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Show I ' 'i ' oJfag& rift ' ." .1-1 - It- o-;':3 i. , ? . , H( II I . I Ss : Ralph Starr, coordinator of the Four-County MX Policy Board, discusses what he sees as the office's role during the closing down period the next two or three months. Starr is of the opinion that the office can still provide three vital services to the area. 1 Folicv Board to close With President Ronald Reagan's announcement last Friday that the MX Missile System will not be coming to Utah and Nevada, the Four County MX Policy Board office will soon be closing its doors. According to Ralph Starr, coordinator coor-dinator of the office, the close-down period will take 60 to 90 days, but should be complete by the end of the year. During that time, he sees the role of the office as at least three-fold. First, there is what he calls the watchdog role. "It would be very premature until Congress makes some kind of funding decision to abandon our planning mechanism," he said concerning con-cerning the decision to place the system elsewhere. "The odds of having MX return to Utah and Nevada are not high, but I don't think we can afford to lay it to rest." According to Starr, Congress has 60 days to support or reject the funding proposal of the President concerning the system, and there is a chance it won't approve the modified version of MX. "I think the people of Utah would be the losers if we folded our tents and left," he said. In fact, Starr sees what he calls a "very bloody battle" in Congress over the proposal. "I don't think that MX is a cut and dried issue right now. I really don't." Beneath Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger is a very complicated bureaucracy, he continued. That bureaucracy could very well force some changes. "There's so many players in this that it's just unbelievable." un-believable." Second, Starr would like to see several of the studies commissioned by the office carried through to fruition, especially two comprehensive planning studies that are nearly complete at the present time. "They will still be of use to the people of southern Utah, and that was our main objective anyway," he said. Many communities have never had a master plan or maps, he continued, and ', noted that even though MX is not ' coming, the office has done a service 'r for these communities. ",, He also hinted that an office similar to the MX office could be of great in- ' terest to the area in the future plan- ning efforts of individual counties and communities. ' "There has to be something done, and I'm not saying that this ofice has to be the one to do it," he said. "It's just a question that's in my mind after this is all over." The third function is probably the most limited in some ways and yet, nationally, could be the most important: im-portant: the briefing of the states which will be receiving MX on the information the office has acquired during the past two years. This briefing and updating of "sister states" could be very valuable to them and to the nation as a whole, he concluded. |
