Carbon lawmakers decide to advertise county board seats

By Sun Advocate

If Carbon citizens are interested in occupying positions on various county boards, the chance to serve has become an easier process.
At the Dec. 10 commission meeting, Carbon lawmakers voted to advertise all open positions open on the boards that help operate county services. Local resident will be able to submit letters to apply for the openings when the notices appear.
“I just think that we should do this so more people from the community can have the chance to serve on these boards,” said Carbon Commissioner Steve Burge.
In the past, the majority of the board seats were filled by word of mouth. People passed the fact an opening had occurred around the community and the county took names as the time to fill the position approached. The commission always had final approval
“First of all, the thing everyone needs to realize is that some of these positions did get advertised for,” stated Carbon Commissioner Mike Milovich. “The other thing that needs to be understood is that if we are going to advertise these openings there needs to be a description of each position developed so people know what they are looking at. I am wondering who is going to do that? Those descriptions have to be supplied with the notice.”
The panels in the county government include the Carbon Special Transportation and Service District, the Carbon Water Conservancy District, the weed board, the fairgrounds board, the Scofield Special Service District and a number of other entities.
“The point is that some people have complained that they haven’t had the chance to be on various boards. So if we pass this measure, no one can be upset about it anymore,” explained Burge. “This will give everyone the chance to apply.”
When the discussion ended the measure passed unanimously by the commissioners.
In an unrelated business matter, the commission decided to lease additional water to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources for the Gigliotti Fishing Pond in Helper.
The pond is still leaking, despite attempts the past two summers to repair it.
“It’s been a very popular site,” commented Justin Hart of the DWR. “We have had a lot of local help with the pond, but it is no secret we have not been able to fix the leak.”
Hart indicated that the pond is losing too much water for the DWR to handle with the 20 shares the agency presently has access to. He said the pond appears to be losing about 66 acre feet per year.
“We need about 40 shares to temporarily make up the difference until we can get funding to fix the dam,” noted Hart.
The state agency has tried to find out where the water is going by using dye. But the DWR representative said that the “earth is just too good of a filtering out the dye” and it didn’t work.
“If we get too low on water, we can lose the fish that are in there,” said Hart. “That’s not too much of problem with the trout, but it was hard introducing the blue gill and bass. Introducing those species is very labor intensive.”
The commissioners appeared ready to help, but were concerned with the problem going on for years.
“This could be a waste of a valuable resource if this isn’t fixed soon,” said Milovich. “I am willing to work on a lease, but I think we need some kind of date set as to when the ponds leakage problem will be fixed. A plan in place might spur those that control the purse strings along a little faster.”
The commission voted to allow the lease of 40 acre feet for one year with the cost being about $15 per share.
The commission also had another discussion about hiring two architects for the new gun range, with one doing the actual range design and the other coming up with the concepts for the buildings.
Building and zoning director Dave Levanger told the commission that the Arizona architect would be in Carbon County in January to look over the project and the costs would be covered by money that had been set aside for evaluation.
But since the gun range committee has recently had second thoughts about the range being located near the airport and instead being located near Pinnacle Peak, that will need to be cleared up and the visit could help with doing that.
The commission also took various other actions including approving a bid for a 10-wheel dump truck from Sterling Truck of Utah for $97,381 that was opened in an early November meeting and later evaluated by the road department. In addition they approved the countys bookmobile contract and also decided to close the county offices at 1 p.m. on Dec. 24 so employees can be off for Christmas Eve.