By Aidan Mortensen | KOAL News

As local governments prepare for year-end, Emery County Commissioner Jordan Leonard joined the KOAL newsroom to discuss what’s happening along the San Rafael Swell and the preparations the commission is looking to complete as 2026 rapidly approaches.

 Beginning our conversation, Leonard discussed the commission’s recent trip to Green River to host its biweekly commission meeting and a town hall public hearing. “Rubbing shoulders with everyone in the community is important. And with Green River being an hour and 10-minute drive away from this side of the county, we want to make sure that we have a presence there; that people are heard and that we understand the challenges and issues that they face.”

He continued,” There were a lot of people who attended. So we did our normal business, but there were a lot of people who attended, and we also had an open house that evening. And about 50 or 60 attended. We talked about community issues and really got to touch base with people one-on-one about their specific concerns. Water, tourism, emergency services, so we touched on a lot of good things that we need to try to partner with the city to make things better.”

Currently in the works for the county is the 2026 budget. Leonard explained what this process looks like for the commissioners: “So we meet with all of the department heads and the different entities that we support as a county, and we go through these budget hearings, talk about how things went this past year, and set a new budget for each department. It’s really good to meet with the department heads to talk about what went well, understand their challenges and identify other areas that may need funding. It’s been a busy couple of weeks. We’ve been meeting with everyone. It looks like the departments have done really well to stay under budget for last year, and so it’s been nice to see them be fiscally responsible with their budget.”

Leonard also addressed property taxes as a part of the process,” the elephant in the room is property taxes, and we’re working on that, and we understand that it’s a burden to the county, and we want to make sure that we spend the money properly. These are hard meetings, you know, there are hard decisions that need to be made, but we try to create win-win situations for the community and the department.”

One common theme for the Emery County Commission throughout the year has been the fight for public land access. Leonard provided an update on two ongoing discussions on the matter: Long Street in Green River and the Cleveland Reservoir. “I think we need to fight for current trails that are open and need to stay open, and give our citizens access to those. Long Street’s been a concern; a lot of people want to drive on Long Street to reach the Green River and other areas to explore. We’re working on that to try to keep that right of way open.”

He added,” Another we want to keep open is access to the Cleveland Reservoir. On the north end of that reservoir, it’s private property. We want to work with the private landowners to allow public access to the north end of the reservoir because, really, there’s not a lot of access to the reservoir, and our communities have used that for many years. So we want to secure that public access to the reservoir.”

Moving along, Leonard spoke on the turnout for the 2025 municipal general election. Statewide, Utah saw a voter turnout of approximately 30%. In Emery County, that number shot up to 47%. “I’m glad people are involved, and I hope the community will continue to be involved with the elections because we need good people in office who care about the community and want to do good things. The community’s voice was heard, and so we have mayors and city councils that were elected, and we’re excited to work with them moving forward as a county.”

Closing our conversation, Leonard stated,” I think community is important,” adding that the community should ” go out and try to support the local events that are happening this fall.”