Though the financial challenges in Carbon and Emery counties may be different, their futures both rely on economic development, according to officials.
That was the message two county commissioners communicated on Jan. 18 to attendees at a general board meeting of BEAR, the area’s Business Expansion and Retention organization.
Carbon County Commissioner Casey Hopes talked largely about how the county is adapting to dropping tax revenues.
“There has been a reorganization of the county and a consolidation of departments,” he said.
He said the reorganization has saved the county a fair amount of money because now services are not being duplicated.
One of the biggest changes took place in the county building when the commission eliminated separate management positions for economic development and tourism.
“We are working toward having one person head up those two departments,” Hopes explained. “The two departments do largely the same job and a single director will better coordinate those two departments.”
But the county is also looking at another possibility and that is to hire a consultant to do that job.
Hopes said there are consultants who could manage it who might have more viable connections to business and tourism.
He said he has already had multiple meetings with Congressman John Curtis and that Curtis has a lot of great ideas about how to help the area generate more revenues.
Hopes pointed out, too, that counties around the state are meeting with the governor; Carbon’s meeting is coming up soon.
“However, Carbon cannot wait for the state or federal incentives to help us,” Hopes said. “Curtis thinks that it is not new businesses that is going to come in and help the economy, but entrepreneurs and present businesses that will grow from within.”
Kent Wilson, an Emery County commissioner, has been on the job four months. He gave the BEAR board his take on his county’s financial picture.
Wilson is fulfilling the term of Keith Brady, who moved out of the area.
“Going through the budget process was daunting,” Wilson said. “Revenues are flat and costs are going up. In Emery, we cannot raise taxes another penny because they are at the legal maximum.”
Emery County has already had its meeting with the governor and Wilson said he was encouraged.
“He (the governor) wants to help rural Utah succeed but there is no formula where you can go up there and they will say they are going to do this, this and this,” he said.
Wilson said with the power plants in his county eventually going away, now is the time to think about what is going to replace that revenue.
As for economic development, he said Emery has a lot of land and a lot of water and that presently they could lease some industry 10,000 acre feet of water.
Emery is happy to be getting tourism spillage from Moab and Goblin Valley, where the number of tourists has doubled in the last two years. He pointed out that Goblin Valley is being run more like a business than a government agency.
“That is what counties need to do,” he said.
Wilson lamented that while Emery has loads of tourist destinations, it has few hotel rooms. One bright spot, however, may be opening vacant houses to tourists.
Wilson also talked about Emery’s struggles to attract big solar power businesses to the county.
“The bottom line is that we have a lot of hope and plans for Emery County.”
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