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Show Wednesday's Salt Lake Tribune carried a featured news story about a visit to Washington, D. C, made by Mr. Harley J. Cor-leissen, Cor-leissen, Utah State Highway Commissioner. Commissioner Cor-leissen Cor-leissen was lobbying for completion of U S Highway 6 from j Delta to the Nevada State Line, and was accompanied on a visit to a senate appropriations subcommittee by Senator Arthur V. j Wakins, who heartily endorsed the Utah commissioner's request that a special congressional appropriation be made to complete work on U S 6. Programmed for this year is about 18 miles of grading and related work on "virgin" road. This is to cost about $250,000 a quarter of a million dollars. Another $180,000 will be required to pave this 18 miles. Then, an additional $750,000 would be necessary to grade up and pave the remaining 29.4 miles of desert des-ert road, not yet scheduled for completion this year. A total of one million, one hundred and eighty thousand dollars will be needed to complete the job. The proposal has the approval of all of Southern Utah, we believe ,and of course all the residents of the Nevada area affected af-fected are heartily in favor of completing the only unpaved portion por-tion of the transcontinental, road from Provincetown, Mass., to Long Beach, Calif. We sincerely hope ways can be found to complete com-plete the project this year. The one thing about the proposal that makes us stop and wonder is the statement by Commissioner Corleissen that Utah will commit the state's share 24 of $1,180,000, or $283,200, if the federal government would agree to put up the remainder. What we are wondering is, Does the State of Utah have that much money to spare in its highway construction fund, without robbing other areas with just-as-necessary highway projects. Will the State Highway Commission have to divert money from other areas to complete the Millard County project? In August of last year, Gov. J. Bracken Lee, in a letter to the editor of The Milford News, said, referring to State Highway 21, "The needs as advocated are imperative and I feel certain will be accomplished." "I shall make a point to see that all the promises prom-ises are kept, as brought out in the article." The "promises" referred to the governor's assurance to Utah and Nevada citizens that he would "do the best he possibly could" to expedite comple- tion of Utah 21. j Recently, the Beaver County proposal to furnish funds fori immediate completion of U-21 was rejected by the State Highway Commission after Attorney General Clinton D. Vernon advised them the proposal was illegal. Beaver County has been told to wait until 1951 and HOPE there will be money made available for completion of this important highway. We're to "wait and hopL." The highway commission wants to spend more than a million mil-lion dollars on a road north of us, and aboui a million and a half dohars in federal money is waiting to be spent on secondary roads in Utah but the highway commission can't find funds to match 24 of this. If not allocated by June 30 of this year just a month from now, the money reverts to the federal treasury and .'.il be forever lost to Utah. Regarding the proposal made by Commissioner Corleissen, Senator Watkins announced that he wants to see U S 6 completed a; soon as possible, "But I don't want the State of Utah to have to sacrifice its much-needed highway funds for that sector unless it is absolutely necessary." The Senator has the right slant on this proposal. Beaver County was turned down on their proposal to raise the necessary neces-sary matching funds to use some of the federal money which, t seems, will be lost to the state, and now we have a highway commissioner offering to sacrifice the highway programs of other sections of the state in order to complete a project for one pressure pres-sure group. If the highway commissioners can find $283,000 for Millard Mil-lard County in one year, it seems reasonable to expect them to dig up at least a few thousand for work on U-21. It's been a long time since we received our last meager handout from the State Capitol. |