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Show Five county AOG a valuable resource The Five County Association of Governments provided a good and honest profile of itself last week. The result was a highly educational experience, or so expressed several of the 20 or so elected officials who listened to the AOG's story. What we heard there was a group not considering itself "another layer of government," but one desiring to help existing local governments govern-ments do their jobs better. As Executive Director John Williams put it, the AOG's services are completely voluntary. If an area doesn't want to use them, they don't have to. But we can't understand why a county wouldn't want to. Southern Utah faces potentially explosive growth. Yet its sparsely populated counties and small towns and cities don't nearly have the, resources available to hire the expertise needed to effectively meet these growth demands. And whereas a single county or city might not be able to hire someone to fill a planning or advisory need, a multi-county association can, and does. Such an association can provide even the most rural of areas with a much higher level of expertise than might otherwise be expected. Salaries of Five County personnel costs the area $300,000 per year, the equivalent of each county having an additional three technically-qualified technically-qualified employees. Like most other areas of federal and state government, multi-county associations will probably find their operations pared down. Still remaining, however, will be more expertise and potential assistance than any single county could ever hope to gather. We support the continuence of strong Associations of Government, especially in rural areas. We also hope the Iron County Commission will reverse its ill-grounded vote of four years ago and lend its official membership and support to the AOG. |