By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

Joining the KOAL newsroom following the biweekly meeting of the Emery County Commission, Commissioner Jordan Leonard covered a variety of topics, including supporting the youth in the community, a new notification tool for the Emery County Sheriff’s Office and an ongoing discussion surrounding mineral lease and payment in lieu of taxes funds.

Opening our discussion, Leonard spoke about a donation to a group of Emery High juniors who will be attending the American Legion Auxiliary’s Girls State: “We always get excited when we have our youth wanting to learn about government and County process and state and federal Government process as well.”

The Commissioner continued,” There was a group of junior girls who were going to this activity, and we financially supported that. We also asked them to come back, return, report, and let us know what they learned. But yeah, a good group willing to be involved in the community and government and learn about the government process. So we were excited about that.”

Switching gears, Leonard spoke about a new app the ECSO plans to use to establish a new line of communication between the department and the county’s citizens. “I’m glad that the sheriff has spearheaded this, but we need to have a better way to communicate with our citizens. I know there’s social media and different avenues, but that really doesn’t touch everybody, and sometimes you need information out there in a really quick manner. So having an app that people can get on their phone and get notifications on things that are happening in the community, and not only for emergencies, but also for maybe community events or different things happening where people want to know what’s happening in the county.”

Leonard added,” It’ll be great across the board for different information. We just need to make sure it’s managed well and carefully. So it’s not spam for people. We want to make sure it’s organized with good information and not blowing up people’s phones all the time.”

Moving from law enforcement to county finances, Leonard weighed in on an ongoing discussion about the disbursement of PILT and Community Reinvestment Agency funds.

“So if the different government agencies through the state and the federal government own property in our county, we receive some of those revenues, or we get paid for them to use county land. So that’s the payment in lieu of taxes, and we get those revenues to spend in our district. We have water districts. We have our recreation district. We have our different special service districts that would need to be funded, and those are usually funded through mineral lease dollars,” explained the Commissioner. “As those fluctuate, we need to make sure that our districts are funded and that we can continue to have services in the county. We do have solar revenue coming into the county that we’re looking to utilize potentially, and we budgeted for some things, but we’re looking to potentially backfill some of these budgets depending on mineral lease and PILT funding as well.”

Leonard also cautioned against using the funds solely to cover services, given their unpredictable nature. “I think there’s been some concern in other counties where some of those services – whether it’s the sheriff’s office or emergency services – need to be funded. And if yes, it’s totally funded through mineral lease or PILT funds that jump up and down depending on the year, it makes it a challenge. So we’re trying to get ahead of it a little bit.”

Moving to recognition, Leonard gave a shoutout to the county’s Weed and Mosquito department: “As we all know, it’s an ongoing and forever process, but we’re going to try to combat the weeds and then the mosquitoes with us being a little drier this year. We’ll see how that goes, but we always have mosquitoes, so they’ll try to get those mosquitoes before they become an issue in the county. And if you do have concerns about mosquito issues as the summer comes upon us, please let us know and we can look at areas if there’s a concern.”

Closing our conversation, Leonard provided a brief preview of upcoming events,” We’re working on the county fair this summer that we’re excited about. Also, the Cowboys Memorial Rodeo looks like it will continue. We’re working on that.”

He also shared a message of support for those impacted by recent losses in the community,” We’ve had some pretty heavy loss in our community the last couple weeks, so we all have heavy hearts and so always thinking of those that have had losses and just wanted to Put positive thoughts out to those families and friends of those people in our community.”