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Show 6h - community y comments... Moab City's unanimous action Tuesday night expressing their intention of remaining in the Southeast Utah Association of Governments is a pretty cleai indication that last week's action on the part of Grand County Commissioners in withdrawing from SEUAOG was not a universally popular decision in Grand County. "If we're not getting everything we think we should be getting from the AOG it's our own fault," stated Councilman Harold Jacobs, who has been the City's representative on the AOG board. Apparently the other four Councilmen agreed, and decided to keep their hands in. Governor Scott M. Matheson is also concerned. The Governor stated Tuesday that although he is sympathetic to the tremendous geographic problems involved, he believes that a compromise makeup should be sought, and that he intended to call a meeting ol officials of Grand, San Juan, Emery and Carbon in the immediate future to do what he can do to help that compromise along. As I see it, there are four possible alternatives available to us, some of which appear to be good and others which have problems. First, we can simply proceed from this point, with Grand County out of the AOG and Moab City in. That might be workable, but it would certainly be devisive, and could lead to further problems between Grand County and Moab City which could only have a detrimental effect on local residents and programs. Secondly, we could throw in with San Juan County and attempt to get an official designation of a two-county area association. That, however, would be difficult to sell to federal officials. One EDD official in Denver this week gave an emphatic "no" to a question asking if a two-county district with populations the size of Grand-San Juan would be acceptable. "It is both inconsistant with the letter and spirit of the law," he said. What federal agency officials say, and what they may do later under pressure from local, state and congressional leaders can be dramatically different, as we have all learned in the past, so his statement should be taken with a grain of salt. It proves, however, that it would be a difficult sales job at best. Third, we could say "to Hell" with all of them and go it alone. There is no doubt in my mind that Grand County would do just fine in most respects. It is also very obvious that to get any share of any fund, either state or federal, we would have to hire- highly professional people to beef up our own elected office-holders, and that could be more expensive than what we might gain in the way of benefits. To deny our residents the benefits of some federal and state programs, because of a lack of qualification and application would be extremely unfair to those who live and pay taxes in Grand County, so simply to sit back and say, "we don't want any help we can do it ourselves," would be very short-sighted. Ideally, it is my opinion that the best solution would be the fourth alternative, and that would be to split the SEUAOG into two separate divisions, one serving Grand and San Juan; the other Carbon and Emery. All four counties could be tied together under one basic umbrella, but to be workable, the two divisions would have to have separate staff residing in the districts they served. Without some staff people actually living in and working for the southern hall of the district, we would be no better off than we ever have been under SEUAOG in the past. We can say all we want about the difficulties ol continually having to travel to Price to deal with the SEUAOG, but the thing that really sticks in the craw ol Grand and San Juan County residents is the fact that all the action is headquartered in a city over a hundred miles away, and if we're going to go that far, we might as well go on to the State Capitol. I, for one, appreciate the positive attitude of Utah's new Governor in wanting to use the influence of hi.-office hi.-office in helping to work out a viable solution. It is alsc impressive to find him so quickly knowledgeable about our situation here. It is to be hoped that those whom ha calls to meet with him will do so with positive, open minds. There has to be a better way, Sam Taylor |