Friday, November 12, 2010

United Women’s Forum Minutes

November 10, 2010 Meeting
Conducting: Kris Kimball
Prayer: Edith Baker
Pledge: Lori Kinyon
Announcements: Kris Kimball Movie Night Nov. 19th at 7:00PM 1252 Lorien Dr. Bountiful. RSVP 299-9597 “Agenda”
Constitution Classes continues on Tuesday Nights, Seminar 3
Patriot’s Packets available today $17.87
Next Meeting: January 12, 2011 10:00am. @ ALH Have a Merry Christmas!!
Senator Dan Liljenquist: Medicaid or go Broke? Jan. 7th 7:00pm @ City Hall in Bntfl.
School Board Report: Barbara Derricott The State School Board is very entrenched with the idea of All Day Kindergarten and trying to see if they can get the Legislature to approve the 7.5M needed to fund the program. They also are looking into grading schools A-F, similar to what Florida did to raise their education performance with their students. The meetings are on the 1st Friday of each month. We need others who would be willing to attend, either morning or afternoon to help Barb cover the 3 different committee hearings.
David County Update: Davis County District Attorney Troy Rawlings was there to report on a community decency ordinance that is being violated by Victoria Secrets and Spencer Gifts. There will be a meeting for this issue in January and it will be very important for us to show up and show support for our Community Decency Standards. Troy has received over 400 emails in the last 3 weeks about this issue and he is very committed to doing what he can to protect Davis County from the influence of soft porn and the effect it has on our children.
Troy also spoke about the need for a Gang Task Force here in Davis County to help curtail a growing problem that he is seeing with gang activity. Right now 20% of the individuals in our county jails are known gang members. A gang task force would be ideal in being proactive with the different agencies in Davis County to deal with this issue. If you are in support of Davis County forming a County Wide Gang Task Force, the most important thing we can do is let our Mayors, City Council Members and Mayors know that we support this idea.
Due to time restraints, Troy was unable to report in detail on the gang activity in Davis County so we will have him back in January to discuss that issue with us in more detail. Davis County is still a safe place to be living, however we want to be pro-active to keep it that way. The following is contact information for the Bountiful Community:
Mayor Joe Johnson jjohnson@bountifulutah.gov
Councilman Tom Tolman tomsgrafix@aol.com
Councilman Fred Moss fred@dominioneng.net
Councilman John Marc Knight John.knight@us,army.mil
Councilwoman Beth Holbrook sandrus@bountifulutah.gov
Councilman Scott Myers sandrus@bountifulutah.gov
Police Chief Tom Ross ross@bountifulutah.gov
Special Guest Speaker: Newly Elected LaVar Christensen We were excited to learn LaVar had been re-elected to the State Legislature as a Representative from Bountiful. He was able to hear Troy Rawlings speak and was familiar with the Miller Case that Troy had talked about with Community Decency Standards. LaVar is willing to help Troy in any way he can from the legislative angle. LaVar also spoke about Principle #4 from the 5,000 Year Leap, religion in government. He did a wonderful job sharing all the different ways religion and morality were woven into the daily fabric of our Founding Fathers. The wall of separation between Church and State that Thomas Jefferson referred to was only Contained in a writtenletter to the Danbury Baptist Church in 1803. It is not found anywhere in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the Declaration of Independence. Thomas Jefferson had been referring to the Federal Government not having any say in any religious matters; that was left up to the states.
LaVar also shared with us the spiritual influence he received when he was writing Amendment 3 of the Utah Constitution and how critical each and every word was that he was crafting. This Amendment protects Traditional Marriage here in Utah, so we don’t end up with the same nightmare that we see happening in California with Prop 8.
We are excited to have LaVar’s wisdom and expertise this year in the Legislature to help protect families here in Utah.
Special Thanks to Marilyn Nielson and Diane Prince for providing soup and rolls for our luncheon.
Our next Meeting will be on January 12th 10:00-12:00pm at the Bountiful American Legion Hall 52 W. 200 S. Have a Merry Christmas!