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Show Jack-Stntfs. By Jack Wallis A top priority for 1980 should be the settlement of the lawsuit filed by Uintah County against Vernal City for annexing the east side U.S. 40 industrial area into Vernal City. It has been a year now since the litigation started and the taxpayers in iie contested area have had to pay iouble property taxes because of the dispute. The property in the contested irea was assessed for 1979 taxes, 3.5 mills for the city and 4 mills for the Ashley Valley Water and Sewer Improvement Im-provement District, when they should have been paying either one or the other, not both. - It also seems that neither the city or the county knows who is supposed to provide services to the businesses on the east side of Vernal. The center of contention in the city-county city-county annexation problem is the approximately $400,000 in optional sales tax revenues generated in this area annually. The city lowered its mill levy when the sales tax money started coming in several years and the county does not want to lose this income from the oil service businesses along east Highway 40 by having the area annexed into Vernal city. Now, because of the county lawsuit, the Fourth District Court has impounded im-pounded the sales tax funds generated in the contested annexed area into a trust fund that cannot be used by either taxing entity. Vernal City claims that the east highway high-way area is a natural growth area for the city boundary and that the area can be better served by city services at a cheaper price. Vernal city claims that the required 50 percent of the property owners signed the annexation petition which represented over 50 percent of the valuation of the area, which is contiguous to Vernal city. 1 Uintah County claims that Vernal C.ty has taken the cream off the top by strip annexation." The annexation iccording to the county takes all the revenue generating areas along east Highway 40 and does not block off the i rea to include a easily serviced area. Tie city has taken the frontage 1 roperty and has left the surrounding property for the county to maintain. The county also questions the number of petitions signed and the way they were obtained. The annexation suit has also caused friction between Vernal City and Ashley Valley Water and Sewer District on the new valley-wide water and sewer systems. The water and' sewer related issues have resulted in a two to three vote in the city council with the majority opposing the demands of AVWSD, who have openly joined forces with Uintah County in the eastside annexation lawsuit. The three city councilmen voting down agreements of water and sewer issues chose not to run for office again and are being replaced with three newly-elected councilmen. This has been one reason the county-AVWSD-city issues have been delayed. With the new city council the chances for agreement may have improved or at least changed. We hope these issues are taken seriously by the new city council and that one of the first New Year's resolutions will be to work out the impass over growth areas, and water and sewer developments in the Ashley Valley area. The possible loss of federal funds, plus the additional costs due to inflation, in-flation, court costs, and the break-down and overloading of the present public services will go down as unforgiveable abuses by those elected to represent the taxpayers, if these problems don't come to some solution soon. To continue haggling over who gets the sales tax money, then have it locked up so nobody gets it, and then levy a double tax on the people who generate the sales tax in the first place, and still further have a dilemma over who provides services to this area, is about as mixed up a situation as we have heard about. We must settle the annexation fight soon. After the eastside annexation dispute is settled a Boundary Commission Com-mission should be formed with representation from all the public entities of the valley for input into plans for the future growth of the Ashley Valley. If some of the projections come true concerning the population growth of the local area due to the energy-related developments coming to our area, the present strife will seem like small potatoes compared with the massive future boom-area problems Let's get the annexation problem solved so we can think clearly on some other mutually-related growth planning that needs to be resolved for the best good of the entire area. |