A Utah Transit Authority bus shelter originally placed on Center Street in Grantsville has been moved to City Hall, after members of city government intervened.
The bus shelter, which was funded using Proposition 1 money, had been installed earlier this month in front of Dennis Goins’ home at 121 Center Street. While Goins said the bus stop had been in front of his house for years, UTA added a full shelter, bike rack, garbage can and additional bench.
Grantsville City Mayor Brent Marshall, who lives on Center Street, said he noticed cones along streets in the city but believed they were for tree trimmers doing work in the city. He said he wasn’t aware UTA was putting in a sheltered bus stop and asked city building official Mike Haycock about markings on the road — but no road cut permits had been submitted.
Marshall said he reached out to UTA after contractors began pouring the concrete slab out in front of Goins’ home. Marshall provided emails from UTA Capital Projects Director Steve Meyer, which called the mid-block placement location of the bus shelter in front of Goins’ home as “totally unacceptable.”
Meyer also promised an investigation into how the location was selected and who was involved, in addition to relocating the bus stop. Marshall responded, asking Meyer to move the bus stop to City Hall.
Marshall and Goins said the UTA project manager, Grey Turner, came and spoke with the property owners.
Goins said the efforts of councilmen Mike Colson and Neil Critchlow were instrumental in having the bus stop removed. He said he wasn’t unhappy with UTA and allowed them to leave the concrete pad, but was glad to have the bus shelter removed.
“I’m very pleased with all that was done to make it disappear,” Goins said.
Critchlow said he spoke with UTA officials after the bus shelter appeared in front of Goins’ house and said they were good to work with in fixing the problem with the bus shelter.
“If they did that in front of my house, I would have been a little upset,” he said.
According to UTA public relations manager Erika Shubin, the bus shelter location on Center Street had been selected for its proximity to the Grantsville Senior Citizen Center and the higher ridership at the bus stop.
Shubin also said UTA was working to pull the permits from the contractor and UTA went through the process properly.
Marshall and Haycock, however, insist the city never received any of the required permits and did not contact the city before contractors started work on Center Street. Haycock said he personally reviews all of the permits submitted to the city and there were none from that address.
“Throughout this process, never was there a permit nor is there a permit today for any of the work that they did,” Marshall said.
A request for comment from Turner on the permits was not returned by press time on Tuesday.
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