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Show THE ZEPHYR/SPECIAL ELECTION ISSUE..FEBRUARY 1993 that money just wasted. I would like to see them go ahead and get the right of way, and then we'll have to come up to a vote of the people before they can get any money for any construction. Zephyr: They do need to get the right of way, but the Community Impact Board voted to give them a $3 million loan pending the approval of the BLM, so they don’t need to go to a vote to get approval for that loan. If the right of way is the issue, then why doesn’t the road board cancel its request for the road itself and go to the BLM with a request for the right of way, a completely different procedure? Dale: I would be completely in favor of that. In fact, I talked to Jimmie Walker, and he will have a meeting with all the candidates and explain a lot of this, because there is a lot of misunderstanding. A lot of people don’t understand there is two different sources of money. But I do not think they should get any kind of loan without a vote of the people. Zephyr: Including the CIB loan? Dale: Including the $3 million, if it’s a loan. The money they are getting because they became a special service district, that’s just tax money that’s coming back to Grand County. Charlie: My understanding of the necessity of the roads special service district was to prevent the loss of so-called "in lieu of taxes" federal money, that would have been reduced if the payments had come into the general fund rather than the special service district. But I don’t think it had to come to a roads district. I think it could have come to another special service district. Dale: Any special service district, yes. But it isn’t money that would have come to the county without—any special service district could have got it, yes. I believe the hospital special service district, the Spanish Valley water special service district, could have probably got the money. Zephyr: Tourism is a dominant form of economic activity in Moab. How should the county proceed, through the Travel Council, in continuing to promote it? Dale: I believe all these services are duplicated, but I believe the county has been doing a real good job. The travel council, all of them, have been doing a good job promoting the tourism, and I believe tourism will keep coming whether we try to promote any more or not. But I don’t think we should stop for awhile. There’s a lot of people out there who haven’t seen Moab. Charlie: One of the things I try to stress in this campaign is the difference between short-term thinking and long-range planning. I think there has been a tendency to embrace short-term gain without looking longterm. I think that applies to tourism and I think it applies to a lot of things. That’s why I consistently stress this approach. Take an issue like the salt water disposal pits. At one time they looked good, they were producing lots of revenue. Now they start costing us money. Those are the kind of things you have to start looking at the whole life of whatever it is you are undertaking. In the 1960s I lived in Aspen. I moved to Moab a few years back from near Jackson Hole. And I have seen what happens when tourism takes over a recreational western town. I don’t think the people that are here now understand the ultimate impact of tourism. And I think if we don’t look down the road farther than just next year and how many hamburgers we can sell and how many motel rooms we can rent, I think we will find that we are dissatisfied with that ultimate happening. Zephyr: What, if anything, can the county council do to help education in the county? Charlie: We have a very small county, we are a relatively poor county, if you compare our revenue with surrounding counties, such as Uintah, San Juan, and Carbon. I think it is absolutely critical that the community work as a whole to improve all the facets of our community life. Education is one of those. We have a very strong, capable school board. It is one of those boards that is independent of the county and the county council, and I think it is critical that we support that board as much as we can. There may be some ways to affect some savings, just like there could be savings realized if we could do more cooperative things with the city. In view of the size of this county, maybe the business functions of the school and the hospital and the city and the county are‘not handled in a very cooperative way, and there may be some ways to affect some savings. Dale: I agree with supporting the school board. As I understand it, schools are state run, not county run. It’s the Grand County School District, but they are state schools. A lot of people have been talking about taking the money that comes back down here to us from these special taxes and everything, and giving some to the schools. This I don’t know if we could even really legally do it, to give county tax money that the state gave us back, and then just give it back to them. Because they keep better than 50 percent of this mineral lease money anyhow, which goes to the schools. I would say I support better education, whether it’s grade schools, high schools, colleges, whatever. I would like to see the colleges expand down here, so that we have more classes people can take without having to leave town. Zephyr:Is there anything the county can and should do to relieve the shortage of affordable housing? Dale: AOG is working on a low income housing project down here right now, AOG and the state of Utah. I’ve been involved in it a little bit the last couple of years. They want to put apartments like over here where they want to build the movie theater. I think it would be better if they could build some regular housing, low income housing, instead of apartments. I imagine it would be a little bit more expensive, but they would be able to get their money back a lot easier with housing. ButI would still like to see more apartments, too. Anything because the wage scale is so low right now, people are having to bring in old trailer houses and live in junk. And there’s a lot of people don’t want these old trailer houses and everything next to them. But if that’s all they can find to live in, that’s all the people are going to be able to live there. Zephyr: So what should the county do? PAGE 5 Dale: I think the county council could get together and check with the state and AOG and see if there’s somebody interested in putting money into this, or, 1 hate to see government get involved in private business like that. But if we have to, we will have to, because something has to be done. Charlie: I think it’s a very difficult problem. I have never seen it resolved to everyone's satisfaction. I would reiterate what I have said before, and that in the absence of longterm planning things happen that we often don’t want to happen. Three or four or five years ago we had low income housing in Moab, and it has changed very, very suddenly. It will continue to change in the absence of any good long range plan that shows how we're going to develop this valley. If we just go totally on market forces, low income housing will always get pushed farther away, because there is a terribly increasing demand for housing and greatly inflating prices. I don’t see anything right now that corrects that trend. One of the things that can slow it down is better planning and zoning. Zephyr: So over the next year, what can the county do? Charlie: What the county can dois stop looking one year ahead. They have to implement a better master plan than the one we have currently proposed. And even that one hasn’t been implemented. Zephyr: Since the voters took away the taxing powers of the hospital district, it throws financial management of the facility back on the county. What should be done about health care here? Charlie: I don’t think there is any way the county council can gain the expertise that is needed to run the hospital. The only way the county council can run the hospital is to get the best hospital board it can, and then listen to what they say. The hospital board has changed over the last couple of years. I was on a hospital board, the first chairman of the board, up in Idaho. It was a small rural county hospital where the state of Idaho finally threatened a lawsuit, it was the last county commission to give over power to a board. I’ve seen these power struggles back and forth between commissions and hospital boards, and | think the hospital board has to be in charge of the hospital, and the council has to listen to the board. Dale: I agree. We have to have a hospital here. We need some more doctors, though. We don’t have enough to have them on call all the time. I’ve talked quite a bit with Kim [Hardman, hospital administrator], and he is trying to recruit more doctors. But it is expensive. It’s around $25,000 to go through a doctor’s employment agency, plus the fact that you have to fly eight to 10 of them in before you can get one that even decides that he wants to stay here. But the money has to be spent, and | agree with Charlie that we should listen to the hospital board, and the administrator, because they supposedly know what's going on down there. Some of these board members, they get on these boards and they really don’t study what they are doing. But I think the boards ought. to get rid of them people, not the county commission, not the county council, the board itself. If a board member isn’t doing what the board is supposed to be doing, they should get rid of them and get some new people in there that will do the job. Zephyr: Would you support a tax increase for the hospital? Dale: I would not support a tax increase. I think there is enough of this other money that is coming in to Grand County that we could use for the hospital. Zephyr: Specifically, which monies? Dale: The Travel Council and the Road Board. Zephyr: Charlie, would you support a tax increase for the hospital? Charlie: I don’t think that’s a yes or no question, even though you ask it that way. I agree with Dale that we have to have a hospital. If the people also think we need a hospital, then we have to be willing to pay for it. There’s no magic formula, it doesn’t matter whether it has its own levy or it comes from another fund, all rural hospitals cost money and the rural residents have to pay something to keep those hospitals here. We can have a better run hospital, we can have more doctors, and produce more revenue at the hospital. We can hopefully get more transient, tourist-type business there, so we don’t have to pay as much. But I don’t think it will ever be a question of either a tax increase or not. It’s going to be a matter of whether the people want a hospital. If they want it, they have to support it with tax money. Zephyr: In one sentence, what is the top priority for you over the next two years? Charlie: The primary accomplishment I would like to see is more cost effective, responsible use of Grand County taxpayer money. Dale: I agree with Charlie, we have got to be responsible to the taxpayers. I don’t want to see any tax increase, and in the next two years we'll have enough just trying to have the council work together. A THOUGHT FOR THE CANDIDATES "Always do right. This will gratify some people, and astonish the rest." Mark Twain BOOKSTORE P.O. BOX 387, 83 N. MAIN MOAB, UTAH 84532 (801) 259-5154 |