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Show « ELECTION TIMES - OCTOBER 1993 - 3 - option makes tourists help with our costs; the property tax option allocates some of the cost to the larger businesses (like oil and gas companies) that have valuable properties in Grand County. In either case some of the cost of the hospital is born by someone other than just the “small guy” taxpayer in Grand County. November 2 General Election At the election on November 2nd we will vote on three different issues. 1) Residents of the Town of Castle Valley will be voting on their next mayor and two Town Council members. 2) All voters in the Castle Valley News Flash The School Board's request that bonds be issued to fund new auditorium, library, and cafeteria for Moab High voting district will be voting on the 1% COUNTY COUNCIL RECALL: School was rejected on county-wide sales tax to be used for the The new form of county govemment voted in by Grand County voters last year included provisions for recalling Council members if the voters were dissatisfied. Only 15% of the voters in the last election were October 12 by Grand County voters by a 29- required to sign the recall petition in funding, with 57 votes order to have the recall put on the November ballot. This small number of signatures has been obtained to recall elections for five of our seven county council members, including Bill Hedden, who represents Castle Valley and part of Spanish Valley. FOR and 27 AGAINST. hospital and 3) on whether or not to recall several of the new county councilmen. This issue of the CV Times has more comments from the candidates for Mayor and Town Council seats. The other two issues were only recently added to the ballot, so we could not cover them in a previous issue. SALES TAX FOR HOSPITAL: The last Utah State legislature provided the option to counties to adopt a 1% sales tax to be used exclusively In these times, if an elected official for local hospitals. This provision is attractive to communities like ours that have a large amount of tourism. The tax is adopted so that there is some way for tourists help to pay for the general medical facilities they use when they visit here. (Direct charges don’t work all that well, because large bills can be hard to collect out of state.) One way to look at the sales tax for the hospital is that it is something like a matching grant, where tourists have to ante up the sales tax along with the local residents. The goal is to have the tourists chipping in on the cost of the services they are using. The other alternative was the property tax. The property tax option was voted down by voters last year. Both sales tax and property tax achieve a similar goal. The sales tax hasn’t bothered 15% of their constituents, it’s only because they aren’t doing vote margin. However, Castle Valley voters approved the around to working on some of the less pressing disasters remaining, like the equestrian center, which still devours half our county PILT money. The wonderfully fractious ideological groups, we are probably looking at a lot of recall elections until we can raise the Council has had to do this disaster control while still new to their jobs. They’ve done pretty well under the circumstances. But they are up for recall. Depend- much. In Grand County, with all our 15% signatures required to a number ing on one’s views, this can be a great more significant, like 50%. The recall provision seems important but should require enough signatures that it would opportunity to give them either a indicate deep dissatisfaction. probably be voting on whether or not our representative (Bill Hedden) and Our new County Council seems to have done pretty well, considering some of the boondoggles they inherited from the previous county commission. They have stopped the tax money hemorrhaging into the Book Cliffs road, have tried to do damage control on the poorly organized County Courthouse project, and are just getting CASTLE CANYON NURSERY Plants for the Canyon Country Landscaping Design Drip Irrigation Headquarters Sprinkler Irrigation Parts Automatic Irrigation Parts System Design 81 Installation 259-8274 supporting vote or a spanking. While details are still sketchy, we will the two general representatives (Peter Haney and John Hartley) should be recalled. If any of the recalls are successful, there will be yet another election to choose who the new County Council members will be. —Jack Campbell |
