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Show Letters to the Editor . . . Mr. Editor, As a foreign tourist, I recently spent a whole week with my wife in Moab, and in the back country, going down the Colorado River for four days, in the raft of Mr. Verle Green, and having a close look at the Canyon National Park and the Arches. Apart from the scenery of your country, we have been impressed, my wife and I, by the extreme kindness of everybody in Moab and by the behavior of the Mormon people, especially with their large families. The very existence today of such a small but healthy country as Moab allows a foreigner to understand where are the roots of the American strength. My stay with you allows me to tell now to my friends in Paris that the future of America is still brilliant, whatever may be that not so good impression received in large cities such as New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. I hope to go back to Moab within the next years and be sure to enjoy it very much again. Yours Faithfully, Francis Planque Chemin de l'Auberderie France Dear Mr. Taylor: Consolidation of counties and cities: I'm a gambler. I say "Amen" to it if it will improve our local law enforcement officers. Why? Well, these are too good to keep, let the public know. Some people are afraid to get involved or say anthing but as I've always said and believe, tell it like it is. Don't try to pass the buck or cover up. I've called our so-called, up to date city police several times in the past month and they are too busy or out getting "credits" in schooling. Like: The night I called, city police dispatcher Gale Scharf, she said, "Maggie, they are at Travelodge, should be out any minute and I'll tell them." No one showed up, 9:30, 10:30. I went to bed. At 1:30 a large crash was heard. A spark plug has been thrown through an upstairs window. I called dispatcher. Well, guess who should be answering answer-ing the dispather's calls but our city policeman. He kept me on the phone, asking questions over and over until finally I hung up on him, cleaned the glass and mess up and went back to bed. If we have enough policemen to sit in the dispatcher's office at 1:30 in the morning to be answering calls instead of closing taverns and checking business houses, why do pay a dispatcher. Then about a year or so ago, headlines in a Philadelphia Philadelph-ia newspaper, "Moab Chief of Police Raising Pot on Window-sill"??? Window-sill"??? Boo. I have reason to ask this question, "Does he raise it to have his deputies to come in a house, spread the seeds on the floor, and fine the tenants:" Boo. Oh! yes, when our local fire siren blows, the police, now in the patrol car, takes off like a "bat out of hell", like he's going to do the work. Boo. Leaves the city wide open for the vandalism. The teenagers aren't dumb. It's our city police that need to get wise. So, if it will change the police habits and their so-called so-called credits, I say consolidate consoli-date everything in the damn books." I have reason to write this letter, anything that is down in black and white, I'll back it up-City Police, Boo. Signed, Maggie Stryker Dear Sam, Virgil Hays missed the point entirely in his Letter to the Editor which appeared in last week's Times Independent. The loss of money from the Kaiparowits failure is not what bothers us. The loss of the rights of the average Utah resident is the point in question. Residents of Southern South-ern Utah are losing their right of self-determination to the immensely rich and powerful non-elected agencies such as the Park Service. BLM and the Forest Service. The so-called public land (70 of Utah) has now become the property of these dictatorships. These dictatorial agencies are based in distant places from where they tell us what we can and cannot do. These agencies are buried and protected by so many layers of government that we cannot influence their decisions even though their decisions influence our day to day lives. They hinder responsible respon-sible development when they should be contributing to our growth. There is no logical reason why freedom, Kaiparowits, Kaiparo-wits, clean air and tourism cannot exist in peaceful coexistence. Profits gained by certain groups or individuals should not blind us to the real benefits of development. Those of us who have the privilege of really knowing the splendid people of Southern Utah know full well that they are certainly not money grabbers. These responsible citizens are waging a battle to protect the right of participation participa-tion in regard to public lands by all the people from the unresponsive, expensive government gov-ernment agencies. Should this battle be lost all Americans will suffer a great loss of freedom and resources. Joe Stocks LETTER... Apparently, there are a few people who feel that those of us who have been vigorously expressing our firm objections to the Consolidation of City and County are just giving this proposal a snap judgment of "No". This is not the situation; we have carefully studied the complete proposal and we don't like what we find. The few recent changes made did not eliminate many of the items that make it unacceptable to us. Thanks, Sam, for making this complete proposal available avail-able to the public. I hope every voter in the county takes the time to read and study it carefully, and then forms an opinion from what is actually in print-not from what is told them verbally. Remember, too, that this proposal was not written by our Grand County friends, but by a person or persons who do not live in our county. I doubt if there is anyone who hasn't at some time bought an item from a super salesman and later found he was "ripped off '-the verbal promises made by the salesman sales-man didn't count: we bought only what was in print in the contract too bad for us if we didn't read it! Our good friends who were on this study committee probably were subjected sub-jected to many good salesmen. Their opinions are very possibly poss-ibly based on the verbal promises they heard. We who did not hear these verbal promises read the proposal and are not influenced by our memories of what was told us. In my opinion, Consolidation Consolida-tion would be a less efficient form of government for us. Many of those who are pushing it have admitted that it would not save money. As I have never worked in the law department or the road department, depart-ment, I do not feel qualified to make a public opinion as to the merits of combining these city and county departments. I feel sure there are factors we would not understand unless we had actually worked in these departments. As your present County Recorder, I do feel qualified to express my opinion of combining the offices of County Recorder, County Clerk, Special District Clerk and City Recorder, as specified in Sec. 5.06. There is no duplication of work or services in these offices to combine them would not cut down on personnel, but would create confusion and inefficiency. In the recorder's office, we must abstract and index your instruments in the intervals between customers. To have other activities going on in our office would create an atmosphere atmos-phere where it would be difficult to' concentrate on our work. Under our present system, we operate our office to the satisfaction of you, the voters-you are also paying our salaries. Under Consolidation, we would answer to the County Manager, but you would still be paying our salaries. I do not always agree with "efficiency experts". For instance, last year I sent my deputy, Maxine, to a Recorder's Record-er's workshop in Vernal. One of the speakers recommended that we not bother with customers who ask for information infor-mation about land, but do not know the legal description of it-he felt this to be a waste of time! Maxine and I spend a great deal of time in this office helping customers locate the owners of land in which they are interested. There is no other place for them to get this help and we feel they deserve this service. Under our present form of government, govern-ment, we are free to either accept or reject such suggestions. sugges-tions. If an "efficient" person like this speaker happened to be our County Manager, we would either refuse you this service or we would be replaced. I am happy to tell you that the "elected recorders" record-ers" she met at this meeting were not in agreement with the speaker on this point. Yes, there is a Personnel board (see Sec. 6.04) and we could go to this board to complain if we didn't agree with the County Manager. The County Manager appoints this board and also designates a member as chairman-what are the odds? |