Winner: Salt Lake City's purchase of 154 acres in Big Cottonwood Canyon is winner on many levels because it sets aside open space, preserves a prime watershed and provides a new playground for hikers and skiers. Best of all, Salt Lake officials are vowing that the area will preserved as is, which means no paving or other development. For $2 million, largely subsidized by a 50-cent surcharge on Salt Laker's water bills, Willow Heights was a wise investment that will be held in trust for perpetuity.
Loser: Adding injury to insult, about a dozen residents of a South Jordan neighborhood were flooded for the third time this year when a severe thunderstorm ripped through Salt Lake County late Tuesday. Angry residents blame an inadequate retention pond. Whatever the reason, city planners and the developer of the subdivision must get to the bottom of the problem. This page wonders why the issue wasn't addressed the first time water deluged these homes.
Winner/Loser: Never underestimate the lengths drug traffickers will go to transport narcotics. A West Jordan detective recently found a 5-inch-long, 1 1/2-inch-thick, hollowed-out bolt apparently used to store 3 ounces of methamphetamine. Police said the man arrested in connection with the incident told them custom-made bolts have become one of the more common ways meth traffickers are shipping their product around the state and across the Mexican border.
Winner: Hats off to Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff for brokering a compromise to address the Secret Service's security requirements during Vice President Dick Cheney's address to state Republican party delegates today at Sandy's South Towne Exposition Center. Concealed weapons permit holders will be able to check their weapons in storage lockers while Cheney is in the convention center, then retrieve them once he leaves. Shurtleff's solution has apparently mollified the Utah Gun Owners Alliance, which had been trying to organize a protest at the convention.