By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News
Following the Aug. 5 meeting of the Emery County Commissioners, Commissioner Jordan Leonard joined the KOAL newsroom for his biweekly conversation on what’s happening along the San Rafael Swell. During this conversation, Leonard discussed topics such as the recent Emery County Fair, energy in the area, and economic development plans for the county.
Opening the talk, Leonard spoke about the new Miss Emery County royalty,” It was good to hear from them. They volunteer a lot in our community, and it takes a lot of guts to run for those royalty positions, but we have a great group of girls this year.” He added,” It was great that they were able to say hi and talk about their platforms and what they’re trying to do in our community.”
Switching gears, Leonard discussed the appointment of Commissioner Dennis Worwood to the Utah Energy Research Board as a representative of the county. “The state reached out to us and asked us to appoint one of the commissioners to that board. We felt as a commission that Commissioner Worwood would fit that well, so we appointed him. He’s going to keep in touch with everything going on out at the research center and the different companies interested in moving in, and be our connection with the commission in the county.”
Leonard also spoke on the presentation by County Assessor Kris Bell explaining the tax evaluation process.
“It’s a pretty in-depth process,” said the Commissioner. “I think we’re all concerned about property taxes. It’s a challenge, but we also want services at the same time. The state has different legislative actions that we have to follow, and then we also have house sales, vacant lots or buildable lots. So all of these have to be evaluated through a process. It was good to have Kris Bell explain all of that and answer a lot of good questions.”
Leonard continued,” If people have questions about property taxes, the way it’s done, please reach out to the county. We’ll try to help explain it.”
Commissioner Leonard moved to his usual departmental spotlight, this time going to the Emery County Fair Committee. “I’ve mentioned this in previous visits with you, that these community events just help us visit with our neighbors and rub shoulders, and the county fair was great. The parade, the vendors, the food, the rides for the kids and the entertainment were great. Frontier Days was also awesome to bring back our heritage and remind us of those who have lived before us. It was a great County Fair and I just wanted to thank everyone who helped out.”
Our penultimate topic of conversation with the Commissioner was the creation of an economic development plan for the county. “We’ve been working on this, and we’re trying to roll it out. We’ll be discussing it in meetings coming forward. Still, we’re working with the state on an economic development plan to focus on our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats that impact our community.”
He continued,” We’re coming up with a plan on energy and business development, community development and a lot of those things … We should be rolling that out in the next few months. We wanted to highlight that we always need to be moving forward and try not to stay stagnant so that we can move this community forward the way that the residents want. Slow, steady growth, and we want our kids to try to move back to Emery County and find jobs.”
Closing our discussion, Leonard stated,” Please don’t be afraid to reach out, we want to be transparent with things. And I know that there are always questions in the community and challenges, and there always will be, we want to try to help answer those questions.”