Castle Country Radio was able to sit down with Carbon County Commissioner Larry Jensen to discuss the past year’s accomplishments that took place within the county.
“Well, I think there is no question COVID added a dimension here that we didn’t expect. The federal government gave to the county and the cities $3 million to help businesses and those dollars were distributed and I hope that has helped some of the businesses that were really affected by it,” said Commissioner Jensen. The county has worked closely with the Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments to allocate those funds.
Although COVID was the hot topic for 2020 the county saw some economic growth take place. “We’ve had some good economic things that have transpired through the year with Intermountain Electronics expansion and hiring over 50 new people, with the future looking really bright for them. SME Steel moved in and hired 30 people. Their project has actually been shut down because the materials they’re building for are in California and California has shut that down. The solar company we’ve finalized all of the issues with the solar company and they’re ready to start their building of their solar facility there north of Wellington,” explained Commissioner Jensen. This is going to bring substantial growth and opportunities to our county as it will help to generate tax dollars.
As for the upcoming new year the county is looking forward to some big projects. “I think the big one is probably the solar field will be built, that’s going to employ a lot of people, it will take a year to build. Intermountain Electronics will continue to expand so at this point they’ve built their 40,000 square foot warehouse, built their parking lot for the additional employees and now with a couple of new contracts that were substantial they’re going to begin building their new 200,000 square foot factory,” said Commissioner Jensen. The addition of the factory will help Intermountain Electronics keep up with the demand of jobs/orders that they are getting.
The county hopes that with the new year there will be more recreational activities available to guests/visitors such as soccer and softball tournaments. “We’re optimistic that as the vaccine is available for COVID that we’ll be able to open up more. You know as a sponsor of events there are some pretty strict guidelines given by the state that we’re very anxious to follow very close which prohibits use from sponsoring some things. I know that we are able to with some good planning to hold events and so we’re working towards the day when we can really open things completely back up, but for the time being, we’re still somewhat on hold with some of those things,” stated Commissioner Jensen.