Providence (Utah)
Abstract
Biography/History Notes
Utah municipal governments perform numerous functions, including the maintaining of law and order, guarding public health and sanitation, promoting recreation, and constructing and maintaining streets and sewers. Providence adopted city ordinances in 1898. These ordinances were revised, rewritten, and published in 1901. Most early revisions related to quarantines. Over the years the town board modified these published ordinances or charter by passing ordinances relating to specific issues, such as construction of a water district, lighted baseball fields, and dog taxes. New ordinances also regulated new innovations such as electricity, telephones, and sewers.??The town board in Providence found their greatest ongoing challenge to be the maintenance of the canal system. The engineers continually devised ways to adapt this system, ensuring that the ditches could use gravity to move the water. In the 1960's, along with several other communities, the Providence town board had the sewer system connected to the Logan City sewer system, which was then enlarged and improved in 1989.
Providence settlers established a town board (1898), which consisted of a president and four board members. The town board functioned as a legislative governing body for the community and its members were elected for two-year terms. The board president was the chief executive for the community and it was his job to see that ordinances were carried out.
The town board appointed a number of town officers. In 1898 the town officers include a town clerk who keeps plats, records and publishes ordinances, and signs contracts; a treasurer who handles and accounts for money; a town marshal who is responsible to take criminals into custody, respond to nuisance reports and aid citizens; a justice of peace who administers oaths and performs marriages; a road supervisor and pound keeper who manages the maintenance of streets, sidewalks and bridges, and controls animals within the town limits; and a sexton who administers burials and the upkeep of the town cemetery.