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Show ft THE ZEPHYRDECEMBER 1993 PAGE 24 wallets with The message from Grand County voters is dear - don't be coming after our associated with them. proposed taxes that have any trace of boondoggle WHAT MICHAEL JORDAN'S RETIREMENT MEANS TO MOAB AND ME Uncommon Michael Jordan retired from basketball when he was still undisputably the best player in the world. Only a few other athletes have done it - Rocky Mardano, Jim Brown, Bobby Jones. is at playing basketball and kissing it goodbye. Imagine being as good at anything as His Airness than anybody in the world pays you over $20 Imagine also the activity that you're better at doing million a year. Imagine you're Michael Jordan and you're giving that up. Tough, huh? There is unbearable and he had to make a change. only one explanation for it - Michael's life was Sense By Hank Rutter What does this tell us about human nature? After you have all the money and fame you want, you want privacy more than anything else. Many of us in Moab have all the privacy we need, but Jordan with all his millions couldn't buy enough of it. Being a celebrity must be miserable - having photographers following you around all the time just waiting for you to lose in newspaper your composure so they can put it on the front page. Having people speculate to distrust debts. to related was brutal murder father's Having columns that your your gambling outside the of the to able Not living most of the people you meet option give your family being of have most us what public eye. When you have everything like Michael Jordan, you don't have in Moab - the right to associate with whom we choose in privacy and the ability to trust most of the people with whom we interact Do we have it better than Michael Jordan? NO NEW TAXES Take it from me, Donald Trump, The votes are in, and, as most of us expected, the recall petitions were unsuccessful (except for temporarily getting Stiles upset). Of much more interest were the votes on the October school bond issue and the 1 sales tax to support Allen Memorial Hospital. Both received endorsements from community leaders, both would have benefitted worthy institutions, and both were defeated. What lesson have these elections taught us? It's tough to get voter approval of any tax increase in Grand County particularly after the hefty property tax increase that hit us last summer. I hope that lesson is taken to heart by our elected offidals and administrators. The 1 sales tax for the hospital was too rich a proposal for my blood, even if tourists were going to pay for most of it. The tax would have lasted for 10 years, and would have generated $900,000 in the first year and 12 to 15 million dollars over the life of the tax (over $2,000 for every resident of Moab). Currently, the County subsidizes the hospital to the tune of approximately $250,000 per year. I wasn't sure the hospital board knew what to do with the first year's revenue, much less the remaining nine years' revenue. The diairman of he hospital board, Rick Hover, was quoted as follows in Ken Davey's column in last month's Zephyr: this Rutter guy knows what hes talking about... You NEED more rich people in this town. In fact, you can never have -- too manyl With the one percent we've been told there are going to be a tremendous amount of funds. Well, those funds can be put in the bank for a proverbial rainy day, or for future expansion, or to accrue interest until ultimately in the 10-1- 5 years when we need to build a new facility, we plready have a head start. You can hardly blame taxpayers for preferring their own bank account to the hospital's tor the time being. Having said that, I still believe that developing an excellent rural medical center that provides a broad range of medical services should be a goal erf Grand County - and I am willing to pay taxes to achieve that goal. Top flight medical care is important to all of us but is absolutely necessary to attract retirees to this community - and retirees are where the money is, and where the money's going to be in the future. If Allen Memorial Hospital has a firm financial footing, it has an excellent chance to be deemed an "essential health care provider" under the Clintons' health plan - a designation which would require all Utah health plans to contract with it during the first five years of the Clintons' program. The institution that achieves that designation for Southeastern Utah will be extremely difficult to dislodge after five years' entrenchment, and it might as well be in Moab as Monticcllo or Price. With or without the Clintons' health plan, we need to take some action soon on funding the hospital. But a 1 sales tax would have generated at least twice the amount needed. The proponents argued that the 1 sales tax could be reduced in the future - but most of us have lived too long to count on a tax being reduced once it is The other lesson from Michael's retirement is that money is like any other commodity - you don't want anymore when you have enough. Being a human being complicates planning because we live a long time and weird stuff happens. But if you're like most of us, you want to accumulate enough money so that you never have to do anything again that you don't want to - like work, for instance. But after you get to where Michael Jordan is, money is supremely unimportant. We all know the only disadavantage to living in Moab is that you can't make enough money working here. But if you already have enough money, you don't need to make any more. Hence, even if Michael Jordan doesn't retire in Moab --people like him will. It is inevitable. There will be more and more Michael Jordans that come here to live. Is that bad? Not at all Michael will pay his property taxes, obey the law, keep pretty much to himself, and some of his money will rub off on the rest of us. individual and family psychotherapy marriage counseling hypnotherapy psychological evaluations organizational consulting imposed. The school bond was a much closer election and a much tougher call. I am happy to pay taxes to improve public education (although not to swell the coffers of the teachers' unions). The school board has obviously done some thoughtful planning on the future needs of the school system. They concluded that something north of $15 million would accommodate the projected growth in enrollments for many years. They came to the voters with the first phase of the project - $5 million for a new library, cafeteria, and a 1200 seat auditorium. It made no sense to vote for the school bond issue this time unless you were also prepared to vote for the second phase later that would pay for the new high school. The library seemed like a good idea (kids actually learn things in libraries), and maybe the cafeteria was a necessary infrastructure support, but a 1200 seat auditorium? For a high school with a current enrollment of approximately 470? I can't help but think that the school bond issue would have passed if the auditorium were scaled down to seats. JAMES A. FERRO Ph.D. Clinical Psychologist (801) 259-888- 4 P.O. Box 325, Moab, UT 84532 600-80- 0 366 NORTH 500 WEST 259-832- 4 Rick ffirschfiefd. Licensed & Insured PLUMBING CONTRACTOR Are your pipes WINTERIZED? Don't wait to find out. 4 J ' ifeitftt ' s.. .. . |