Notes from Closed Meeting on UTOPIA
Two months ago the Orem City Council members attended a meeting regarding the future of UTOPIA. At the meeting they were required to sign a non disclosure agreement. The meeting discussed using a fee on the utility bill of every resident of Orem to cover Utopia and its short fall. The utility fee would be a steep $20 to $25 a month regardless of whether or not you have or even have access to Utopia. The Orem City Manager said the non-disclosure agreement NDA (non disclosure agreement) had been lifted off of those of us who attended the UTOPIA meeting. The notes below were taken by Hans Andersen at the meeting. The notes in black are from the meeting and the notes in red were added by Hans later for clarification.
October 23, 2013 Secret meeting with NDA
I had a meeting at Kirton and McConkie law office in SLC, 50 E South Temple to discuss an offer by a company who wants to partner with UTOPIA. I signed a NDA (non-disclosure agreement) stating I would not talk about the information they shared with us about 10 minutes into the meeting. There were about 5-6 cities at our meeting, about 18 people?. All CC members and city managers are invited and will attend multiple meetings for similar presentations.
A fellow from Canada named Nick Hand (Hann) represented an unknown british company. His plan was to:
1. Get our city councils to vote to make UTOPIA a utility and to impose a still to be determined monthly fee to be imposed on our citizens once they ran the backbone in front of each house in our cities.
He used a $20-25/month figure when describing this. After reading the contract I believe I know why. If you turn to the bottom of page 9, part 2.4 of the Macquarie/UTOPIA agreement it talks about cities like Orem adding to their citizens utility bill the current bond payment for UTOPIA which is currently coming out of the general fund (i.e., property tax that just failed). The Maquarie/UTOPIA agreement says in part 2.4, in part,
. . . . the Parties will continue to explore options for including the existing debt (emphasis added) in the Transaction as outlined in the Milestone 1 Scope of Work herein, and may decide to do so in the future. . . .
City managers like this part because it would dump into the utility bill the whole UTOPIA mistake, (Past and this new debt) just like Provo dumped their whole IPROVO mistake into their utility bill. Many citizens would be unaware of the transfer, just like most don’t know the Orem street light fee was just dumped on their utility bill.
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