OCR Text |
Show g By Jack Wallis I (plan was presented to the Uintah I uty Commission Monday to convict con-vict a juvenile detention center in the I tehed basement area in the south fbgofthe old hospital building. jle new center would tentatively be I i'ii the Uintah Basin Youth Secure 1 t Facility and would serve the three I isin counties. J pe facility would have four jail cells JL" room for four more at a future The present estimated cost of (Jfcling is $203,600. One half of the Wlmction and the maintenance and Nion of the facility will come from funds. The state participation 'Nhave to be approved by the 1981 9 ;P legislature and the funds would if1 available until July 1981, if ap-pved. ap-pved. '. state Social Services Department JW the architect to draw the plans for 2 lacillty and Monday the County issiohers agreed to apply for the ! lunds and proceed with the plans jet, .fte,aciliy- Monday meeting the commis-1 commis-1 ? made an appointment with an ' t to survey the best aproach for tr '6 plans for remodeling the level of the old hospital into an (J I care center nursing home. An lt .?nce borage facility is also need-I need-I '"lie site. opening ceremony for the new ;,U1 has been postponed until work new hospital is finished. XV n hospital heating plant has 2"' the capacity to handle ,-lre old hospital facility. The ',lja and laundry center in the new , : ' can provide these services for youth center and the extended 'center. iit1 PresenUtion, our reaction 3 es 's to much for one com-;Seclally com-;Seclally vouth center. But tw e heard about the Plans for s inters, the more feasible :.is,tme and it appears this pro- c'ials m0St economical way to go. ttw ,,agree that the centers can Mohf8ether- The main problem W !lnancing the remodeling of ""HKpital structure. 'i38flered C3re Center and yuth i;. 'ity are both greatly needed orkM area-We "ope they can Swiih"1 WUh the new hosPital y Ji stiii savin8s t0 the taxpayers "Ration, the strict codes and ,1S governing such facilities. H"t I 6 locked to discover a report released this week by the Utah Foundation Founda-tion concerning population projections by counties from 1980 through 2000. According to the foundation report every county in the state would enjoy substantial growth by the year 2000 with the exception of the three basin counties. The projection said Uintah County would lose 350 people, Daggett 150 and Duchesne would remain the same population in the year 2000 as it is in 1980. According to the population survey done by the Uintah Basin Energy Development Council the population of the Basin area will increase about three times in the next 15 years from 33,000 to over 95,000. The difference between a minus 500 growth and an increase of 62,000 is too much error to allow even in statistics. When agencies come up with population popula-tion data that varies as much as the Utah Foundation and UBEDC reports do it makes one wonder about the reliability of statistics. The Foundation report shows every multi-county district except two with more that a 50 percent population increase in-crease by the year 2000, with the state total at 59.6 percent increase. The southeast district is listed with a 44.8 percent growth and the Uintah Basin counties are listed with a minus 1.5 percent per-cent growth. Believe it or not. That's about the lowest blow we have looked at for a long time. A week ago the Foundation, in another report, indicated that Vernal City had the highest percentage increase in business activity as measured by sales tax reports. Vernal was listed with a 47.4 percent increase comparing 1979 with 1978. The state as a whole was 10.7 percent. Businessmen we have talked to say business in 1979 wasn't that much better than '78. How did they come up with those figures? It has been said before that statisticians statisti-cians can prove anything they want to by juggling their data. We would like an explanation on how the Utah Foundation Founda-tion arrived at its population figures for the projected growth of the Uintah Basin and the sales tax figures. From the report it would appear a famine is coming to the Basin that no one knows anything about but the Utah Foundation. Our guess is that something has been left out. It could be just a few zeros. Maybe the Foundat.on got our population data mixed up with some zero growth family planning stats. |