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Show IEdlittdDipnaill He asked the right questions Citizens of Park City and Summit County will probably never agree about Frank Singleton. But certainly cer-tainly this would be a different, perhaps more languid place if he hadn't come. First, there's the fact that he supervised the growth of a professional health department, with more money, more state and federal aid and more professional staff. If the county has a presence in Park City, it's largely due to its health department activities. But beyond that, we received a great deal of entertainment enter-tainment from the former health director. Why bother to watch Larry Holmes fight when you could, instead, ' see Frank Singleton take on the County Commission, the Health Board (whom he once referred to as "trained seals"),Park City Corp., the Sewer Board, the school board... They say Nature abhors a vacuum. Well, Singleton abhorred ab-horred static situations, at least those he felt needed improving; im-proving; he abhorred an arena where one actor was manipulating the others to his benefit; he abhorred a segment of the body politic where one little germ might grow and choke the whole county to death. Just in areas connected to public health, he found enough glitches glit-ches to keep him busy. When confronted with a situation like this, Singleton's solution was to rattle its cage, light firecrackers under it, blow whistles but basically, shed light on it. Sometimes, perhaps, the problem didn't deserve all the hoopla. Or Singleton shed more heat than light on the issue. It wasn't always easy to see Singleton as the hard-driving hard-driving professional in conflict with a bucolic county government. Even the professionals in Park City government govern-ment were a little leery of him (But for those of you who have only seen the abrasive Singleton, we should note that he has frequently expressed respect, publicly and privately, for the pros at City Hall. We would like to think they return the feeling. ) Singleton was not always right, but even some of his vehement critics now share his feelings about the potential poten-tial problems existing in county government. We didn't always agree with him at this paper. (One of our editorials questioned the high health department turnover in his first year in office.) But we believe Singleton has always acted with an honest motivation. - Frank Singleton didn't always have the right answers. But more often than not, he asked the right questions. Frank is off to other escapades. We're stuck with the questions. |