Local Democrats will offer voters stark choice

    Carbon County Democrats held their local convention in Helper last Thursday, joining party faithful with candidates for numerous county, state and federal elected positions.
    A few dozen people attended the convention, held at the Rio Theatre on Main Street.
    Local candidates who addressed the crowd included Carbon Democratic Party Chair Ed Chavez, who is running for Jae Potter’s seat on the county commission; John Jones and Joe Christman, who are vying to replace GOP commissioner/surveyor Jake Mellor; and Sulika Laalu Merrell, candidate for county clerk/auditor, who is hoping to unseat whomever the local Republican Party appoints to replace Seth Oveson, a former Democrat who switched parties recently after announcing his resignation after accepting a state job.
    Jones perhaps gave the most impassioned address of the night, among local candidates.
    “If it’s experience you want, I think I have some of that. I started as a city councilman right here in Helper. I was appointed to the Carbon County Commisson. I served as president of the Utah Association of Counties where I worked with other counties across the state on their issues. I helped other counties become successful,” he said.
     Jones said he was in favor of full-time commissioners—suggesting that while commissioners today earn a full-time salary, they hardly put in 40 hours a week.
    “One thing I see we are lacking today is full time commissioners. When I was there it took me between five and six days a week to do the job. Today those guys can do it in a few hours in a day. I think we need to get back to a full time commission. We are paying full time wages,” he said.
    Jones spent almost seven years on the county commission before losing his seat to Mellor. He now wants his seat back.
“If you take a look at the six and a half years that I spent as a Carbon County commissioner, we did $33 million worth of projects. We built $33 million worth of infrastructure. Things like the senior center, the Children’s Justice Center and we rebuilt the rodeo grounds. We pretty much rebuilt Carbon County. If you look at Carbon County, it was built by Democrats just like me and you.
“When I walked out of office, minus the new courthouse which shouldn’t have been billed yet, we had lowered the deficit by a one million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars ($1,750,000). So I gave you $33 million worth of assets and lowered your debt structure by a million, seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I think that’s pretty good. But we also cut the budget by $2.5 million a year. And that stopped taxation folks. If you looked what was left in the bank, there was over $20 million left in the bank when I left this county commission. There was $9 million in unrestricted funds. That was my Ferrari account. You could buy anything you wanted to with it and I left it there. They bought something, I don’t know what it was, but they did something. It went down three or four million bucks.”
“That was security for the future of this county. What I see are mistakes in bookkeeping that need to be fixed.”
“I met with Jake Mellor just recently when they decided not to audit the books. A million dollar mistake in the books and they’re not going to audit the books. I said hey, audit the books, maybe this will help you…Jake Mellor, about the third time through, because I was pretty sure he wasn’t getting it, said ‘You’ve told me three times!’ But I shouldn’t have to tell him once—he’s the commissioner.”