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Show PAGE 13 THE ZEPHYR/SPECIAL ELECTION ISSUE..FEBRUARY 1993 help, again through the special district road funds, specifically for computers and things like that. But I envision the county being involved, whether privately or publicly, in vocational school type of education, to train the high school people we have for the type of industry that we may want to attract, and have an available workforce here, so youngsters can stay here and work in this town, rather than having to go somewhere else. Dave: I don’t think that developing the cadre of trained people is a necessary part of attracting industry. If we attract industry there will be jobs. It doesn’t work the other way You don’t have a whole bunch of people standing around waiting and then business that happens to match their training, it’s got to work the other way. You have to have business that wants to come here that can provide or find people that are capable of doing whatever it is that the business does. So I’m not sure we can target training and education to produce people capable of stepping right into a new business coming to town. | think the council should be more involved in the educational process. At least to the point of trying to funnel more money into it. Whether that is directed from tax money or another source, that’s going to be crucial. | think there is a possibility of generating a private fund, not tax money but donated money, to support activities at the schools. I run into a lot of teachers who come into my business and they are buying things for classroom use. They are spending their own money for that. We give them a break, half price, some things we give them. And I don’t think there is any reason in the world why teachers should spend his or her own money to buy materials to use in the classroom. If for whatever reason the usual source of funding doesn’t provide an adequate amount for that, then I think there is a possibility for a community-wide effort, maybe coordinated by the council, to provide funds for those activities. John: Until the state of Utah realizes that they need to put more money into education, we are not going to have an education system that’s on a par with the rest of the states, and we're not going to attract teachers with the salaries the state is offering. I don’t think those are problems that the county council should handle, they are problems which the state has to handle. Dave: I’ve got one comment in connection with that, John. People are always saying with the salaries we are offering, we can’t attract good teachers. We got some of the best damn teachers you've ever seen over in those schools. We may not be paying them well, but we've got some superb people working in the schools here. I don’t fault our teachers a bit. I’m amazed that they work for what they get, and they turn around and pay for classroom materials that ought to be paid for by us. John: And I certainly wasn’t indicating that we have bad teachers because we pay bad salaries. I’m just saying that we need better salaries for our teachers. Zephyr: Do you support the proposal of the Special Service Roads District for the Book Cliffs Highway? Dave: No. John: No. Zephyr: What can the county council do to prevent the Road Board from continuing on with it? Dave: It’s my understanding we can dissolve the Road Board. Zephyr: Would you consider that? Dave: Yes. I might turn around instantly and institute a different board. But my understanding is the county council has the authority to simply dissolve the entire board. John: I guess I’d want to study that a little more, I’m not absolutely sure we can dissolve that road board and reappoint another one, and not lose the funding. I guess I would rather appeal to the road board to be more responsive to the voters’ wishes. Zephyr: Do you have any indication they would be more responsive? : John: To honestly answer that question,I don’t see the Book Cliffs Road as an issue. The people have spoken, I think the people who are on that road board and our present county commissioners have understood the people’s wishes, and I see them changing their mind, albeit slowly. But I do see them changing their mind. And I would hope that they would continue to move in the direction of the voters. If they don’t then other action would have to be taken. I wouldn’t want to be specific about it at this time. Dave: I think it’s an awfully important issue at the moment. There is a strong feeling among the people who support that road still, today, that after this election is over there will be enough people on the council to either block along that subject, or approve it, and that things are going to go on as in the past. When I mentioned cancelling out the entire board, that’s if it is legally possible. If that’s a possibility, it’s one of the things I want to do the first day the council meets. Zephyr: Tourism has affected Moab tremendously in recent years. People are looking at the county spending through the Travel Council. Is the county doing a good job, dealing with impacts and future opportunities, in promoting tourism? In the future should be emphasize or deemphasize that promotion John: I think you have to break it down. We have the tourism board and we have the county commissioners. I think the tourism board and the chamber of commerce are doing a good job in trying to promote tourism. But they are handicapped because the county commissioners are taking their funds away to promote for other projects, such as the golf course in Elgin, and things of that nature. This transient room tax was intended to promote tourism and to use those dollars to help the infrastructure that we need because of the tourism. I would like to see that type of plans to continue, rather than spending it on things that I don’t feel are doing the greatest amount of good to attract tourism, or industry, to this town. Dave: The transient room tax money can only be used to bolster the tourist industry, to try to attract more tourism. We can’t use it for much of anything else. I’d_like to try to figure out TOM maybe some creative bookkeeping to be able to apply some of that money to other purposes. At this point, I don’t think it makes any difference if we promote tourism or not. We've started a snowball rolling, and it’s going to continue. Tourism has climbed here every year for 20 years. It’s just recently that the rate of increase has skyrocketed. If you look at other areas being discovered around the country, that’s a typical curve. There isn’t anything we could do to stop it now. You can’t put a gate up and you can’t tell people, “don’t go to Moab." We have 2 national parks that are internationally renowned, and they are going to bring peopleno matter what we do. So we better not be talking about whether we're going to encourage or discourage it, but how we're going to handle it. Zephyr: There is a current shortage of affordable housing in Moab. What can and should the council do to alleviate that shortage? Dave: Nothing. I don’t think the council can do anything in providing lower cost housing. What we might be able to do and should do is try to control some of the things that force housing costs up. We are on the verge of getting into a Vail or Telluride situation, or maybe toward that, more than we've been. And communities like ours, when they suddenly get to be very popular and crowded, the property taxes go up rapidly. That’s one of the problems communities like this face. That’s how people get forced out. Their housing goes up, their property values go up, and the lower income or fixed income people get crowded out. I’m not sure the county can actually do anything itself to provide that housing. John: I agree with Dave in the sense that I’m not sure this is the sort of thing the county should get specifically involved in. It has to do with private industry.. But one of the things that the county can do is provide information to prospective people who want to put up low cost and subsidized housing, how they can go about it, how they can finance it, they may be able to do something in the area of tax breaks, things of that nature. I don’t think the county should be involved in building low rent housing. Another thing, though, is we tend to move in the direction of saying we don’t want any more trailer homes or mobile homes in Moab. That’s something we can’t do, we have to have that type of thing available to people who are on fixed incomes. But in order to protect property values of other people, these have to be confined to mobile home areas. I don’t think we can go putting them willy nilly wherever we want to. We've got a master plan, and we don’t have a master plan, because we are changing that plan. Everybody who wants a variance here and there. We have to throw a master plan out on the table and get some feedback from the people. Zephyr: On the question of zoning, can you define what you mean by good zoning. John: Good zoning protects everyone's property values. It doesn’t mean a willy nilly way of doing things, offering variances to every Tom, Dick or Harry who comes along because they are a friend or buddy. It means protecting everyone’s values equally. Dave: Good zoning is, the intention of zoning, is to protect property values. Zoning is a part of planning, and the thing we lack is long range planning, not just in zoning, but in other things. Zoning should be a part of comprehensive planning, a development plan for the entire county, or those portions that are going to see much development action. The most important thing is, a zoning plan, once it is set, should be very strict. It should be precise, and people should understand why it exists and the reason for zoning areas the way they are zoned. Then it should be very difficult to get exceptions to that plan. Zephyr: A one sentence answer. What is your top priority for the next two years? Dave: Basically, long range planning, the development of a long range comprehensive plan and the most important single part of that now is a waste management plan. John: I agree we need a long range plan and the reason is to give the majority of people the most for their tax dollar, and that’s what the county commission hasn’t done. TILL photography DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN... "Principles aren’t of much account, anyway, except at election time." 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