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Show THE ZEPHYR/SPECIAL ELECTION ISSUE..FEBRUARY 1993 PAGE. 12 District #5 Dave May v. John Maynard Zephyr: The county budget is approaching $5 million. What is it in your experience that qualifies you to handle such a budget? John: For all of my life I’ve run a business, and dealt with a budget and budgeting. Whether a budget is $5 million or $200,000, it doesn’t make any difference. You have to budget for needs in a way that the budget balances. Balancing a budget for the county is really no different than balancing a budget for a business. Dave: You’re managing a huge amount of money, the numbers are big and there are more zeros. But a county is more like a group of businesses than one single entity. Certainly the money all comes together and it’s in one pie, but you're operating a bunch of really diverse activities. As John says, if you are going to operate efficiently, you're going to have to balance it. Zephyr: The financial performance of the county commission has been a major issue over the past year. How would you characterize their financial functioning? Dave: I sure lost faith with the present, or the recent past commission. You have to be careful right now, with Peter Haney in asa commissioner. But I’ve totally lost faith with the operation of the previous county commissioners. Although I can’t quite finger any individual things that were misspent or poorly spent or misplanned, there is an obvious lack of planning, a lack of real organization, that makes me-I don’t want to sound too negative about those rascals, but it makes me suspicious of everything that has gone on in the last year or two. John: I would agree with Dave. I would like to add that I think the present county commission, and 1 too would like to release Peter from that, have not spent the money where it does the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people. I see them taking pet projects they have, which they want to see done, and doing them. And not doing them well. The courthouse is a good example of that, where the people originally didn’t want it, they forced it through, and now they’ve gone ahead and done it. And we have no guarantees that it’s going to turn out the way the people want it to, and it probably won't. There are going to have to be some cuts made. There’s no performance bond in place. It’s things like that I think are just foolish and wasteful of taxpayers’ money. Dave: That is a good example of the kind of thing I’m talking about. But that’s the real obvious thing, that’s what we all know is somewhat messed up. We don’t know how far it’s messed up. But the part that bothers me is the whole lot of other expenditures that we don’t know much about. That’s the part that makes me suspicious of everything going on. If we had to have a courthouse renovation, it could have been built with different funds, it could have been done differently. It certainly could have been done more "properly" than the present method. John: When you have a county budget with so many special service districts, and those service districts are somewhat accountable to the taxpayers but you don’t see that money in the county budget, it’s hard to really tell where that money’s been spent. Unless you go to an awful lot of effort to find it. I’m not so sure the average citizen on the street is aware of where the money is being spent. It’s kind of like a lot of hidden agendas. Zephyr: Specifically, what in the county budget can be cut, and what in the county budget should be increased? John: One of the obvious things that should be at least trimmed back is the Hastings Road. To spend $120 some thousand dollars to engineer a road that is not a major highway in the county seems ridiculous. I agree the Hastings Road needs to be upgraded, but I don’t think it needs upgrading more than any other secondary road. It needs to be graded and graveled, but I don’t think it needs 100 foot right-of-ways and paving costs of that nature. That’s one obvious thing. There are some things in the budget I think need more budgeting, specifically recycling and Seekhaven. I don’t think in the general budget you find things that need to be cut as you find in the special service districts that funding is kind of misappropriated, and needs to be cut. Dave: I don’t have anything specific that I could say you can chop 20 grand here and 50 thousand there. Certainly there are areas where we are using money that are directed improperly, and we need to put more money not only into recycling, but into a composting program. We talk about trying to reduce the volume of material going into the dump, and composting can eliminate an awful lot of stuff that we’re spending money to bury. But to get back to your question, I can’t make any specific points at this time about what should be cut, or amounts that should be cut, nor amounts that should be added anywhere. We do need to reorganize the way we are spending it. One other thing about the budget in general. | really dislike the fact that we have a budget but not a financial plan. We have a budget, and then there area whole bunch of things that are called "off-budget." They involve large revenues and large expenses but don’t show up on the county budget. Some of the special service monies, and some of the mineral lease monies, that don’t show up on the budget. You can find out what they are, you can ask and they will tell you what the money was and _ how it was spent. I’m not saying they are stealing it or anything like that. But] think it should be part of one public, easily read and easily understood financial plan, not the mishmash we have now. Zephyr: Voters in November refused to reapprove the Allen Memorial Hospital District’s taxing power, throwing the financial responsibility for the facility back on the county. What direction should the hospital go? Should services be expanded or scaled back? Where would you like to see the hospital in two years? Dave: We really must, underlined in bold, must, provide high quality primary care for the community. Ido not think we should be doing CAT-scans and brain surgery over there. But I do think that anyone who lives in this community, from infants to the elderly, who needs primary care, the first level of good care, should get it in the community. We shouldn’t have to send someone to Grand Junction who has a broken arm. I realize I’m overstating it, but... I think the emergency room they have completed over there is great, and I think that as we go along we’re going to have to upgrade the building and the services offered, and further down the line, build an entirely new hospital. We’re talking huge amounts of money. But we’re a growing community, we have a lot of medical needs in it that have to be met. You can’t operate an efficient, healthy community without good health care. Dave May and John Maynard Zephyr: Would you support a tax increase to expand the hospital? Dave: First, we're going to have to deal with the present situation. But we might eventually need a tax increase. We might also be able to use mineral lease money. Mineral lease monies can be used for a lot of different things, and you might be able to build a hospital. You couldn’t operate it with mineral lease monies, but you could construct a new hospital, and sometime down the road, I’m not talking about the next year or two. But before that, we’ve got to settle the problem we have right now. Either the people are going to have to re-authorize the taxing basis as before, or the council is going to have to allocate money to it. There really aren’t any other options. John: I agree with Dave. Ten years ago 88 percent of the people in this county voted in favor of the one-tenth of one percent [hospital] taxation. This past year it failed. I think the reason why is a backlash against the way the hospital was being operated by the commissioners.’ I would like to see that tax issue re-voted upon by the people, but not until after the new council comes in. I think it will pass by 88 percent the way it did 10 years ago. I'd like to see 20 percent of that road district money, as Dave says, go into the hospital for the next 5 years, just to give them some capital for infrastructure. One thing I would specifically like to see is an addition or a new building which would be for longterm care, a nursing home, if you want to call it that, on the lower level, and I’d like to see that building contain an upper level to provide low-rent, subsidized housing for the elderly who don’t need full-time nursing care, but may need meals brought in occasionally, but still able to keep their own apartment up. Nursing homes don’t pay for themselves. But with the government housing subsidy area, that would help pay for the nursing home. I think its something the county needs badly. Zephyr: For the health care services, would you support a tax increase? John: 1 don’t think the hospital will need a tax increase if they get their one-tenth of one percent, which they claim they can break even with. And then with the mineral lease monies, that should give them upfront cash to build the infrastructure they need. Zephyr: Everyone says we need better education. What specifically could and should the county council do for education? John: You kind of get into another area here. People talk about wanting to bring industry in here. Before we can bring industry we have to have a workforce available to run it, and I don’t think we have that now. I don’t know that specifically the county should get into the areas of public education in the school system here, although they may be able to lend some financial Utah State University in Moab 259-7432 "There is one thing better than good government, and that is government in which all people have a part." Walter Hines Page |