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Show Employco travel pay The subject of travel pay for County Road Employees has become an issue at recent meetings of the County Commission. Commis-sion. County Road Employees from Miners -vllle have complained at the cost of traveling travel-ing to and from work, with the high price of gasoline. ( They must travel to the road sheds in Beaver and Milford. Commissioners Commis-sioners Pryor and Johnson, fear that this cost might eliminate employees living too far from the road sheds from remaining with the County, and keep others from seeking seek-ing employment with the County. Motions have been made to subsidize travel to and from the road sheds, for em -ployees living over 10 miles from the sheds. So far, these motions have died for lack of a second, and the subject has now been tabled jintil October 2nd, to see if other public entitles subsidize employees travel to work. The COUNTY NEWS opposes such subsidizing sub-sidizing on several grounds. We feel it opens a can of worms that will be difficult to close. The County Commissioners cannot legally le-gally tell an employee where to live. To ' create a subsidy for employees living outside out-side a 10 mile radius of the road sheds, would be discriminatory to other employees living within a 10 mile radius. There is little lit-tle doubt that those employees would eventually even-tually want to be subsidized as well. We feel the courts woukj uphold their claim. A subsidy would encourage employees to move outside the 10 mile radius of the road sheds to get the subsidy. . Since the Commissioners cannot control where an employee lives, there would be nothing to keep an employee from moving to Fillmore or Cedar City, and get ting the subsidy. Or to cite the absurd, there would be no reason that an employee could not live in a Mt. Holly Condominium or Beaver Mountain Summer Home, or pitch a tent at Cougar Spar and receive the subsidy. sub-sidy. t ; Road employees, as do all of us, live where they want to, and accept the cost of transportation to and from work as part of that choice. But it Is their choice, not that of the Commission or other residents of the county. And for this reason they should not be subsidized. There is no question that travel does affect county employees, both hired and elected. When was the last time an elected elect-ed official, other than Commissioner, lived in Minersville or Milford. There has been none, except Sheriff Tate, in our ten years in Beaver County. And, of course, the Sheriff drives a county vehicle. In only one instance, when Alden Johnson John-son ran for Assessor, has a resident put-side put-side Beaver filed for an elective office other than Sheriff or Commissioner. We've no doubt that should theCommissioners choose to subsidize county employees for travel, that the next election will find the encum -bents challenged from throughout the county, not just Beaver. These problems are not unique with Beaver County. They are much more severe in densely populated counties where residents travel much farther to work. No member of the road crew travels more than 18 miles to work. We sympathize with those county employees who are suffering from the higher fuel prices. But what resident of Beaver County has not felt the effects of inflation? "Red" |