A mere touch of the finger - and $10,000 - will make it possible to bring the story of Orem to life, in living color on the computer screen.
City Council members voted recently to approve the spending of $10,000 in contingency funds to pay for the construction of an exhibit at the SCERA Heritage Art Museum. The art museum will open as part of the addition being completed to the SCERA Showhouse building on State Street.According to director of administrative services Phil Goodrich, the contingency fund currently has a balance of more than $100,000 with two-thirds of the budget year gone.
Goodrich said it's not unusual for a contingency fund to have that kind of balance and "in fact, they usually have more." Goodrich said the money is held there to be ready to meet a variety of emergency needs, extra snow removal, special requests, etc.
The money allocated to the art museum will pay for a stand-alone interactive computer built into a protective casing and framed by a large replica of the city's logo.
A touch-screen will allow visitors to view video clips, photographs and maps of Orem that combine themselves into a colorful on-site tour of key city sites.
Music and recorded text will augment the tour designed for visitors of all ages and abilities.
Management intern Dan Hayes brought the request to the council. Hayes said most of the $10,000 will go toward the purchase of a memory-intensive Pentium computer with a large touch-screen ($6,624) and the rest toward creating the casing, the large-scale log and minimal data collection costs.