North County Staff | Posted: Thursday, May 12, 2005 12:00 am
A couple of weeks ago I had a chance to meet with Lehi's Community Council.
Some members of the group had concerns with the newspaper, and they invited me to sit down and talk with them.
I was prepped for the meeting by Cathy Allred, who has attended the meetings since they began two years ago. I approached the meeting with a bit of trepidation. I had been told in advance that some members of the group were critical of the Lehi Free Press. That surprised me, since the Free Press has been telling Lehi's story since the 1930s.
What I found was an unusual collection of civic leaders and concerned residents working together to coordinate activities within the city. Efforts to coordinate events aren't unusual, but this approach is novel and refreshing.
Present were representatives of the following organizations: The Lehi Civic Improvement Association (also known as, and I'm not kidding, the CIA); a representative of Lehi's Promise who doubles as a representative of the Lehi stakes of the LDS Church; the chairman of the council's Standards Committee, who doubles as the spouse of the representative of Lehi's Promise; the president of the Lehi area PTA council; the pastor of the local Baptist church; an officer from the Lehi Police Department; a member of the City Council; a representative of the Lehi Family Week organization and editor of the council's newsletter.
This isn't the whole council. Missing was the principal of Lehi High School, the director of the Chamber of Commerce, a member of the Recreation Department, a representative of the local Boy Scouts and the president of the Lehi Arts Council.
You get all of these people in one room and you have a pretty good representation of the community. It's an impressive gathering, and they meet with one goal -- to make sure these groups work together to make their city a better place.
From what I could tell, the group works this way.
In the monthly meeting, everybody tells everybody else what's happening so by the time the meeting is over, the right hand usually knows what the left hand is doing. This is pretty revolutionary.
Then the groups work together to see how they can help make an upcoming event more successful.
For example, the Lehi Roundup is just around the corner. The Improvement Association is in charge of the city celebration, but with the help of the other members of the Community Council, it can enlist the aid of almost every organization in the city.
The council makes it easier for the LDS Church to coordinate efforts to get the miniature floats built for the Roundup Miniature Parade.
This has always happened in the past. But Lehi has grown so fast event coordination could be cumbersome. The Community Council helps smooth that over.
This parade, by the way, is the best in the county. I've been going for more than 20 years, and am delighted every year with the creative floats and the colorful costumes. The floats are built by hand by various LDS Wards -- not every ward builds a float every year -- and are pulled by young men, and are ridden by younger children. Dozens of children in costumes that match float themes walk along.
It's hard to describe, but always entertaining.
Getting back to the council, this kind of cooperation is essential for many city events. The beauty of the Lehi group is that the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented every time there is an event scheduled.
Whether it be the city's Family Week activities, the Roundup, recent nondenominational Interfaith Celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ or a Scout-O-Rama, the Community Council is available to pool the city's resources to make the event work.
The council has other ongoing projects aimed at promoting family values and strengthening the community.
In the end, my concerns about the meeting were groundless. Some members of the group, perhaps, had felt the newspaper was not cooperative, but it wasn't hard to agree to cooperate.
One outcome of the meeting is that the newspaper will begin publishing articles about "Empowerment Assets" the council has adopted.
My overall impression was that the Lehi Community Council offers a model that could benefit most of our north Utah County communities -- a continuing effort by separate civic and church organizations to work together to make good things happen each day.
This story appeared in North County on page A2.