Morgan County

PORTERVILLE — Only the walls of the historic Porterville meetinghouse still stand, but those walls symbolize a once divided community that settled its differences.

Now, the site is up for sale.

Thomas Bergman currently owns the property. He paid $2,000 for the meetinghouse in 1975. His family restored it and then lived there until 2001, when one of the daughters left a candle burning in her fourth floor bedroom.

Kristen Hebestreet knows some things — like farms, rural communities and the people who live there. That’s one reason she’s excited about being our new correspondent covering Morgan County.

Kristen is an Ogden native and an experienced newspaper journalist. She has three bachelor’s degrees — anthropology and communications from the University of Utah and English from Weber State University. Plus, she said she’s “one test short” of a master’s in English.

She also has 17 years of experience as a reporter, most of it in the Appalachia area of the southeast, working at newspapers in Bristol, Va., and in Kingsport and Johnson City, Tenn.

MORGAN — After beating out 22 other applicants, Blaine Gehring officially got his start as Morgan County’s new planning and development services department director on March 12.

ROY -- Mormon Battalion, Company C will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday at the Weber County Roy Library, 1900 W. 4800 South.

Calvin Stevens, noted scholar on Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints history, will be the guest speaker. Stevens is a retired institute teacher at Weber State University and will discuss the life of Willard G. Smith, a musician in Company D in the original Battalion. Smith settled and is buried in Morgan County.

MORGAN — All three candidates for the Morgan County Council will be unopposed, and none of the incumbents is running for his or her current seat.

But one face won’t be new. Robert Kilmer, who has filled an at-large council seat since 2011, filed for the four-year District 3 seat. He will be replacing Howard Hansen, who has served on the board for four years.

MORGAN -- Morgan County Councilwoman Ronda Kippen seems to be balancing her legislative duties with her employment as a full-time office assistant in the county's planning and development services department.

As Kippen sat in county budget work sessions that stretched as long as 10 hours for several days in November, some county residents wondered if she was still officially on the clock for her planning job.

A review of Kippen's time card obtained by the Standard-Examiner shows Kippen logged 4.5 hours on Nov. 7 and 2.5 hours on Nov. 8, the same days as lengthy county council budget work sessions.

MORGAN -- The county's latest audit cost more than double what the Morgan County Council had counted on.

"(The audit) took longer than originally identified," Councilman Lyle Nelson said. "I'm concerned it took as long as it did. The cost was extreme."