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Show l' " . .... .. . . " ' ,. , ' j" 5 " " ' ' ' '?' i. . - . ... -.., r... a ... Greg Sanders with Southwest Applied Technology College in Cedar City was one of the presenters Tuesday evening, Sept. 17. at the Smartsite meeting held at Bryce TROPIC - Some 50 valley residents filled the computer lab room at Bryce Valley High School last Tuesday evening to overflowing, as they gathered to hear the latest update on bringing bring-ing a full-fledged Smart Site and jobs to Garfield County. The evening's meeting resulted result-ed in classes being set to start Trills ll llW ' ' ' I M . ' V I i " . . .". .i .i i .' -V.".- TOOffifeuW. Valley High School. Some 50 local residents resi-dents gathered to get the latest update on training and potential for new jobs through the program. Smart Site Meeting Answers Questions, Sets Classes To Start Tuesday and Wednesday, Oct. 1 and 2 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the BVHS computer room. The classes will be taught by Kaylynn Nielson. Search for Small Industry A number of months ago, recognizing rec-ognizing the fickle nature of tourism, the potential threat of loss of jobs in the logging indus try and the general decline of the economy, Tropic Town board member Gaya Greenhalgh began looking into the possibility possibili-ty of alternative small jobs for the Bryce Valley area. She teamed with others countywide with similar concerns and a survey sur-vey was conducted to see how (See MEETING on page 4A) Meeting From Front Page many were equally interested in developing alternative small industry. Shane Luck, formerly with the Five County Association of who now serves as the county's Economic Development Coordinator moved forward in his quest to establish Smart Sites throughout southern Utah. A Smart Site Team was formed with the purpose to create "family "fam-ily sustaining jobs" in Garfield County in computer-related work. In an effort to acquire needed computer training for local rural communities, the services of Southwest Applied Technology College (SWATC) in Cedar City were sought. Background on Training Brent Judd, a teacher with (See MEETING on page 5A) Meeting From Page 4A SWATC gave a brief synopsis of why they were doing what they were doing. Judd had been involved in setting up the Kanab Smart Site and shared the pitfalls they ran into in Kanab which they hoped to avoid in the future. Judd said that Kanab had hired a company called ACS Automated Computer Systems, basically an electronic mail room that received hard copy bills, putting them through a high-speed scanner and forwarding forward-ing that information to various locations with computer terminals termi-nals and special software to be processed. He said that their Smart Site Committee found ACS and also got Zions Bank which wanted 60 people in two weeks. "Kane County has a high unemployment unemploy-ment rate, but 60 people is a lot of people in a small town," Judd said. "And, we had two weeks basically to get everybody up-to-speed so they could go to . work. Well, there weren't 60 people to get up-to-speed to go to work. , Or the people that needed to get, up-to-speed, couldn't do the 45 words per minute (wpm) 'on keyboarding or 1 80 key strokes a minute in 10-key." Judd said they had a struggle to find people. They eventually relaxed the rules and allowed 16-year-olds to work over the summer to fill the positions. He said that most high school kids they were ready to go to work with those basic skills. "So that's what they did to try to fill the positions, to try to keep those things going," he said. "Well, that showed us something," some-thing," he said. "Come time to (See MEETING on page 7A) Smart Site Meeting From Page 5A start a Smart Site in Garfield County, we need a pool of people peo-ple ready to go to work when the jobs come ... so we don't have the cart before the horse." He said their proincipal focus is on training for computer capabilities capa-bilities for Smart Site and work-at-home jobs. Judd then introduced Shane Luck, who, as the county's economic eco-nomic development coordinator, is also on the lookout for other types of small industry while currently training for electronic capabilities. He said the potential poten-tial also exists for other types of small industry. He said that it could be something shipped in from outside out-side such as electronic components compo-nents to be assembled and then shipped back. Cuurently, however, how-ever, they are focusing on computer com-puter electronic mode as the easiest eas-iest to bring in some other kind of training for work that you can do at home or at some site over the network. Luck thanked everyone for coming and expressing such an interest. He thanked the school district, Brent Judd with SWATC and Gaya Greenhalgh who had been the "heartbeat" of . the project. He said she had marshaled help from John and Marsha Holland, Chris Roberts, and others. He said that last year when the sawmill closed down studies revealed that the county would lose not only the 65 jobs at the sawmill, but another 40 jobs in the forest more than 100 jobs, a loss of some $10 million taken out of the county. At that point Luck was asked to get involved. He described primary jobs as those where something is created or produced. pro-duced. "If you make something or sew it, that's a primary job. If a farmer raises a crop and sells it, that's a primary job," he said. "In our county, when we create cre-ate a primary job, we create at least two or three other jobs because of.those depending and needing services, like schools, or grocery stores or service stations. sta-tions. "So the concern we had with the sawmill ... if that sawmill closes down, there were 40 mortgages just relative to that one company. So the banks were a little concerned, there's 40 mortgages that may not get paid. The school district would lose a number of students and that would be $3-4,000 per student stu-dent per year. "As we looked at it, we said what can we do to create other kinds of jobs than sawmills, or mining or agriculture. Those are the things that we know best, and I grew up in an area just like this on a sawmill. And I know how that goes. You cut trees until somebody says that you don't cut trees and then you go broke or you close. "So we started looking around. Your mayor, Jean Seiler and Gaya Greenhalgh and others met with me and said, 'Here are some ideas. Why don't you talk to some people. And we started talking and we thought, we will create a county wide Smart Site." (More next week) |
