OCR Text |
Show PAGE 4 THE ZEPHYROCTOBER 1993 Facts and Opinions a summary of the month's news. by Ken Davey FACT Grand County voters will dedde October 12 whether or not to allow the echoed district to borrow up to $5.5 million to construct a cafeteria, an auditorium, and a modem library at the high school. Actual tax rates will change over the next few years, based on new construction in the county and on the valuations of existing land, but a taxpayer who owns a home valued at $50,000 can expect to pay somewhere around $50 per year to help repay the bonds. OPINION As of Zephyr press time, members of the board of education have helped put together a citizens' committee to promote the bond special election, and that group has been out speaking to organizations in support of the plan. And, as of now, there has been no organized campaign to fight against the band referendum. Normally, with a group of respected citizens pushing for the plan and no campaign against if, a vote like this has a good chance of passing. But not this time around. The recent round of heavy tax increases for many local property owners has put them in a pretty poor frame of mind when it comes to them forking over even more, and with the schools being the major recipients of current property taxes, a lot of veteran political observers here are betting against the bond getting a majority vote. It is ironic that after a decade of some awfully odd capital projects in Moab, now that a GOOD project comes along, it has the best chance of all of being scuttled. After years of substandard education in Grand County, the board of education has made significant progress in turning that bad situation around, and the best indicator of their success has been higher scores by youngsters on standardized achievement tests, admittedly a measure of knowledge, but the best available at this time. The board has begun to tackle some of the deep problems in the schools here, including the obscenely high drop out and attendance rates. The board has joined with administrators and teachers in trying to get a handle on a system-wid- e discipline program, to create an environment within the classroom conducive to learning. The teachers, buoyed by efforts to increase local pay from the bottom of the list of districts in the state to at least somewhere near the middle, are approaching their craft with an enthusiasm noticeably absent just a few semesters ago. At the beginning of this school year, the team of adults charged with the responsibility of educating our youth were working better together as a team than in any time in recent memory. But that brief window to a view of better things to come is in danger of being shuttered closed once again, and the losers will be the children, the ones we are SUPPOSED to be doing all this for. The school system is growing in Moab. Each year, more students come into the system, and a bulge of intermediate students today foreshadows increased high school enrollment in the future. The present facility is small, too small to meet even current needs, much less projected jumps in enrollment. But rather than blindly reacting to a crisis, the school board did something so unique and different in Grand County that most residents were shocked and surprised: the district actually decided to step back, review the situation, look to the future, and do some long range planning. They knew the high school will soon not be large enough to meet even minimal needs. They knew that the middle school is inadequate (and right now can't meet legal requirements.) But instead of tearing down the high school and building another one, instead dismantling the middle school and building from the ground up, board members sat back for a little bit and said, "Hmmm. There's some land near the high school. What if we look into buying it?" And they did look into it, and it was reasonably priced. So they said, "What if, instead of building two new schools, we convert die current high school into a middle school (with 3 grades instead of four, the middle school body could easily fit into the existing high school classrooms, with room to spare), and build only one new school, a high school?" And they looked into that idea, and it made sense. And they thought a little bit more, and realized that if they build the new high school right next to the old high schoolnew middle school, BOTH schools could share 1) an one cafeteria, auditorium, large enough to contain the student bodies at both schools; 2) than of trying to build partitioned off to separate the schools but, due to economy scale, cheaper facilities into one two of two lunch rooms; and 3) a joint library, combining again the resources bigger, better, more technologically equipped media center. In their work in planning out, step by step, what they wanted to accomplish, the school board has come up with an outline that will save Grand County taxpayers millions of dollars. The catch is that it will also cost taxpayers millions, and right now that doesn't play well in living rooms and coffee shops. There are hundreds of kids passing through the school system here, then heading out to find the accumulation of jobs and carve out lives in an increasingly competitive world, where most be will the to learn important prerequisites to future success. knowledge and the ability 14 And many of those youngsters, 12, 13, years old, don't always spend that much time wondering about what will happen a decade or two down the line, and they are asking, challenging, adults to 51 IOW them why education is important. And we can talk all we want, if we're not willing to put our money where our mouths are, if we're not willing to shell out six or seven dollars a month for the better education we continually preach to them they should work and sacrifice for, then we have no right to expect or hope they'll believe a word we say. FACT The hospital continues on its search to find physicians for Moab. Early this summer, the number of doctors in town dropped when a physician, expected to set up practice here in July, changed his mind, and another physician decided to leave file area. That left Dr. Robert Murray, who earlier had decided and announced that he would be and Dr. Steve Rouzer, who continues to work on the hospital staff, as well as running a private practice. In the meantime, the hospital contracted with a medical firm in Provo to provide physicians for clinic duties a couple of days a week, and coverage for the emergency room over the weekends. semi-retire- d, OPINION Let's take a look at the grim statistics. Number of documented cases where patients have died in Moab because physician medical care was not available: 0. Number of documented cases where patients have suffered long term disabilities because of the lack of medical care in Moab: 0. don't mean to make light of people with medical needs, and the worry of not having regular, local physicians who can provide care. I recently spent some time at the emergency room while a doctor took a look at my son (in what turned out to be a situation, e but as the healer on Northern Exposure said, "you know those parents.") But while we have a doctor shortage, we do not have a medical crisis. And what that means is that there is no need for us to panic, to start grasping at straws while desperately trying to lure physicians I first-tim- to practice here. Two months ago there was a severe problem, but the hiring of the Provo firm, expensive as it is, has made sure that there are trained doctors available in town to supplement Dr. Rouzer's emergency room duties, 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. No, we don't have heart specialists and brain surgeons on call in the hospital cafeteria, waiting for patients, but we never did, and being a small town, we never will. For the more complicated and serious situations, we will continue to rely on Lifeline helicopter service to Saint Mary's in Grand Junction. Our problem is not the absence of doctors in Moab (though even with the Provo firm, we could use more), but rather the town's inability to attract and retain permanent practicing physicians, family doctors willing and capable of sinking roots into the town. Because it isn't the emergency cases that fall through the cracks during a family practice doctor shortage, but rather those patients with long-teror chronic medical problems, people with respiratory or digestive or cardiac conditions who need long term care from doctors who can get to know than, get familiar with the medical histories and the benefits and drawbacks of past treatments. And that role is performed by doctors living here, not covering the emergency room a weekend or so a month. The hospital board is pushing forward with a plan to build a $350,000 medical office, in the hope that adequate facilities here will help in recruitment. And of course it's an attraction; who wouldn't want a brand new facility the day they hang out their shingle? But a medical office is not the way to find physicians who will come here and stay for 5, 10, 20 years. Neither is trying to compete with Raleigh, North Carolina or Cambridge, Massachusetts, or Layton, Utah by offering higher and higher compensation, because any doctor fishing for the best financial package is not going to end up at Allen MemoriaL What we do have is some erf the world's best outdoor recreation, and the canyons and desert solitude and a small safe town to raise a family. Those are the elements that will convince physicians to come here. And that's how the idea of moving here has to be sold. There are doctors who have expressed a willingness to come here. Health officials have file job of determining first, if they are good enough doctors, second if they really would like to be here. THEN compensation, then office space, then what the community can do to help them get established become the issues. More important than the final amount of the weekly paycheck is file long term commitment to health care that a community shows. And that commitment can only come when those responsible, in this case members of the hospital board, demonstrate in practice that they can size m TOM!? CONTRACTING Cabinets - Furniture - Doors and Custom Interior Finishing Custom Homes - Additions Remodeling BotCVSR 1806 Moab, UT (801) 84532 259-729- 6 |