Hyrum mayor touts new parks, solar panels

Plans for two new parks were announced last week by Hyrum City Mayor Dean Howard during his second annual state-of-the-city address. On KVNU’s Crosstalk show Tuesday, Howard said there is a lot of excitement about the new Salt Hollow Park that will be located between 100 and 300 North on Hyrum’s west end. Howard says residents on the west side of the city feel they have been neglected as far as parks are concerned. “Most of the parks exist on the east end with the rodeo grounds and the baseball diamonds and soccer fields and parks up there,” Howard explained. “But this spring we’re going to do Phase 1 of our Salt Hollow Park. “That phase will include a walking trail, parking, we’ll build a pond there, we’ll have picnic tables, restrooms and a splash pad.” Another attraction at Salt Hollow Park will be a 30-foot tall sleigh riding hill. Howard says no additional tax will be required in order to build the park because the city has a $50,000 grant from the RAPZ tax fund. He says the other park to be located on the east end of town will be known as Blacksmith Park. It will have a dual-purpose retention basin that will also serve as a soccer field during the warm-weather season. Hyrum City is also getting innovative with renewable energies. Not only does Hyrum now have solar panels at its almost-new library, Mayor Howard says he can boast that Hyrum has the largest solar panel of any municipality in Utah. Howard says part of the funding came from a federal government stimulus grant and there was a $30,000 match from the city. Howard says that it is functioning now and people who visit the library can view a monitor that displays how much energy the panels are producing at any given moment. He says right now the solar panel is generating about 40 kilowatts of power. On KVNU’s Crosstalk show, Howard said the library itself is the most heavily used in the area, except for the Logan Library.

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