With fellow Democrat Jenny Wilson pitching a health-benefits program that would extend the county's insurance policy to employees' "adult designees" - a term that includes gay and lesbian partners - Horiuchi had to shake off his Pavlov-like inklings to speechify. After all, the real debate remained a week away.
Instead, he promised colleagues a jaw-dropping speech on Tuesday of political "enormity."
"Not massive in terms of size," the Democrat said. "Massive in terms of intensity."
Republican Michael Jensen smiled, suggested that Horiuchi edit for quantity (but certainly not quality) and remarked about the upcoming debate: "I venture to guess that we'll need more than a half-hour next week."
No bliss in UTOPIA
With Midvale's City Council poised to decide whether to up its financial support of UTOPIA, several residents made their opposition clear.
Sure, the public hearing had ended - with 15 people speaking against the refinancing plan for the fiber-optic network and three for it - but that didn't stop a man with a handlebar mustache from shaking his head and repeating aloud, "Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it."
Another man got off his phone and yelled out,
"Payson City just rejected it - 4 to 1."
Midvale's five council members looked up and then voted unanimously to stick with UTOPIA.
Half the crowd shuffled out of the council chambers with rumblings of, "Remember them next election."
Taking a bite out
of dog attacks
Provo Municipal Councilwoman Midge Johnson has made curbing vicious dogs in the city a personal crusade. And she understands both sides of the issue.
During a recent meeting of Provo's and Orem's governing bodies, Johnson related her own childhood experience with a mean mutt that left her with small scars on her face.
Johnson said when she walked home from school, this dog would come out and harass her and try to bite her. When she told her father, he said to bite back.
Sure enough, the cranky canine came at her again. Johnson said she grabbed the pooch and bit it on the face, and the dog's collar cut her face.
"My dad was surprised I did it," Johnson said, "but that dog never bothered me again."
Orem still sober
Orem City Councilwoman Karen McCandless said the council's recent vote on a "sober-living ordinance" may be giving people the wrong idea about Utah County's second biggest city.
The ordinance establishes criteria for locating group homes for recovering alcoholics and drug addicts, such as limiting the number of people living in the house to six and requiring proof of sobriety.
But some wags seem to think that the ordinance means that the rest of Orem may be partying like it's 1999.
"There are jokes that these are the only places in Orem to live in a sober fashion," McCandless said, assuring her colleagues from Provo that Family City USA remains stone-cold sober.
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