study of the Legacy North Connector. The City Council allocated $40,000 to pay for this study. The engineer has been hired and will report his findings to the committee. Essentially, his objective is to review the information obtained by UDOT as they analyzed each option for the connector. Additionally, he was assigned to evaluate the options and see if he agrees with the recommendation made by UDOT or if his findings result in a different recommendation. He was also given the charge to determine if there exists other options that have not been explored. He will report his findings to this committee and give further guidance to the city as the city decides whether or not to amend its transportation corridor to comply with the request by UDOT to adopt what is commonly referred to as Option #3.

It has been made known that UDOT will present its case to the City Planning Commission at a public hearing to be held on or about August 8, 2007 [the date has been set for August 9th]. Based on the fact that the engineer will not have completed his study and this will be the Planning Commissions first opportunity to hear from the public, it is most likely the Planning Commission will not make a recommendation at that first meeting but schedule a follow-up meeting to make a recommendation.

Having said all of that, during the meeting it was reported that UDOT is convinced that Option 3 is their best option and compared to the other three options it is the only viable option. They indicated that they most likely will not be persuaded to choose one of the other three options and will only consider changing their position on Option 3 if a new option or new information is presented to them that supports a change. Having sat through the first hour of the meeting without commenting it appeared to me that unless something new was presented Option 3 would become the likely outcome. Therefore, I asked to speak and present a modification to Option #3 that would come closer to meeting the citizens objectives but still allow UDOT, the City, and various other interested parties to meet their requirements.

The proposal I put forth is to basically take Option #3 and shift it north along 650 West north of the homes on 250 South and as close to Clark Lane as possible. This means that as it runs along the DR&G tracks (from North to South) and then turns east after the fairgrounds, this proposal requires it to turn east at the beginning of the fairgrounds and just clip the south end of the jail complex. In either proposal the fairgrounds are planning on moving so why not just cut around the jail rather than extend it further south? Then instead of running along the east side of the DR&G tracks push it out several hundred feet to the east through the open undeveloped land and then provide a trail and buffer system between the connector and the DR&G corridor.

I can explain this in more detail at the meeting. Although it does not completely remove the connector from the west side of Farmington it separates existing homes very little and is a compromise that might work, it is certainly an improvement over Option #3 which is what we will be left with if we insist on not coming up with an alternative they will listen to.

What has become apparent to me is that we can scream as loudly as we want but unless we say something that allows each interested party to maintain something that is important to them they will not listen. This proposal allows the city to add to its commercial space, UDOT to pretend that Clark Lane is viable, the golf course to maintain the 14th hole, Station Park to maintain its current plans, the state legislature to meet its 2040 requirements, and the citizens to keep the freeway from dividing homes and being right in our back yard. I agree that the citizens give up the most on this option but unfortunately we have the least amount of power and representation at the table.