Tooele Transcript-Bulletin

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Tooele County School District officials estimate enrollment districtwide will grow by 2.2 percent this year based on preliminary enrollment counts from the first week of school. If the numbers hold true, they would mark the third straight year of modest enrollment growth.

The district is reporting an increase of over 500 stu-dents from last year.

“Enrollment is high, but we have several students that have not attended yet,” said Terry Linares, Tooele County School District superintendent. "The schools are checking each name that has not attended, which is approximately 150 students districtwide."

After enrollment records are cleaned up, Linares is anticipating growth of around 300 students. The 2012-13 budget was based on growth of 200 stu-

dents over the 13,675 offi-cial October 2011 enroll-ment count, according to Linares.

Schools clean their enroll-ment records by dropping students that they know

have moved or enrolled at another school, but they have to wait 10 school days before dropping a student that is enrolled but does not show up for school. Enrollment figures by

school will not be released until the cleaning is com-pleted.

Enrollment has climbed steadily in the Tooele

SEE SCHOOL PAGE A7 ➤

Vernon man’s long-time job keeps school warm

See B1

Tooele’s Skyline Park open after a year of construction

See A3

TRANSCRIPTBULLETINTTTOOELE

TUESDAY August 28, 2012 www.TooeleTranscript.com Vol. 119 No. 25 50¢

BULLETIN BOARD B3

CLASSIFIEDS B5

HOMETOWN B1

OBITUARIES A6

OPEN FORUM A4

SPORTS A9

RIVERS AND LAKES 24-hour

Stage Change

Great Salt Lake Elevation

In feet as of 7 a.m. Monday

Vernon Creek at Vernon 1.04 -0.01South Willow Creek at Grantsville 1.40 none

at Saltair Boat Harbor 4196.09

Tu W Th F Sa Su M

Pollen Index

Source: Intermountain Allergy & Asthma

HighModerate

LowAbsent

The Sun Rise Set

The Moon Rise Set

UV INDEX

The higher the AccuWeather.com UV Index™number, the greater the need for eye and skin protection. 0-2 Low; 3-5 Moderate; 6-7 High; 8-10Very High; 11+ Extreme

ALMANACTemperatures

Precipitation (in inches)

Daily Temperatures

SEVEN-DAY FORECAST FOR TOOELESUN AND MOON

UTAH WEATHER

Last Normal Month Normal Year Normal Week for week to date M-T-D to date Y-T-D

Salt Lake City

Ogden

Logan

Provo

Vernal

Price

Tooele

Nephi

Manti

Green River

RichfieldMoab

Cedar CitySt. George Kanab

Blanding

BeaverHanksville

Delta

GrouseCreek

Roosevelt

Clive

Rush Valley

Wendover

Gold Hill

Vernon

Ophir

Grantsville

Tooele

Lake Point

Bauer

Stockton

Pine Canyon

Stansbury ParkErda

Knolls

Ibapah

Dugway

High Low

Eureka

Wednesday 6:54 a.m. 8:06 p.m.Thursday 6:55 a.m. 8:04 p.m.Friday 6:56 a.m. 8:02 p.m.Saturday 6:57 a.m. 8:01 p.m.Sunday 6:58 a.m. 7:59 p.m.Monday 6:59 a.m. 7:58 p.m.Tuesday 7:00 a.m. 7:56 p.m.

Wednesday 6:47 p.m. 4:53 a.m.Thursday 7:19 p.m. 6:00 a.m.Friday 7:49 p.m. 7:05 a.m.Saturday 8:18 p.m. 8:09 a.m.Sunday 8:47 p.m. 9:11 a.m.Monday 9:16 p.m. 10:12 a.m.Tuesday 9:48 p.m. 11:11 a.m.

Forecasts and graphics provided by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2012

93/64

89/62

89/64

89/62

88/61

80/56

93/65

91/63

90/65

89/62

89/62

78/56

83/59

92/6492/65

94/64

91/60

91/63

93/67

91/64

89/55

90/64

88/57

86/59

91/63

90/60

88/59

96/65

89/6197/70

86/5999/76 91/59

86/61

87/6096/69

94/66

87/51

91/60

Full Last New First

Aug 31 Sep 8 Sep 15 Sep 22

Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue

Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon

WEDNESDAY THURSDAY FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY

Mostly sunny

91 63

Mostly sunny; showers at night

88 61

Mostly sunny; showers at night

87 59

Partly sunny; showers at night

85 59

Mostly sunny

83

Mostly sunny and pleasant

85 58 57

Partly sunny

82 53TOOELE COUNTY WEATHER

Shown is Wednesday’s weather. Temperatures are

Wednesday night’s lows and Wednesday’s highs.

High/Low past week 94/61Normal high/low past week 88/62Average temp past week 77.9Normal average temp past week 75.3

Statistics for the week ending August 27.

See complete forecast on A7

WEATHER INSIDE

Source: www.airquality.utah.gov

Good

Moderate

Moderate

AIR QUALITYTuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

County brings down the axWith revenues falling $4 million short, commissioners start chopping programs and employees to balance budget

Board president defends superintendent pay hikeSchool enrollment climbs gradually

SERVING TOOELE COUNTY

SINCE 1894

file / Maegan Burr

Tooele County School District Superintendent Terry Linares listens during a February meeting at the state Capitol. In June, Linares’ salary was raised to $128,500.

Grantsville City

Source: Tooele City

$1.5 Million$4.2 Million

$1.5 Million$4.2 Million

$1.5 Million

Biggest Tooele City Lawsuits

Tooele Associates

$4.2 Million

Maegan Burr

Scott Bitters goes over a powerpoint presentation with an honors psychology class in a portable classroom at Stansbury High School Thursday morning. The school added three portable classrooms this year.

City’s bill for Overlake lawsuit totals $4.2 million thus far

Maegan Burr

Tooele County Surveyor Doug Kinsman stands in his office Tuesday morning. Although Kinsman will keep his job, his staff will be laid off due to budget cuts.

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Tooele County Commissioners are making deep budget cuts and laying off employees as they attempt to stave off an estimated $4 mil-lion revenue shortfall by slashing expenses in the last three months of the 2012 budget.

Revenue forecasts for contracted jail inmates and mitigation fees paid by the hazardous waste industry have failed to materialize, leaving the county short 17.5 percent on its $22.8 million 2012 general fund budget, which ends on December 31.

“We've known for some time that the revenue wasn't coming in like we had thought it would,” said Bruce Clegg, Tooele County com-missioner. “We did what we could, like our hiring freeze, and were hop-ing that something might happen and things would pick up, but it didn't happen.”

The entire three-employee eco-nomic development department has been notified that their depart-ment will be closed and all employ-ees laid off at the end of September. County surveyors, other than elected

SEE COUNTY PAGE A5 ➤

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Tooele sent has spent $4.2 million to date in its decade-long legal battle against Overlake devel-oper Tooele Associates.

That figure includes outside attorney fees, court costs, expert witnesses, and costs of discovery — a pre-trial phase that allows opposing parties to obtain evidence from each other through copies of documents and depositions — related to the city’s defense against the lawsuit filed in 2002.

“The largest driver of costs was simply the enor-mous amount of time it takes to litigate a complex commercial case,” said Roger Baker, Tooele City attorney. “Discovery was extensive due to the large number of documents and witnesses involved.”

SEE LAWSUIT PAGE A6 ➤

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

In a year in which the Tooele County School Board handed out only half of scheduled salary step increases to teachers and raised property taxes by 9.1 percent, it also chose to bump up Superintendent Terry Linares’ salary by 20.4 per-cent.

Linares’ annual salary was raised from $106,759 to $128,500 when her contract was renewed for two years in June. In a letter emailed to all district employees this morning in response to recent inquiries, Scott Bryan, Tooele County School Board president, outlined the rationale for the raise.

“The increase was in part recogni-tion for the superintendent's leader-ship over the prior years and in part strategically positioning the district to offer a more competitive salary in alignment with other superinten-dents throughout the state,” wrote Bryan. “We also recognize that we will eventually hire a new superin-tendent and we want to attract the top talent for this critical position through a competitive compensa-tion package.”

Linares has not received a raise in the four years since she became

superintendent, according to Bryan.“The board of education unilater-

ally offered the superintendent an increase and unanimously approved such,” Bryan wrote. “The increase in the contractual agreement has put Superintendent Linares in an uncom-fortable position with employees throughout the district. As a board of education, all employees need to know that the superintendent did not request an increase.”

Linares said she voluntarily reduced her own salary by $1,500.

“The board raised my salary to $130,000, but I took the same three days of no pay as everybody else, so my salary is $128,500,” said Linares.

Provo School District, which enrolls nearly the same number of students as Tooele County School District, pays its superintendent $132,139, and the superintendent of Box Elder schools, also similar in size to Tooele, makes $126,029, according to UtahsRight.com, a website that tracks public salaries in the state.

“I really don’t think it is fair that we have an employee that puts it as many hours as our superintendent does for what she is paid and then when we go to replace her we offer the next guy a big raise,” said [email protected]

TOOELETOOELETStallions trump Buffalos in

rivalry game See A10

FRONT PAGE A1FRONT PAGE A1

TUESDAY August 28, 2012 A5TOOELE TRANSCRIPT-BULLETIN

A STUDENT’S VIEW

During the summer I spent a lot of time at my Grandma Bev’s house

in Delta. One night when I was there, my Uncle Gale was visit-ing us and we started to talk about wild horses. Uncle Gale was a wild horse specialist for the Bureau of Land Management before he retired, but occasion-ally he’ll still go and check on the horses and their water.

Uncle Gale was telling us all sorts of stories and I mentioned how I would love to see the wild horses in person. Before I knew it, my Grandpa Merv and Uncle Gale were making plans to take me to see the wild horses the next morning. They mentioned I would have to wake up extra early and told me I ought to get to sleep.

When I woke up the next morning, my grandpa had already gone and returned with doughnuts for breakfast and my grandma was making us each sack lunches. Uncle Gale soon picked us up in his truck and then we were on our way to see

the horses.As we drove, Uncle Gale and

Grandpa Merv entertained me with stories about the places we were passing. We passed Uncle Gale’s farm, which was one of the prettiest farms we passed. We also passed a couple of houses, and before long we passed the last house we would see until our drive home. We turned off of the oiled road and drove on a gravel road for a long time. I thought we must have been close, but we turned again, this time onto a road that was so bumpy, I don’t think it is really considered a road.

As we got closer to where the horses were, Uncle Gale pointed out tons of places that used to be small reservoirs where rain water would gather and the animals

could drink. The reservoirs have been dry all year.

Around 10:30 a.m., Uncle Gale quickly pulled over the truck, grabbed his binoculars and pointed straight ahead of us. I couldn’t see anything, even with the binoculars. Thankfully, Grandpa Merv couldn’t see them either. My grandpa told me that Uncle Gale always spots the horses before anyone else. A little bit later Uncle Gale pointed out another band of horses. Again, I couldn’t see them. I thought that he must have been imagining them, but then Grandpa Merv commented on how many there were. I never saw those horses either.

Uncle Gale started the truck again and we drove for a bit before we stopped again. This time I could see the horses with the help of the binoculars. It was a group of six or seven horses. Toward the back of the band, there was a white mare and her colt. I wouldn’t have known the white horse was a mare, but Uncle Gale had seen this band of

horses a couple of times before. He told us they were probably on their way to water and we could easily beat them there and watch them drink.

Uncle Gale started the truck again and turned onto an even bumpier road. Uncle Gale and Grandpa Merv exchanged theo-ries on where the horses could be eating because it has been such a dry year. The two kept talking and pointing at the occa-sional antelope until we made it to the watering hole.

We got out of the truck and Uncle Gale said all we had to do was wait. We ate our sack lunch-es and every couple of minutes Uncle Gale would use his bin-oculars to see how much farther the horses had to come.

Before the horses made it to the watering hole, we saw a couple of cows and their calves come to drink. Two stallions, a gray one and a black one, came and drank, too. The horses didn’t seem to mind sharing the water-ing hole with the cows. The two stallions were the first horses we

were able to see up close.After the two horses left,

another large group came. This was a band of nine horses, including a colt. Uncle Gale said this band was unusual and wouldn’t stay together for very long. Eight of the nine horses were stallions and only one of them was a mare. Uncle Gale said it’s usually the other way around, with mostly mares and one stallion. The colt was so cute. He trotted along next to his mother, but once he was close to the water, he ran right into the middle of the watering hole, splashing the other horses and scaring away some cows. The colt was probably the highlight of my whole wild horse adven-ture, other than spending the day with my Uncle Gale and Grandpa Merv.

Last week, staff writer Rachel Madison wrote an article about how the BLM is planning on removing hundreds of wild horses from Tooele County because there isn’t enough feed for them because of the

wildfires. I read that the BLM is thinking about taking the horses to Delta. It’s sad that the horses are at risk of suffering from star-vation and dehydration, but the hundreds of horses will be more than OK if they end up in Delta, because then my Uncle Gale can check up on them every once in awhile.

Kristine is a senior at Tooele High School.

Wild horse adventure a different side of Tooele County Kristine Johnson

CORRESPONDENTKristine

county surveyor Doug Kinsman, and 22 sheriff’s office employees have also been given termina-tion notices, according to Doug Hogan, Tooele County attorney.

The economic development department was created in 2008 with Nicole Cline as director. Cline was working as the county planner at the time the depart-ment was created and had also been working on economic development since 2002.

At the time of the department’s formation, county commission-ers said splitting the depart-ment from the planning division would allow both departments to function more effectively.

Now the economic develop-ment department is being elimi-nated because it is not a function of county government required by state law, Clegg said.

“The commissioners will pick up the duties of economic devel-opment,” said Clegg. “Economic development is important but it not a department we are required by law to have.”

The $25 million new jail, with a capacity of 250 inmates, was budgeted to bring in $2.3 mil-lion this year by contracting to take in out-of-county inmates, largely from the U.S. Marshal's Service and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

To date, the county has seen less than $50,000 in rev-enue from contracted inmates, according to Hogan.

“The jail was staffed as if it would be at capacity,” said Hogan. “Now the sheriff will have to lay off some of that staff.”

The commissioners cut the sheriff’s office budget by $800,000 for the remainder of the year, according to Tooele County Sheriff Frank Park.

“That $800,000 cut translates into losing 20 people and the commissioners cut out a two-man hazmat team,” said Park.

Jail staff were hired based on the amount of people needed to run the new facility, not on the amount of prisoners at the facility. The inmate population fluctuates, with the current pop-ulation housed at the jail at 127,

according to Park.The new jail was built to

be compliant with the federal Prison Rape Elimination act that requires total separation of males and females, with males guarding males and females guarding females, said Park.

“That alone, the separation by sex, required more staff than the old jail,” said Park. “Compliance with new regula-tions combined with the old jail’s inadequate size we needed a new facility.”

Not all of the 20 employees that will be cut will come from the jail, said Park. Every division will be examined to see where employees can be trimmed.

“The layoffs will leave some holes,” said Park. “The hazmat team also performed duties of

the SWAT team and was the liaison with Search and Rescue. The county will now also have to have some kind of contract or memorandum with another agency to provide hazmat clean-up in the unincorporated areas of the county.”

Park is working with the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s office, which is hiring, to find positions for some of his laid off staff.

Hogan said some of the bud-get reduction for the jail would be just adjusting numbers to fit reality, as some expenses for the jail, such as medical expenses, were not incurred because the jail has not operated at capac-ity.

Overall, the biggest drop in county revenues has come from mitigation fees.

Fees paid by EnergySolutions, Clean Harbors — for both its Grassy Mountain and Aragonite facilities — Deseret Chemical Depot operator URS, and land-fill operator Republic Services were conservatively budgeted at $5.7 million, compared to $7.1 million actually collected in 2011.

Actual mitigation fees received to date are $2.5 million.

“EnergySolutions is the big-gest payer of mitigation fees and their activity at Clive is down this year,” said Hogan.

In a conference call on EnergySolutions’ 2012 second-quarter earnings, Gregory Wood, EnergySolutions chief financial officer reported that revenue for their logistics, processing and disposal segment was down by $13 million compared to sec-ond-quarter 2011 revenue due to a lower amount of govern-ment waste being disposed of at Clive as federal stimulus fund-ing dropped off.

Mitigation fees have always been a roller coaster ride for the county, peaking at $9.1 million in 2007 and then dipping to a low of $6.4 million in 2008. Now it appears those fees will fall to an all-time low this year.

Mitigation fees were not always such a large part of the county’s operating budget, said Jensen.

“I don’t feel that mitigation fees should be such a large part of the county’s budget, but it is something that started a long time ago,” said Jensen. “The county gradually became more reliant on mitigation fees as they grew and the county also grew to provide more services and personnel.”

The county is probably not done cutting yet, since eliminat-ing the economic development department, laying off surveyors, reducing jail staff, and adjusting expense projections will most likely not be enough to add up to the expected $4 million short-fall, Clegg said.

“We are looking at every department for potential cuts,” said Clegg. “There will proba-bly be more cuts announced as we review operations in every department.”[email protected]

County continued from page A1

Maegan Burr

The Tooele County Economic Development and Business Resource office sits empty Monday afternoon. The department will be eliminated in September due to budget cuts at the county.

DOING ROAD WORK

Maegan Burr

Arrow Landscape Construction workers Antionio Campuzano

and Ray Melendez work on the road

leading into the Tooele City Cemetery

Tuesday morning.

A5

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TUESDAY September 4, 2012 www.TooeleTranscript.com Vol. 119 No. 27 50¢

INSIDE

Wednesday

Thursday


SINCE 1894

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Dude, Grinders is back.Six weeks after the downtown Tooele

skate shop closed its doors amid con-troversial circumstances, it reopened on Aug. 13. Owner Chris Escobedo, closed suddenly after his California-based landlord told him he need to make way so Tooele County could pur-chase the building. The county had planned to use the building to expand

its relief services operation — a plan that is now on hold due to public opposition and the county’s financial problems.

“I was out of town on vacation when a friend called me up and said that the plan for the county to buy the building was off,” said Escobedo. “I checked with the building owner and he said that the building had not sold but that he was still trying to sell it.”

Escobedo has a lease for the build-ing that doesn’t expire until the end

of December from building owner Paul Hatch, a property investor from Glendora, Calif.

Hatch said he has no immediate plans for the building. He bought the property in April 2012 as an invest-ment.

Escobedo moved into the building — known as the Sweat Fitness build-ing from its previous owner — from his shop across Main Street in January

Displaced skate shop jumps back into former Sweat Fitness building

See SKATE page A6

by Rachel Madison

STAFF WRITER

The Tooele County Health Department recently received a $268,000 federal grant to aid in its goal of vaccinating at least 50 percent of the school children in the county against the flu.

The grant was awarded to the Utah Immunization Program from the fed-eral Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention. Four health districts in Utah, including the Utah County Health Department, Davis County Health Department, Bear River Health District and the Tooele County Health Department, helped to apply for the grant. Because each health department assisted in writing for the 18-month, $1.5 million grant, each was awarded a different sum of money to help with different projects they were working on.

The Tooele County Health Department received $268,000 to assist its efforts in providing flu shots for school personnel and children in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade at all schools in the Tooele County School District and at Excelsior Academy, a charter school in Erda. Bucky Whitehouse, community services supervisor for the health department,

Health department moves toward 50 percent school vaccination rate

See VACCINE page A5


Good

Good

Good

RIVERS AND LAKES 24-hour

Stage Change

Great Salt Lake Elevation

In feet as of 7 a.m. Monday

Vernon Creek at Vernon 1.06 noneSouth Willow Creek at Grantsville 1.40 none

at Saltair Boat Harbor 4195.97

Tu W Th F Sa Su M

Pollen Index

Source: Intermountain Allergy & Asthma

HighModerate

LowAbsent

The Sun Rise Set

The Moon Rise Set

UV INDEX


ALMANACTemperatures


Daily Temperatures


UTAH WEATHER


Salt Lake City

Ogden

Logan

Provo

Vernal

Price

Tooele

Nephi

Manti

Green River

RichfieldMoab


Blanding

BeaverHanksville

Delta

GrouseCreek

Roosevelt

Clive

Rush Valley

Wendover

Gold Hill

Vernon

Ophir

Grantsville

Tooele

Lake Point

Bauer

Stockton

Pine Canyon

Stansbury ParkErda

Knolls

Ibapah

Dugway

High Low

Eureka


Wednesday 10:24 p.m. 12:09 p.m.Thursday 11:03 p.m. 1:06 p.m.Friday 11:46 p.m. 1:59 p.m.Saturday none 2:50 p.m.Sunday 12:35 a.m. 3:36 p.m.Monday 1:28 a.m. 4:18 p.m.Tuesday 2:26 a.m. 4:57 p.m.


88/62

86/59

85/62

84/60

83/58

78/53

86/63

86/61

83/63

86/61

87/59

75/54

79/55

84/6388/63

89/63

88/58

85/60

86/65

88/62

85/46

86/58

83/51

85/57

86/61

86/56

86/55

92/59

87/5993/67

83/5695/72 88/57

85/60

84/5895/64

90/62

84/50

85/53

Last New First Full

Sep 8 Sep 15 Sep 22 Sep 29




Partly sunny

86 61

Partly sunny

85 57

Sunny

83 56

Plenty of sunshine

86 58

A thunderstorm in spots in the afternoon

83

Very warm with times of clouds and sun

88 62 60

Mostly cloudy and cooler with t-storms





Statistics for the week ending Sept. 3.

WEATHER


Operation Christmas Child looking for donations for needy kidsSee A4

Grantsville native dances through EcuadorSee B1

BULLETIN BOARD A8

CLASSIFIEDS B5

HOMETOWN B1

OBITUARIES A6

OPEN FORUM A4

SPORTS A9

Maegan Burr

The Foundation for a Better Life director of photography Reed Smoot films a scene with Clarence Davis, playing an African tribesman, Friday in Bauer. See story on A3.

AFRICA COMES TO BAUER

TuesdayAIR QUALITY

County officials say plan to expand relief services department is on hold

Maegan Burr

Tooele County Emergency Management computer systems administrator Stephen Smith works on the Emergency Operation Center’s server system Tuesday morning. Smith will keep his job with the county despite the closure of the Emergency Management Department.

Maegan Burr

Grinders owner Chris Escobedo moves a ladder in his store in Tooele Tuesday morning. Grinders has reopened after a deal to sell the building Escobedo rents fell through with Tooele County.

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Staff layoffs and department reor-ganizations continued at the Tooele County building last week as county commissioners attempted to shore up a budget facing a $4 million shortfall.

“I was hoping this would be the last round of cuts, but we may have some more coming once we look at where things are following these reduc-

tions,” said Jerry Hurst, Tooele County Commissioner. “The last two weeks have just been awful. I hope I never have to do something like this again.”

Last week, Vern Loveless, who has served as the Tooele County Engineer since December 2007, was notified that his position will be eliminated as of the end of September.

“We aren’t legally required to have an engineer,” said Hurst, adding the county doesn’t currently have an engi-

neer on staff. “We will contract out for engineering services.”

Kerry Beutler, county planner, will lead the nine-employee engineering department, which includes planning, zoning, building and code enforcement functions, according to Hurst.

“I guess we’ll have to rename the department because it doesn’t have an

Cuts continue at countyEngineering, emergency management are latest departments eliminated

See CUTS page A5

BTOOELEOOELETOOELET

Stallions trample Rabbits

in home-turf victory See A9

by Rachel Madison

STAFF WRITER

Back-to-school jitters may be long gone for most Tooele County chil-dren, but for some the transition into school is more trying.

Children of all ages have differ-ent anxieties when it comes to going to school for the first time or going back to school after a long summer. Younger children experience separa-tion anxiety from their parents, while older children have more anxiety about the friends they have and if

they can find their classes. Some chil-dren adjust quickly to these changes, but for others, their anxieties can take a toll.

“The reality is the kids all go back to school and they’re happy to be back, so we don’t see them coming in [to Valley Mental Health],” said Loren Mitchell, therapist and children’s team leader for VMH. “But I think one of the most common issues is that there’s a little bit of a honeymoon period for a lot of kids and then with

Back-to-school blues are beatableExperts say many resources exist to help stu-dents with difficult seasonal adjustments

See BLUES page A3


TUESDAY September 4, 2012 TOOELE TRANSCRIPT-BULLETIN

by Siera GomezCORRESPONDENT

Presidential campaigns and the upcoming election may be on the minds of most Americans, but us teens are facing a far more pressing issue: the death of the fry line.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released new guidelines restricting the type of food that can be served in public school. You might have heard of this policy decision reported as, “There are no more fries in the lunch line!”

True, these guidelines have inspired some other changes in

the lunchroom, including the new “one cup of fruit or veg-etables is mandatory” policy. However, no one is terribly out-raged about that, since there is a “fruit drop” box for unwanted items just after the line ends.

However, there is no substi-tute for the beloved fries that have been cut suddenly from the school’s provided meals —

and fury is brewing. I will admit that cutting out

the daily serving of french fries in lunches is probably a good idea. Where better to improve nutrition than at a place where some children eat five days a week?

However, the idea that there are no french fries, period, strikes me as rather depressing. Let me clarify. A daily dosage of french fries, which is what the rules have been previously, is not necessary or healthy for any child. For those who argue that no one gets fries every day, I beg to differ. It had actually become quite a common occurrence for

students to line up at the “fry line” every day. It certainly was the longest line.

However, there are four lunch lines on any given day offer-ing a variety of foods. One of those lunch lines, the main line, changes daily. Would it hon-estly be damaging to have a “fry day” maybe once a month or once a week? Not to men-tion, Stansbury High School, as most public schools do, has an a la carte line that serves such things as breadsticks, cinnamon rolls, ice cream items, cookies and drinks. Would the option of french fries be so damaging there?

Why is incorporating french fries into school lunches such a big deal, you might wonder? They are fatty, unnecessary and unhealthy in a society that is already suffering major prob-lems in heart disease, diabetes and obesity rates. The only thing I have to say to that is though it may sound silly, just like a chocolate bar or an ice cream cone can make your day, so can french fries at school. I have heard some argue that to them, french fries were the only good part of the school day.

Though it may be an unrea-sonable view, banning french fries altogether has served to

make a very resentful student body. Who can support educa-tion when the french fries are gone?

I do not disagree that an entire serving (or three) of french fries every day was something that needed to end at public schools. However, cutting out fries completely is not the answer. Moderation is key. Cut down the portion sizes, the days to serve fries, or put them in the a la carte line. But for heaven’s sake, government, don’t make us quit cold turkey.

Siera Gomez is a senior at Stansbury High School.

Government risks student revolt after taking french fries off the menu

Siera GomezCORRESPONDENT

A STUDENT’S VIEW

said the money will specifically be used to create a program that makes it easy for each students’ insurance to be billed when they get the vaccination.

This program will be more ben-eficial than past programs because it will be more convenient for working parents who don’t have time to take their children to a doctor’s office to get vaccinated, and being able to bill third-party payers will help to sustain the pro-gram for years to come, not just until the grant money runs out, according to Sherrie Ahlstrom, family and school health supervi-sor for the health department.

“The system being created will be taken into schools and have the capacity to bill insurance carriers right there, as well as retrieve and input information on state data-bases related to immunizations,” Whitehouse said. “It’s one of the first type of projects we’ve done where all that capability goes into the school to handle all different people simultaneously.”

Ahlstrom said this will be a good way for the health depart-ment to look at the feasibility and sustainability of billing insurance at schools while giving vaccina-tions.

“We want to know, is it pos-sible for this to work well?” she said. “And is this project a good method? Any health department could participate in applying for the grant, so we did because we feel like kids are an important population to reach. We thought with added funding we could really enhance the program and make it a successful one for our community.”

Myron Bateman, health depart-ment director, said because the

grant is an 18-month grant, the health department will have two years to get everything running smoothly.

“We have two years to put things online,” Bateman said. “Any revenue we collect from giv-ing the vaccinations will be put back into the program. We don’t really make any money off the program because of the cost of vaccines though.”

Mobile flu clinics, which the health department has been using since 2009, will start on Oct. 8 and run for three weeks or until all the schools in the county have been visited. Last year, 22 percent of the approximately 13,695 children were vaccinated. This year, the goal is to vaccinate 50 percent of the approximately 14,000 children in the county.

“We want to let citizens know, especially those with children in school, about the project and how important it is for us to have as many kids as possible get flu shots at schools this year,” Whitehouse said.

The two mobile clinics, which are walk-in trailers attached to department vehicles, will have basic computer equipment installed in them that allows nurs-es to connect to the electronic databases they will need to con-nect to provide the insurance bill-ing option.

“We want to get as many indi-viduals as possible to use our school-based clinic in order to help us test out the system we’ve been given the grant to test out,” Whitehouse said.

Bateman said having the mobile clinics come around to the schools increases the chances of children getting vaccinated because it makes it easier for working par-ents to sign their children up and kids respond to getting vaccinated better when their parents aren’t around.

Ahlstrom said in order to receive a flu vaccination, a person has to have a child or sibling attending a Tooele County school. Children who don’t have insurance can receive the flu vaccination for $15.

If they have insurance, she said there are several insurance car-riers the health department can bill. If they have an insurance that is not contracted with the health department, they can pay $20 for the vaccine and they will receive a receipt they can send in to their insurance company for possible reimbursement.

Both flu shots and flu mist will be offered. The vaccine is not required, but is highly recom-mended.

Louise Ekenstam, immuniza-tion coordinator for the health department, said both the shot and the mist are equally effective. Children will all be given the mist vaccination, unless a question-naire filled out by their parents states otherwise.

“The flu mist has shown to be extremely effective in chil-dren because it’s not invasive,” Ekenstam said. “Kids are more willing to sit down and let us give them the vaccine.”

After kids receive the vaccine, it will take two weeks before it goes into effect. If children are receiv-ing their first-ever flu vaccination, then they will require a second dose. The health department will come back to the schools a sec-ond time to administer the sec-ond dose to those students.

Ekenstam said this year the health department wants to focus on giving young, healthy people the flu vaccination because chil-dren are contagious for one to two days before they have flu symp-toms.

“People know they need to get a flu shot, that’s not a big deal,” she said. “But a lot of parents think if their children are healthy and they never get sick, why should they get a shot? That’s a great way to think, but people need to understand that by being vaccinated, they are keeping people around them who

may easily get the flu and aren’t as immune to it safe.”

For more information on the mobile clinics, parents can visit the Tooele County Health Department’s website at tooele-health.org. This year, for the first time, parents can pay for the vac-cine online, print and fill out the paperwork online, and use QR codes — small, black and white boxes people can take a photo of with their smartphone to access certain websites — on posters hung in the schools to access the health department’s flu informa-tion web [email protected]

Vaccine continued from page A1

file / Sue Butterfield

Miriam Batemen gives Guy Anderson a flu shot Saturday at the Tooele County Diabetes Coalition carnival at Stansbury High School in this December 2011 file photo.

engineer anymore,” said Hurst.The engineering department’s

2012 budget was $934,965.The six-employee emergency

management department will also cease to exist as a separate department and become part of the county health department, Hurst said.

The health department already has an emergency pre-paredness function, and the emergency operations staff will be reduced by one and a half positions at the health depart-ment.

Emergency management director Kari Sagers, who has put in 28 years working with Tooele County, will retire.

Stephen Smith, who was the computer systems adminis-trator for emergency manage-ment, will split his time between emergency operations and the county’s information technol-ogy department to replace a full-time IT staff member who voluntarily left.

The county’s 2012 budget contains a line item for $714,216 in emergency management assistance. The purpose and function of the county’s $6 mil-lion Emergency Operations Center will remain unchanged. Built in 2009 with $2.5 million in county funds, $2 million from CSEPP funds, and $1.5 million in other grant money, the build-ing houses the emergency oper-ations staff and county dispatch center, and is designed to be the command center for local emergencies.

The layoffs have also hit the parks and recreation depart-ment.

Two employees voluntarily left the Benson Grist Mill staff and won’t be replaced, and

one full-time position and two part-time positions for complex workers at Deseret Peak will be cut. An additional two full-time complex workers at Deseret Peak have left work recently and won’t be replaced, Hurst said.

Hurst said commissioners knew three years ago as they saw revenue shrink during the recession, and with CSEPP funding and mitigation fees from hazardous waste decreas-ing as Deseret Chemical Depot prepared to close, that times would get tough. A decline of CSEPP revenue from $2.8 mil-lion to $1.2 million, and a drop in mitigation fees from the DCD from $500,00 to $125,000 were included in the 2012 budget.

“We started three years ago with a soft hiring freeze, then we stopped all new equipment purchases,” said Hurst. “And then we went to a hard hiring freeze.”

Although recent cuts have only affected a few county departments, Hurst said that all departments have felt the effect of lower revenue and staff reductions.

“With our hiring freeze, all departments have seen a reduc-tion in staff,” said Hurst. “They have all lost employees either through retirement or people leaving voluntarily that have not been replaced.”

The budget cuts of the last two weeks were precipitated by revenue for federal prisoners at the new county jail that did not materialize and an unexpected drop in mitigation fees, primar-ily at EnergySolutions’ Clive operations, Hurst said.

Revenue from jail fees has not reached last year’s $149,000, but the 2012 budget projection for jail fee revenue was $2.3 million. Mitigation fees for operations in Tooele County’s West Desert, including EnergySolutions,

were budgeted for $5.7 million but have only reached only $2.2 million.

“We knew that CSEPP was ending and that the mitigation fees from the DCD would be ending, but we did not expect that mitigation fees from the West Desert would be down by half,” said Hurst.

The county has used miti-gation fees to cover operating expenses for years, according to Hurst. While those fees do fluc-tuate, he insists that the county is conservative when estimating mitigation fees when the county budget is prepared.

Hurst and his fellow commis-sioners remain committed to balancing the budget without raising taxes.

“We held a hearing last year on a proposed tax for municipal type services,” said Hurst. “The members of the public at the meeting felt very strongly that they would rather see reduced services than increased taxes, and we heard that.”

In addition to last week’s bud-get cuts, two weeks ago com-missioners announced budget cuts that included eliminating the three-employee economic development department, lay-ing off all surveyors other than elected county surveyor Doug Kinsman, and eliminating 22 positions in the sheriff’s [email protected]

Cuts continued from page A1

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INSIDE


Good

Good

Good

AIR QUALITYThursday

Friday

Saturday


www.TooeleTranscript.com Vol. 119 No. 44 50¢

SNOWPACKSnow Water Equivalent as of 12 a.m. Wednesday

Rocky Basin Mining VernonSettlement Fork Creek

Source: Utah Natural Resources Conservation Services

Tooele Valley-Vernon Creek Basin

Snowcover 0.3 1.5 0.2Average 0.3 0.1 0.1Percent of average 100% 1500% 200%

UV INDEX

Snowfall (in inches)

Last Month Season Week to date to date

The Sun Rise Set

The Moon Rise Set

UV INDEX


ALMANACTemperatures


Daily Temperatures


UTAH WEATHER


Salt Lake City

Ogden

Logan

Provo

Vernal

Price

Tooele

Nephi

Manti

Green River

RichfieldMoab


Blanding

BeaverHanksville

Delta

GrouseCreek

Roosevelt

Clive

Rush Valley

Wendover

Gold Hill

Vernon

Ophir

Grantsville

Tooele

Lake Point

Bauer

Stockton

Pine Canyon

Stansbury ParkErda

Knolls

Ibapah

Dugway

High Low

Eureka

Friday 8:01 a.m. 6:24 p.m.Saturday 8:02 a.m. 6:23 p.m.Sunday 7:03 a.m. 5:22 p.m.Monday 7:04 a.m. 5:21 p.m.Tuesday 7:05 a.m. 5:20 p.m.Wednesday 7:06 a.m. 5:19 p.m.Thursday 7:08 a.m. 5:18 p.m.

Friday 9:13 p.m. 11:25 a.m.Saturday 10:07 p.m. 12:09 p.m.Sunday 10:03 p.m. 11:49 a.m.Monday 11:02 p.m. 12:26 p.m.Tuesday none 12:59 p.m.Wednesday 12:02 a.m. 1:30 p.m.Thursday 1:05 a.m. 2:01 p.m.


60/36

59/34

54/33

57/32

58/33

50/33

60/36

59/37

58/37

59/36

59/34

48/32

53/34

59/3661/38

60/35

61/29

60/34

58/36

57/34

57/25

57/33

58/30

61/33

59/37

62/34

62/31

67/35

62/3469/41

62/2871/48 68/36

60/38

62/3366/36

65/35

56/26

62/34

Last New First Full

Nov 6 Nov 13 Nov 20 Nov 28

Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu

Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed

FRIDAY SATURDAY SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY

Times of clouds and sun

59 37

Plenty of sunshine

61 29

Sunshine and patchy clouds

57 32

Mostly sunny

58 34

Mostly sunny

60

Plenty of sun

59 39 40

Clouds and sunshine


Shown is Friday’s weather. Temperatures are Friday night’s lows and Friday’s

highs.


Statistics for the week ending Oct. 31.

Creative costumes from downtown’s

massive trick or treat See B1

WEATHER


Cowboys football was filled with ups and downs See B10

Stansbury drama tackles Shakespeare in upcoming play See A6

BULLETIN BOARD B6

CLASSIFIEDS C6

HOMETOWN B1

OBITUARIES A8

KID SCOOP C8

SPORTS B10

Maegan Burr

Danny Adams drives an ATV on a side-wheelie while Tooele County contract surveyor Taylor Hathcock follows him with milage equipment Tuesday afternoon on Stansbury Island while attempting to break a world record. Adams broke the world record by driving on two wheels for 17 miles.

THURSDAY November 1, 2012

by Lisa Christensen

STAFF WRITER

At the end of the day Tuesday, as the sun fell behind the horizon and the light began to fade on Stansbury Island, Danny Adams stood covered with splatters of white, alkaline mud and cele-brated his new world record.

Adams broke the record for driving a four-wheeled ATV far-ther on two wheels than ever before: 17.88 miles. The 21-year-old drove for an hour and a half

in a side-wheelie, breaking the previous record by three miles.

“It feels pretty good,” he said. “I’ve been wanting this for a long time.”

Adams’ accomplishment is subject to verification by Guinness World Records, and he has to submit several forms of documentation, including video of the event, still photos and sworn statements from a member of the Tooele County Surveyor’s Department and a non-family witness. After the

materials are submitted, Adams will have to wait six to eight weeks to hear whether his claim has been accepted.

The surveyor was present to officially document Adams’ mile-age by GPS, and followed directly behind him on a four-wheeler. After Adams had gone a few miles on his first attempt, the run had to be restarted because the track-ing equipment was not working correctly. Adams also had to start over one other time because dur-ing a turn he tipped back over to

four wheels.The Grantsville man said he

learned how to drive on a side-wheelie about 10 years ago from his older brother, but did not set out to break this record until a few weeks ago, when he found a listing of it online. The record was set at Miller Motorsports Park in November 2008 by Travis Pastrana, of Maryland, who drove 13.85 miles around the track as part of an MTV show,

Grantsville ATV rider goes wheels up, entering world record books

SEE RECORD PAGE A3 ➤

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Although early voter turnout in Tooele County has been sluggish this year compared to the last presidential election, there are reasons to believe participation could still surge as Election Day approaches, according to Tooele County Clerk Marilyn Gillette.

For example, the clerk’s office has already mailed out 2,188 absentee ballots to county voters compared to only 915 mailed out to voters in 2008.

“I credit part of the increase to the county Republican Party that has been encouraging people to request absentee ballots so they can vote by mail,” said Gillette.

The Tooele County Republican Party made a concerted effort to sign people up to vote-by-mail as a way of increasing voter turnout, according to Chris Sloan, Tooele County Republican Party chairman. Republicans’ efforts included pushing vote-by-mail applications at caucus meetings, booths at pubic events, and through precinct chairs going door-to-door in their precinct, Sloan said.

Yesterday morning, 135 people, mostly seniors, voted early at

Early voting down but turnout could still turn upwards

SEE VOTING PAGE A10 ➤

by Lisa Christensen

STAFF WRITER

Tooele police are looking for a man they say put three people in the hospital in two separate attacks on Halloween night.

“It’s still under investigation. We are looking for an active suspect,” said Lt. Adrian Day of the Tooele City Police Department. “We’re seeking him for two cases last night.”

Lt. Paul Wimmer of the Tooele City Police Department said victims and witnesses identi-fied 19-year-old Gabriel Mascarenas, of Tooele, as being involved in the two separate assaults. In the first, at about 9 p.m. at the Tooele City Cemetery, Mascarenas allegedly choked his 17-year-old girlfriend until she passed out. She was transported to Mountain West Medical Center for treatment. By the time police responded to the scene, Mascarenas was gone, Wimmer said, and police began hunting for him.

Then, at about 2 a.m., police were dispatched to a house near downtown Tooele regarding a fight in progress. Wimmer said according to statements from people attending a Halloween party at the house, Mascarenas arrived at the party

Tooele man hurts three in separate Halloween attacks

SEE ATTACKS PAGE A11 ➤

Maegan Burr

Catholic Church Salt Lake City Diocese Bishop John C. Wester sprinkles water onto a crowd while he blesses second phase of the St. Marguerite Catholic School in Tooele Tuesday afternoon.

Maegan Burr

Joel Peterson, Larry Milburn and Marsha Milburn vote at the Grantsville Fire Station Thursday morning. Though early voting is down compared to the last presidential election, absentee ballots increased.

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

If this year’s presidential contest is all about the economy, it seems this year’s county commission race is all about the budget.

The county commission candidate that wins the election will take office in January and immediately be faced with a budget for 2013 that was approved in December. At that point, they’ll hope to not be facing another year of fiscal tumult like 2012.

This year’s budget was originally 8.4 per-cent higher than the 2011 county budget.

Tooele County Auditor Mike Jensen explained in December 2011 when the bud-get was approved that the increase was due to $2 million in expenses for the new jail to be offset by a corresponding increase in jail fee revenue, a $1.3 million increase in jet fuel sales at the Wendover airport, and a 1.5 percent cost of living salary increase for county employees — the first such increase in three years.

By the end of August, the county build-ing was reeling as commissioners called long-time county employees to their offic-

Commission candidates differ on budget issues

SEE COMMISSION PAGE A11 ➤

BLESSING NEW SCHOOL

George Young

Colleen Johnson

Shawn Milne

SPECIAL ELECTION ISSUE NEXT WENDESDAY

MORNINGin place of Tuesday’s Issue


THURSDAY November 1, 2012 TOOELE TRANSCRIPT-BULLETIN

Much as “Toy Story” and “Monsters, Inc.” revealed the secret lives

of toys and monsters, respec-tively, “Wreck-It Ralph” shows us a behind-the-screens look at char-acters in arcade games.

For the past 30 years, Wreck-It Ralph (voiced by John C. Reilly), a 9-foot-tall, 643-pound behemoth of a man, has destroyed a building — game in and game out — so that the eponymous hero of his game, Fix-It Felix, could come and repair all of the damage with his magical hammer, and thus save the residents of the building and defeat the evil Ralph’s dastardly plans.

But Ralph is tired of being the bad guy, and he’s sick of being overshadowed by Felix (voiced by “30 Rock’s” Jack McBrayer). All Ralph wants to be is a hero, just once, and to be accepted by the other characters in his game.

He gets his chance when he finds out the new game in the arcade, “Hero’s Duty,” has an actual hero’s medal that a player can get just by reaching the top of the building. Swiping one soldier’s armor and gear, he sneaks into the game, and while he fails at first, he does succeed in getting the medal — and then accidentally unleash-es a force of vicious, prolific space bugs.

Trying to escape the psybugs, he stumbles into a spaceship and ends up flying out of “Hero’s

Duty” and into the Candy Land-esq racing game “Sugar Rush,” where he inadvertently unleashes a stowaway bug into the pancreas-busting environment and meets Vanellope von Schweetz, a cute but kind of bratty character of the game.

Vanellope (voiced by Sarah Silverman) steals Ralph’s hard-earned medal so she can enter an after-hours race to determine who will be able to be chosen during the next day’s play. She has been ostracized by her fellow racers and the land’s ruler, King Candy (voiced by Firefly’s Alan Tudyk), for being a “glitch” in the game. As Ralph and Vanellope try to enable her to compete and win the race, so she can get Ralph’s medal back, they find everything is not as it seems.

Meanwhile, Felix has gone looking for Ralph, since the absence of the game’s villain has put it in jeopardy of being shut down. He tracks him down as far as “Hero’s Duty,” where the tough-as-nails commander, Sgt. Calhoun (voiced by Jane Lynch), goes with him so she can destroy the bug that stowed away with him while Felix tries to fix everything Ralph

has wrecked.The film is a little slow to get

going, and for better or worse spends most of its time in “Sugar Rush” (because Vanellope, as a glitch, cannot travel to other games), but is a fun ride nonethe-less, especially for anyone who has played video games at virtu-ally any point. There are a lot of nods to games past and present — the orange ghost (Clyde) from “Pac-Man,” Dr. Eggman from “Sonic the Hedgehog” and Bowser from “Mario” are among the other video-game villains at the Bad-Anon support group Ralph attends, while “Sonic,” “Q*Bert,” “Frogger,” “Pac-Man” and others are also part of this world.

There is also a bit of commen-tary on the way video games have changed. Besides a montage of how the arcade has changed in the last 30 years, when dodging gunfire in “Hero’s Duty” Felix says what most parents have probably thought: “When did video games get so violent? It’s scary out here!”

The relationship between Ralph and Vanellope quickly morphs into a kind of brother-sister dynamic, and they clearly play off each other well. Unfortunately, most of their banter and jokes between each other stop at that oh-so-sophisticated fart joke level, but for them it kind of works. Felix and Calhoun are complete opposites, but form a friendship for the purpose of their respective

missions and end up in a not-altogether-unexpected place in the end.

The whole movie is stuffed with video game references and finely-detailed graphics, and while it would be good in either 2-D or 3-D, the 3-D helps pull out some of those background elements (just don’t opt for it if you have a tendency to get nauseous in 3-D movies, since this is one of the move-ier ones).

“Wreck-It Ralph” isn’t a Pixar film, and it lacks that final polish that those movies seem to have, but it’s close. Pixar Animation Studios is credited with helping

with the animation, and John Lassiter, who has been the execu-tive producer on every Pixar pro-duction, is also the executive pro-ducer here. And, like Pixar pieces, a short film — which is adorable, and also produced by Lassiter — precedes the main event.

In the end, “Ralph” shows influ-ences from past films, but comes into its own as a tribute to that common, binding medium of modern generations: video games.of inclusive camera shots, are a nice escape from the four frozen months we have to look forward to.

In no way is this film an Oscar

contender, but it’s not really trying to be. What it does try to be, and what it is, is a fun, surprisingly clean romp (though some of the fight sequences seem a bit intense for being PG) that manages to be disarmingly charming and uplift-ing. It may not be a knockout, but it’s definitely worth its time.

‘Wreck-It Ralph’ makes good fun out of video game nostalgia

A11

FLICK PICKS

FLICK AT A GLANCEGrade: B+Time: 92 minutesOpens Friday

Lisa ChristensenSTAFF WRITER

Li

but the homeowner, a 36-year-old man, had heard about the assault at the cemetery and tried to get Mascarenas to leave. During the ensuing argument, Mascarenas pulled out a sharp, pointed object and stabbed the man three times — twice in the upper torso and once in the leg, Wimmer said. Another man, who was 41 years old, saw that the first man was severely injured and that Mascarenas was using a weapon, and attempted to pull Mascarenas off of the victim, Wimmer said. That’s when the 41-year-old was himself stabbed twice in the back.

When police arrived, Mascarenas had left, Wimmer said. The 41-year-old man was transported to MWMC, and the 36-year-old man’s injuries were severe enough to require being flown to Salt Lake City for treatment. Wimmer said investigators have not had a chance to ask this victim about events Wednesday night, but hope to talk to him later today. The other two victims identified their attacker. None of the victims’ injuries were life-threatening, Wimmer said, but the homeowner’s were very seri-ous.

Wimmer said police have not yet located Mascarenas, but are issuing warrants in case he is found first by police in other areas.

Mascarenas was charged with

assault with substantial bodily injury, a third-degree felony, in September 2011, and pleaded guilty to a class A misdemeanor of the same charge last October. He was sentenced in March to two years of probation and a year in jail, but 260 days of that sentence were suspended and credit was given for time already served for the remaining 75 days. According to court records, he violated the terms of his probation in June and was sentenced to a revocation and reinstatement of his parole, now for three years, as well as 12 days in jail with credit given for 12 days previously [email protected]

Attacks continued from page A1

es to tell them that their jobs would be eliminated. The rea-sons: Mitigation fees were down by nearly one half from the budgeted forecast for 2012 and the $2 million in jail fees never materialized. That left commissioners staring at a pro-spective $4 million gap between expenses and income by the end of the year.

Entire departments and dozens of employees were surprised when they heard the news and found themselves eliminated in an effort to balance the budget.

Republican county commission candidate Shawn Milne has been critical of the decisions made by current commissioners that led them down the road to the current financial crisis.

“The commission could have made more Spartan choices in financing and spending much ear-lier in the economic downturn,” said Milne. “They could have changed their spending patterns and done more with less.”

Milne is particularly critical of the decision in 2008 to bond for $2.3 million to add a convention center on to the indoor rodeo arena at Deseret Peak Complex.

“I don’t agree with the ‘if you build it they will come’ attitude that justified the convention center at a time when the economy was hitting people hard,” said Milne.

Milne also believes the decision to build the $25 million county jail without competitive bidding was a mistake.

“We may have needed a new jail,” said Milne. “But we may not have needed such a large facil-ity and by not taking bids we may have need up paying an additional $2 to $4 million.”

Milne also questions the expense for expanding horseshoe pits at Deseret Peak and wonders why more frugal decisions were not made earlier.

While the county employed a soft-hiring freeze to reduce staff by attrition, Milne said he would have proposed offering early retirement like Tooele City did for its employ-ees in 2009 to help reduce staff.

Colleen Johnson, a two-term incumbent who is trying to retain her seat on the commission through a write-in candidacy, defends the commission’s actions and explains that the county did trim expenses

from the budget.“Some people think we just sat

and watched revenue go down and did nothing until now,” said Johnson. “That is not true. We saw revenue declining and instituted a hiring freeze back in 2009. We also asked department heads to trim 5 to 15 percent from their budgets in travel, training, supplies and other non-personnel items.”

Looking back with hindsight, Johnson said the county could have started laying people off ear-lier instead of hoping for the hir-ing freeze and attrition to reduce expenses.

She defends the new jail as a necessity because the old jail was overcrowded and did not meet new federal regulations, she said. The new jail, with a capacity for 250 prisoners, has a fluctuating popu-lation, but recently the population in the jail was as high as 170 with 50 of those being federal prisoners, which the federal government pays the county to house, said Johnson.

“It took a while but we are begin-ning to see revenue coming in from federal prisoners to help with the budget for the jail,” said Johnson.

Commissioners have been criti-cized for using annually fluctuat-ing mitigation fees to balance the county budget. Johnson counters that mitigation fees are placed in the county’s general fund and state law limits the maximum amount that can be held in the general fund balance from year to year. Also, without using mitigation fees as a rainy-day fund during the economic downturn, the county would have been forced to raise taxes to continue to provide basic services, Johnson said.

Johnson refuses to discuss what areas of the budget she proposes to cut in 2013 to make forecasted revenue meet expenses.

“It is too early in the process to say anything,” said Johnson. “We are still in the discussion phase with department heads.”

George Young, the Democratic candidate for county commission, supports the recent budget cuts made by county commissioners.

“It is a tough decision to make, to let employees go,” said Young. “I have been there in my business experience, and it is hard.”

Young said he believes the com-missioners have done what is nec-essary to balance the budget and bring expenses in line with rev-enue.

However, Young, like Milne, is

critical of earlier spending deci-sions made by the commission.

“I think they could have paid better attention to expenses,” said Young. “The could have been more frugal in their purchasing and building expenses.”

Young agrees that building the new jail without competitive bid-ding was a mistake.

“I know from experience that as a contractor that competitive building always gets you lower costs,” said Young.

Young said if he had been on the commission he would have resisted the temptation to dip into mitigation fees to balance the bud-get, and instead tried to cut costs in every department.

All three candidates do not sup-port adding back departments or staff that were cut in 2012 to the 2013 budget, including the county engineer, economic development, and the hazmat team. They also agree that the 2013 budget does need to include expenses for eco-nomic development, but not a sep-arate stand-alone county depart-ment to perform the function.

Young proposes the creation of a countywide economic devel-opment organization that would have its own board and include the county and all the cities in the county. The organization would present a united effort and vision for economic development in the county and share expenses.

Johnson believes that contract-ing out for economic development services as needed is the best way to go, including dues already being paid to the Economic Development Corporation of Utah.

Milne, who believes the county needs to get far more aggressive in pursuing economic development, is encouraged by Tooele City’s offer to help out with economic devel-opment for the remainder of this year, and is interested in pursuing a dialogue with Tooele City about economic development after the first of the new year.

Voters going to the polls will see Young and Milne’s name on the ballot. To vote for Johnson voters must select “write-in,” which will bring up a keyboard and then they can type in Johnson’s name. Exact spelling is not required.

Early voting locations and times as well as poll locations and times for Election Day can be found at the Tooele County Clerk’s website at www.co.tooele.ut.us/[email protected]

Commission continued from page A1

A11

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The choice is clear, the comparisons are obvious, and the real power is with you!

Elect effective and proven leaders. Those with character, vision and capacity to make a real difference in how we all live each day. Elect those who listen and not tell you what “ they think” is in your best interest and then act behind closed doors .

Want real change, necessary change, change for the betterment of hard working people of our county? Then look at the accomplishment, caring and commitment of the men and women who have demonstrated that capacity. Want to make a difference?

I ASK FOR YOUR VOTE,Johnny O’Donnell

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“Who is representing you?”Elect leaders who will represent your interests and

NOT “Tooele County Power Brokers”Barack ObamaPresident

Scott HowellU.S. Senator

Jay SeegmillerU.S. House, District 2

Peter CookeGovernor

Dee SmithAttorney General

Mark SageAuditor

Chris StoutTreasurer

David SwanUtah House, District 21

Tom NedrebergUtah House, District 68

George YoungTooele County Commission

A11


TUESDAY November 13, 2012 www.TooeleTranscript.com Vol. 119 No. 47 50¢


Good

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AIR QUALITYTuesday

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SINCE 1894

SNOWPACKSnow Water Equivalent as of 12 a.m. Monday

Rocky Basin Mining VernonSettlement Fork Creek

Source: Utah Natural Resources Conservation Services

Tooele Valley-Vernon Creek Basin

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Wednesday 8:08 a.m. 6:04 p.m.Thursday 9:16 a.m. 7:07 p.m.Friday 10:15 a.m. 8:14 p.m.Saturday 11:05 a.m. 9:24 p.m.Sunday 11:48 a.m. 10:33 p.m.Monday 12:24 p.m. 11:40 p.m.Tuesday 12:56 p.m. none


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Statistics for the week ending Nov. 12.

Child’s creativity put to work on “Green Screen Adventures” See A7

Two deaf teachers share their world with sign language See B1

BULLETIN BOARD B4

CLASSIFIEDS B6

HOMETOWN B1

OBITUARIES A6

OPEN FORUM A4

SPORTS A8

Nominations are being accepted for the annu-al Tooele Transcript-Bulletin Christmas Benefit Fund. Each year, readers are asked to nominate a local family they feel is in need of help from the community. From those nominations, the Transcript-Bulletin will choose one fam-ily to profile, encouraging the community to donate cash and gifts to make their holi-days a little merrier.

Last year, Kay Negrette and Dakota Madill, a single mother and her wheelchair-bound son, were given doz-ens of gifts, bags of food and a check for more than $3,800 by the newspaper and its readers.

Each nomination should

include a thorough descrip-tion of the hardships the family is facing, as well as an explanation of how the fund could help them this Christmas.

Please send nominations and contact information by Tuesday, Dec. 4, to the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin Christmas Benefit Fund at P.O. Box 390, Tooele, Utah, 84074, or email nominations to [email protected] with “Benefit Fund” in the subject line.

Benefit FundTranscript-Bulletin

Maegan Burr

Stansbury High School principal Kendal Topham talks about his deployment Monday at the Elk’s Veterans Day Ceremony at the Dow James building.

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

Two months after firing its previous execu-tive director, the Tooele County Chamber of Commerce has refilled the position.

The chamber’s 15-member executive board met last Wednesday and selected Jared Hamner, of Grantsville, to manage the chamber’s day-to-day affairs.

“We were impressed with Jared’s presenta-tion he made to the board,” said Jed Winder, chairman of the chamber’s board of directors. “Jared’s background will help the chamber’s board of directors as we take the Tooele County Chamber of Commerce to the next level.”

Hamner worked for the last 16 years for West Ridge Academy, formerly known as the Utah Boys Ranch, a residential treatment center for teen boys and girls.

A native of Indiana who has a bachelor’s degree in business economics from Indiana University, Hamner originally moved to Utah in 1994 to accept a management position with Federal Express. In 1996, he changed careers and

Chamber of Commerce reloads with experienced executive director

SEE CHAMBER PAGE A6 ➤

Maegan Burr

Daniele Collard looks at hats Tuesday morning at C-A-L Ranch. Retail sales rose this year, and the rise is expected to continue into the holiday

by Rachel Madison

STAFF WRITER

Many stores in Tooele have seen sales trend upward through-out the year, and most are planning on those sales continuing to rise during the holiday season.

Scott Wolfe, assistant store manager at C-A-L Ranch in Tooele, said sales at his store are up about 5 percent from last year.

“At this point we’re only up 5 percent, but during the holidays is when we sell the most stuff, so we expect that percentage to rise,” he said. “At this point in time, our clothing department is heads above the rest of the departments in terms of percentage of what we’ll make off it.”

C-A-L Ranch’s work wear, in particular, has sold well this year, Wolfe said.

“With EC Source coming through installing the power line [Rocky Mountain Power’s Mona-to-Oquirrh transmission line], they’re coming in to buy clothing, and heavy-duty clothing at

Holiday shopping outlook bright for local retailers

SEE RETAILERS PAGE A5 ➤

Maegan Burr

Tooele County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Jared Hamner poses for a photo at the chamber’s office Monday. The Chamber of Commerce board felt that Hamner’s experience directing West Ridge Academy will serve him well as the new executive director.

TALES OF SACRIFICE

by Tim Gillie

STAFF WRITER

For the third time in the last four months Tooele County has announced a reduc-tion of employees as the Tooele County Commission and county department heads scramble to reduce expenses to meet an unforeseen reduction in revenue.

“We really hope and believe this will be the last round of cuts in staff we will have to make for this year,” said Colleen Johnson, Tooele County Commission chairwoman.

“The last few months have been horrible, but we have to reduce expenses to match our income.”

County employees learned of more impending cuts in staff last Thursday after-noon when county commissioners sent an email to all county employees stating that department heads would be holding meet-ings to inform their staff of reduction in force plans for their departments.

This most recent round of layoffs affected 22 people, according to Johnson.

Eliminated through the Thursday after-

noon announcements were eight part-time workers from the Deseret Peak Complex, two part-time information department workers, two part-time people from the maintenance staff, one part-time person from treasurer’s office that had been devoted to collect-ed license renewals for the Department of Motor Vehicles, one full-time person from the IT department, one full-time clerk from the justice court, three secretaries from the county attorney’s office and one full-time

Reduction in revenue leads to third round of layoffs

SEE LAYOFFS PAGE A10 ➤

TOOELETOOELETStansbury

dancer earns all-state for second time

See A9

INSIDE


TUESDAY November 13, 2012TOOELE TRANSCRIPT-BULLETIN

by Rachel Madison

STAFF WRITER

Most Tooele County residents know Myron Bateman as the direc-tor of the Tooele County Health Department, but many don’t know that he wears another hat as a member of the Utah Water Quality Board.

The Utah Water Quality Board’s mission is to guide the develop-ment of water quality policy and regulations within the state. The board meets monthly and is made up of 11 members from across Utah who represent various groups, such as cities and towns, environmental organizations and industry. Bateman represents local health officials and departments, and has been on the board for three years. He was appointed by Gov. Gary Herbert to a four-year term.

“In March they’ll reorganize the board and change the posi-tions up. If the governor decides to have me on the board again, he’ll appoint me to it once again,” Bateman said. “Board members can serve up to eight years.”

Bateman said another one of the biggest changes that will be occurring in March, as the result of new legislation, is that when there is a water quality hearing, instead of the board hearing the issue, the hearing will be set by an admin-istrative judge. An administrative judge is an official who presides at an administrative trial-type hear-ing to resolve a dispute between a government agency and someone affected by a decision of that agen-

cy. Bateman said this change came about at a good time, and used the board’s recent decision to approve the United States’ first commercial oil sands project in Moab as an example of how the new process will save time.

“We just finished a big hearing. The real question was, ‘Does the board need to issue a groundwater permit in that area because the groundwater is 1,500 feet below the surface?’” Bateman said. “But that’s impossible to monitor, so the board said no. Then it went to an administrative hearing and the judge said no. Then it came back to the board last week and we agreed with the judge, and said no once again.”

Last Wednesday’s decision by the Water Quality Board paved the way for a new plant operated by Alberta-based U.S. Oil Sands, to produce an output of thousands of barrels a day of petroleum product from oil sands — loose sand that contains naturally occurring mix-tures of sand, clay and water that is saturated with a dense form of petroleum — by the end of 2013. The company has been working since 2005 to obtain permission from the state to develop oil sands in a 213-acre area in Utah’s Book Cliffs.

Bateman said the Water Quality Board’s 9-2 vote upheld the judge’s previous ruling that the project would pose no threat of ground-water pollution, because the site contains no significant ground-water.

“It was a split vote. The envi-ronmental group representa-

tives voted against it,” Bateman said. “We’ll continue to have staff monitor the water and make sure nothing will be contaminating the aquifer. But it’s just impossible to drill wells 1,500 feet deep to test all the water.”

Environmental groups are con-cerned that groundwater from rain or snowmelt could still become contaminated with the petroleum and other solvents used to extract the oil. Bateman said the board has had a few complaints from state environmental groups.

“We’ve had a few complaints from environmental groups, but not many,” he said. “They aren’t very happy with our decision that came out. But our decision does meet the law and the environ-ment is being protected, in my opinion.”

Bateman said other issues, like oil spills and gas leaks, are always a concern for the board.

“The Division of Water Quality does the monitoring, but our job is to set the policy,” Bateman said. “If there’s a violation due to a leak, it comes to the board and we have to make a decision for what to do next.”

When it comes to Tooele County, Bateman said the main issue he’s seen come across the board’s radar is creating regula-tions for wastewater units at pri-vate homes.

“There are rules and regula-tions we develop for those type of things,” he said. “When it comes to individual septic systems, we try to talk to everyone involved and get other rural areas’ input so

that the rules won’t be a problem in another area. We want to make sure we don’t create a problem or conflict.”

Bateman said the board is also a grant division, which means it can gift money to wastewater districts for project.

“That’s where cities like Tooele and Stansbury Park come for funding if they want to do proj-ects,” Bateman said. “One of the biggest projects we’ve had was for Stockton. They put together a wastewater treatment system but they had a failure at their ponds. I was able to get them a $1 million grant to replace it. They wouldn’t

have had the money to do that. I believe half that system was paid for with grant money.”

The Water Quality Board cur-rently has about $12 million in state and federal grant monies to help municipalities increase their water quality.

Because Bateman is the health officer representative, he also meets with the dozen other local health officers in the state to make sure their voices are heard on the Water Quality Board.

“I meet with them once a month, and work with them in their area if they have a water quality issue,” he said. “We’re in

constant contact.”Bateman said the main reason

why he likes to be on a state board is to look out for Tooele County.

“I want to make sure the rules and regulations don’t impact any of our industries adversely,” he said. “I want to be able to protect the environment for our citizens. Also, when local cities apply for money, I can be their advocate. I feel like it’s a great opportunity to have my peers select me to repre-sent the state. We’ve been pretty progressive in Tooele County and I think this helps.”[email protected]

County health director plays leading role in developing state water quality policies

Maegan Burr

Myron Bateman talks about his role on the Utah Water Quality Board on Oct. 31 at the Tooele County Health Department. In addition to Bateman’s duties as health department director, he also works as a member of the Utah Water Quality Board.

person each from the office of the county treasurer, assessor, recorder and auditor.

Johnson said the commis-sioners met with department heads and asked each depart-ment to come up with a plan to trim their budget by 5 or 15 percent.

“The percentage depended on the department and their overall budget size,” said Johnson. “To ask a department with a small

budget to absorb a 15 percent cut would be difficult. We also considered how much revenue each department produces in determining the amount we asked them to cut.”

Department heads then sat down with the human resources department and decided on a reduction in force plan to meet their targeted budget reduc-tion. The reduction in force plan included consideration for seniority and experience, Johnson said.

Johnson did not know how much the latest rounds of lay-

offs will save the county, but she did know that combined with previous layoffs and bud-get adjustments the county is looking at a combined savings of $3.1 million.

In late August, the county com-missioners were predicting a $4 million shortfall in revenue due to a decrease in mitigation fees primarily from EnergySolutions operations at Clive and jail fee revenue for federal prisoners that never materialized.

With the accumulated $3.1 million in budget reductions, the county budget is back on track with the original budget approved in December 2011 that included using $900,000 of the county’s fund balance to cover 2012’s expenses, according to Johnson.

Announcement of layoffs at the county started in August with 28 people affected, including the elimination of the office of eco-nomic development, all survey-ors other than the elected county surveyor, and 22 positions in the sheriff’s office.

In early September, another round of layoffs was announced as mitigation fees continued to come in lower than budgeted.

The second round of layoffs affected 10 people, including doing away with the county engi-

neer post and the county health department absorbing the func-tions of the emergency manage-ment department.

Johnson said the commis-sioners staged the layoffs as they

watched mitigation fee pay-ments, which come in monthly.

“We had to keep an eye on mitigation fees and other rev-enue,” said Johnson. “We did not know exactly how much we

needed to cut and even at this time the cuts we have made are based on projections of income for the balance of the year.”[email protected]

Layoffs continued from page A1

Maegan Burr

Tooele County Attorney Doug Hogan stands in the county attorney’s office in September. Three secretaries from the attorney’s office were laid off last week during the county’s third round of layoffs.

A10

A10

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Now it can be told: United States government auditors are finally acknowledging that Afghan

security forces will be incapable of defending the nation from the Taliban after Western forces withdraw in 2014.

What does this mean? The Taliban, obviously determined to return to power, will most certainly retake most of the nation. The hapless Afghan army will probably just run away. That’s what it did almost as soon as the Soviet Union, the last foreign occupier, pulled out.

Does that mean the U.S. has simply wasted hundreds of billions of dollars and 2,000 American lives? Not entirely. The war’s original purpose was to wreak revenge on al-Qaeda for the 9/11 attacks, to capture or kill its leadership and destroy its training camps.

That was accomplished. But in short order, al-Qaeda simply moved to other unstable states — Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen, Algeria. The Obama adminis-tration’s long-stated fear is that when Western forces leave Afghanistan, al-Qaeda might return. The Taliban would certainly welcome them back.

My view: Be our guests. It would be far easier to attack them in Afghanistan than in some of their other present locations — particularly Pakistan. Now that al-Qaeda has bases all over the world, why is holding onto Afghanistan so important anyway?

In its new quarterly report, the Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, a federal agency Congress established in 2008, said its audits found that the Afghan army “will likely be incapable of fully sustaining Afghan National Security Forces facili-ties after the transition in 2014.” The army’s record at this is disheartening.

In February, American soldiers turned over a forward operating base west of Kabul to their Afghan counterparts. When they returned in August, the Americans found what they described as a “dismal scene.” The Afghan soldiers hadn’t kept up the gen-erator and were down to three hours of electricity a day. Nearly all of their

vehicles had broken down. They had no working night-vision goggles, so they were largely defenseless after dark.

Stories like that are rife. In one eastern base near the Pakistan border turned over to the Afghans this year, the new tenants allowed the place to run down so severely that they finally aban-doned it and deserted. But they left behind their chickens; they had turned the water-well building into a chicken coop.

If Afghan security forces cannot maintain forward operating bases, they won’t be able to defend most of the country. It’s just that simple.

Not surprisingly, the Pentagon offered only qualified endorsement of the inspector general’s report. “There are problems that do come up, and obstacles,” Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said last Thursday. “But our commitment to the strategy remains sound,” adding that “overall, we think the process is going well.”

That’s a typically over-optimistic military statement. Can you imagine any Pentagon officer ever saying: “This is hopeless. We can’t win.”

Well, Congress doesn’t buy it.“America’s can-do response to the

challenge [in Afghanistan] is admi-rable,” the Congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan reported. “But human and financial resources have limits, and long-term costs are seldom consid-ered when short-term plans are being framed.”

By that, the commissioners were say-ing, U.S. military and civilian agencies almost never take into account whether the host country has the skills and financial resources to maintain a big, expensive project after the U.S. leaves, leading to “vast amounts of spending

with little or no benefit.”Even with the discouraging experi-

ences over the last decade, Congress is continuing to appropriate billions for army “sustainment” — buildings and equipment for Afghan soldiers who are incapable of maintaining them. The total appropriated so far is $9 billion.

In fact, the special inspector general noted, “the U.S. has surpassed its goals in procuring equipment” for the Afghan army, even though the Afghan army and police “do not have the capability to operate and maintain garrisons and training centers built for them.”

The inspector general made the same point that the Congressional com-mission stressed: “Billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer funds will be at risk of going to waste.”

What’s so perplexing is that Congress chartered both the special inspector general’s office and the Congressional commission, whose staff spent three years studying the problem.

Still, Congress is blithely ignoring their conclusions — including this one from its own commissioners: Spending money on a project “is wasteful if it does not fit the cultural, political and economic norms of the society it is meant to serve, or if it cannot be main-tained.”

Joel Brinkley, a professor of journalism at Stanford University, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning former foreign correspondent for the New York Times.

Afghanistan project is tale of money being ill-spent

Commissioners must goOur commissioners have done it

again. They destroyed the hopes and dreams of 22 families (“Reduction in revenue leads to third round of layoffs,” Nov. 13). Great timing too, just before the holidays. I don’t fault them for making necessary decisions to balance the budget, but I do blame them for making bonehead decisions on how to spend taxpayer dollars in the first place. How could they build multi-million dollar facilities, namely the jail, without having solid contracts to ensure the revenue stream was in place to repay the investment? It boggles my mind to understand how this could happen. Furthermore, how can you continue to support the Deseret Peak

Complex when it continually oper-ates in the red? These types of ill-fated decisions would not go unpunished in my business. We need to impeach the entire county commission and start over. You folks are fiscally irresponsible and an embarrassment to the entire county. You have decimated county services and people’s lives. Morale at the county building is at an all-time low. You cannot keep jerking people around, making threats and spur-of-the-moment decisions. In closing, how much did you spend last week for your training trip to St. George? Hope you enjoyed the golfing.Tim Hill Tooele

Open Forum• Editorial• Guest Opinion• Letters to the Editor

Voice of Tooele County since 1894

Jeff BarrusEditor

Scott C. DunnPresident and Publisher

Joel J. DunnPublisher Emeritus

OUR VIEW

GUEST OPINION

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Editor Jeff [email protected]

(435) 882-0050

TUESDAY November 20, 2012A4 TOOELE TRANSCRIPT-BULLETIN

by the Transcript-Bulletin editorial board

With the exception of the “Our View” column, the opinions expressed on this page, including the cartoon, are not necessarily endorsed by the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin.

Editorial Board

GUEST OPINION

LETTER CONTEST

Each month, the Transcript-Bulletin will select the best letter of the month and reprint it in the first Open Forum page of the following month. The winning letter writer will receive a free one-year subscription to the newspaper. The subscription can be transferred or used to renew a pres-ent subscription.

The Transcript-Bulletin welcomes letters to the editor from readers. Letters must be no longer than 250 words, civil in tone, written exclu-sively for the Transcript-Bulletin, and accompanied by the writer’s name, address and phone number. Priority will be given to letters that refer to a recent article in the newspaper. All letters may be subject to editing.

Letters written to thank an individual or organization should be submitted for “Notes of Appreciation”

Readers who are interested in writ-ing a longer guest op-ed column on a topic of general interest should contact Editor Jeff Barrus directly via the contact information at the top of this page.

Email: [email protected]: (435) 882-6123Mail: Letters to the Editor Tooele Transcript-Bulletin P.O. Box 390

LETTERS POLICY

When it comes to local government, it apparently takes a lot to make Tooele County resi-dents really mad.

What else could explain the lack of outrage at the way commissioners have managed the county’s budget crisis? Last week, as the nation fretted about approaching the “fiscal cliff,” Tooele County had already crashed through all the caution signs and was sailing off the edge, pumping the brakes frantically in an effort to stop the momentum of years of reckless financial policies.

A third round of layoffs at the county brings the total number of positions cut over the past four months to around 60. (Hopefully someone at the county is keeping an exact count.) One of the most devastating aspects of the layoffs, particularly from a employee morale perspective, has been how they have been staggered, with the most recent coming a week before Thanksgiving. And outgoing Commissioner Colleen Johnson didn’t give those county employees still standing much cause for relief when she recently said she hoped more staff cuts wouldn’t be needed — this year.

Right now, it’s all up in the air at Tooele County. Budgeting is a month-to-month process. If more radioactive waste gets sent to Clive or a few more federal prisoners turn up at the new jail next month, happy days will be here again. Heck, we might even be able to build that shoot-ing range, fancy-up the convention center or put in those showers for the homeless on Main Street. If not, we’ll lay off a few more folks and hope we can hire them back next month.

Worse still, numbers aren’t entirely guiding these decisions — when asked, Johnson could not say how much the latest round of layoffs would save the county — and neither is the public, which hasn’t heard any open discussion on the budget crisis in commission meetings. It’s not even clear how much commissioners are managing the situation, since the last round of layoffs was executed by department heads who were ordered to cut in a way that would be “fair” to all.

The county commission’s leadership style was summed up by Commissioner Bruce Clegg in August, when he said, “We’ve known for some time that the revenue wasn’t coming in like we had thought it would. We did what we could, like our hiring freeze, and were hoping that something might happen and things would pick up, but it didn’t happen.”

Leadership is not “hoping that something might happen.”The commissioners want you to believe they’re victims. But if the economy is to blame, why

haven’t you read about widespread layoffs at Tooele City or within state government? They want to claim Sheriff Frank Park gave them bad advice regarding the new $25 million jail, but since when does the buck stop with a department head on building or financing the largest capital project in county history?

Truth is, the current commissioners have hired and built with reckless abandon over the past six years. They began to live off of mitigation fees, and still drained the county’s fund bal-ance down. Then, when the budget crunch approached, they sat and waited. When it got bad enough, they made drastic cuts. When it got worse, they cut again. And again.

The commissioners have gotten away with this bungling partly because they’re well-inten-tioned, likable people. That won’t be enough now.

It might take a lot to make county residents outraged, but if this doesn’t do it, nothing will.

Commissioners fiddled while county budget burned

Joel BrinkleyGUEST COLUMNIST

It is common to use test scores that only measure minimum compre-hension levels, like Utah’s Criterion

Referenced Tests (CRT), to measure the performance of schools. However, most parents want to see measures of excel-lence at a school, not just a measure of how well that school barely succeeded. That is why it was refreshing to see the front-page article in the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin describing how more Tooele Valley students are taking the College Board Advanced Placement tests (“More students take advanced placement class-es, pass rate lags behind,” Nov. 8).

In June, the Deseret News published a list titled “50 Worst-Scoring High Schools in Utah,” and all three of the Tooele Valley high schools were on it. At No. 15, Tooele High School was the lowest, No. 31 Stansbury was in the better half of the worst, and Grantsville came in at No. 28.

The Deseret News used CRT scores so the ranking is by relative levels of medioc-rity. I’m sure there are people who argue that their school’s mediocrity is better than someone else’s, but many parents would rather know about excellence.

In the Nov. 8 article, the Transcriptonly reported pass/fail rates for the AP test scores. This was probably done in the interest of decreasing word count, but it left important aspects of the Tooele students’ excellence in the editor’s circu-lar file. A value of 3 is passing, but some students earn scores as high as 5’s on their tests. Some students also score highly enough on multiple tests to earn an “AP Scholar” designation.

The designation “AP Scholar with Honor” is granted to students who receive an average score of at least 3.25 on all AP exams taken and scores of 3 or higher on four or more of these exams. In Utah, 861 students were awarded “AP Scholar with Honor.” One of these was my daughter, Mirae, who earned the award by achieving 5’s on all four of the AP tests she took last year.

In order to earn this award as a 10th grader, Mirae had to leave the Tooele County School District and begin riding the UTA bus into West High School every

day. This is because while THS has 12 AP courses listed in its catalog, it does not reliably offer them all.

West scored only slightly better than THS on the Deseret News list, coming in at No. 17. So there is little difference between the mediocrity of THS and West. However, on U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of the college readiness of students at high schools nationwide, West earned a 34.6 while THS was given an 8. While only about half of the AP tests taken by THS students were passed, the West pass rate was almost 80 percent. West also has more merit scholars, and higher SAT scores.

In fact, take any measure of excellence — as opposed to mediocrity — and West does much better than the entire Tooele County School District combined.

This year there are several more stu-dents that go into West from the Tooele Valley. West is only open to out-of-district students who can display the aptitude to excel. The school has a program called ELP (early learning program) that is a junior high program of excellence, and the last opportunity to prove aptitude for entrance into the 2014 ELP is coming up soon. There is one test on Nov. 30, and the last one is on Dec. 7.

There are many Tooele Valley students who can excel if given the chance, but they may have to look beyond the Tooele County School District to get the opportu-nity to prove it. Larger numbers of Tooele Valley parents are looking for excellence in educational opportunities for their chil-dren, and increasing numbers are finding it. You can too.

Steve Parker is a scientist, amateur phi-losopher, award-winning blogger and long-time Tooele resident. He and his wife, Ellen, are raising their two kids in Tooele and consider it home.

Demand for excellence pulls students outside of district

Steve ParkerGUEST COLUMNIST

The networks had barely called the election for

President Barack Obama before GOP elites rushed to embrace an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Getting killed by almost 3-1 among Latino voters understandably concen-trates the mind, but it’s no reason to lose it. The post-election Republican reac-tion has been built on equal parts panic, wishful thinking and ethnic pandering.

It’s one thing to argue that amnesty is the right policy on the merits. It’s another to depict it as the magic key to unlock-ing the Latino vote. John McCain nearly immolated himself within the Republican Party with his support for amnesty and did all of four points better among Latino voters in 2008 than Mitt Romney did in 2012, according to exit polls.

What is the common thread uniting McCain, the advocate of “comprehen-sive” immigration reform, and Romney, the advocate of “self-deportation”? They are both Republicans supporting conser-vative economic policies. Surely, that had more to do with their showing among Latinos than anything they did or didn’t say about immigration.

According to Census Bureau data,

among native-born Hispanics, 50 percent of all households with children are headed by unmarried mothers. About 40 percent of all households receive ben-efits from a major welfare program. This doesn’t mean that the GOP shouldn’t try to appeal to persons in these

households. It does mean that they aren’t natural Republican voters.

Latinos tend to have liberal attitudes toward government. Take health care. An ImpreMedia/Latino Decisions poll of Latinos conducted on the eve of the election found that 61 percent of Latinos supported leaving Obamacare in place. Sixty-six percent believed government should ensure access to health insurance, perhaps because 32 percent of nonelder-ly Latinos lack health insurance — about twice the national average.

These are facts that never intrude upon Wall Street Journal editorials scold-ing Republicans for supposedly turning their backs on budding new recruits. In the Journal’s telling, if it weren’t for Republican intransigence on immigra-tion, Latino voters would be eagerly join-ing the fight for lower marginal tax rates and the block-granting of Medicaid.

Republican donors with a dispropor-

tionate influence in the party would be perfectly happy to jettison the cause of immigration enforcement. They are fine with a flood of low-skilled immigrants competing with low-skilled American workers. And why shouldn’t they be? These immigrants don’t suppress their wages; they care for their children and clean their pools.

Whenever it is pointed out that illegal immigration tends to harm low-skill workers already here, the comeback is the scurrilous canard that there are “some jobs that no Americans will do.” But most hotel maids, construction workers, coal miners and workers in meatpacking — all tough, thankless jobs — are U.S.-born. If it is hard to entice legal workers into such positions, here is a radical concept: Pay them more.

None of this is to deny that the GOP has a tonal problem on immigration, or that Latino voters care deeply about the issue. Absent a greater economic appeal to all working-class voters, though, it’s hard to see how an obviously opportunis-tic turnabout on immigration will help the party much. Amnesty isn’t a quick fix for the GOP’s problems. Would that it were.

Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.

GOP shouldn’t pander on immigration issue

County government should be routedThis letter is to answer the question

in the Transcript-Bulletin’s editorial (“Commissioners fiddled while county budget burned”) on Nov. 20, “What will it take to get Tooele County residents outraged?” Know this: I am outraged at the financial situation Tooele County and Tooele City are in these days. The county is going broke from a long string of expensive and bad choices, and the city is about to be sued out of existence for unfair practices with a home builder. In his letter to the editor on Nov. 20, Tim Hill suggested that the county govern-ment should be routed. I agree. Tooele County is too diverse to fill the com-mission with people from the livestock industry only. Tooele County elites going to the St. George convention after sack-ing that many employees is akin to Wall Street executives giving themselves large bonuses after causing the financial crisis that wrecked the world’s economies. All this malpractice is ultimately paid for by the taxpayer, and if the taxpayer contin-ues to be silent, he will continue to pay for stuff like this.Mike EnrightStansbury Park

Leaders bring Great Depression backOur most revered board of county

commissioners — after this recent elec-tion, of course — have decreed an unher-alded 82 percent increase in property taxes in order to fill the void regarding excessive county expenditures and lack of proper prior planning. Most of us, at this point in time, have not experienced hard times and have failed to recognize that our country as well as county are in dire financial difficulty. With the inception of the very abrupt socialist program referred to as Obamacare in January, the reality of this situation is going to hit hard when we will all have to seriously restructure our budgets. Most of us will not be able to attend Jazz games, will be reduced to one car or none and have to ride the bus to work, will turn the temperature down to 60 in the winter and wear a sweater in the house, will open the window to cool off during the summer, and will maybe even pull a little red wagon to the mercantile for food. In reality, what we need to do is find decent, responsible citizens who are willing to run for office. Thanks to the Transcript-Bulletin for keeping us abreast of these current tax issues and other mat-ters. The quality of your publication has increased dramatically since a few years in the past when it seemed that most of your interest appeared to be in the direc-tion of animal rights and vicious dogs

that the mean deputies shot. Keep up the good work.Ralph PierceTooele

Bookmobile trumps horse partyI just wanted to let you know that

we loved, loved, loved your editorial “Commissioners fiddled while county budget burned.” I believe the county resi-dents are very upset over the commission-ers lack of leadership and foolish deci-sions, but we don’t know what we can do about it. First off, I realize that the county has a serious financial problem — and this is nothing personal toward anyone. My family has been friends with our county leaders through the years and appreciate their service, but I feel if I don’t express our point of view on the subject, I would be doing my community and my children a severe injustice. My entire life I have been a patron of the bookmobile. I am not alone when I say that we are extremely angered over the fact that Tooele County has spent millions of dollars giving the jailers a nice, new state-of-the-art jail. Although I myself have never been in the jail and cannot say for sure, I would imagine that the inmates have access to books while incarcerated. Meanwhile, our children — the future of Tooele County — are denied literature. I also have one question: How much did the Wild Horse and Heritage Days cost our county? We are not opposed to having such an event, but when finances are tight, if something were to go, what is more important, small towns’ access to a library or a weekend party?Lacey BurrowsRush Valley

Archives article a poor choiceThis letter is in reference to the Nov.

15 From our Archives titled “Police snare marijuana in raid on Tooele apartment.” I have for the most part enjoyed the archive articles, and I thought they were designed to be either entertaining or informative. I fail to see where this article referencing a $15,000 drug bust that occurred in 1968 meets either category. I hope that this is not a preview of more of the same. I have recently been doing some historical research about Deseret Chemical Depot and have spent quite a bit of time at the local library reviewing Transcript-Bulletinarticles, and I have found some very use-ful information. Along with that informa-tion, I have come across some very inter-esting stories that left me thinking things like “Wow, I didn’t know that,” or “That was pretty cool,” or “Oh yeah, I remember that.” I might be wrong, but I think that’s the type of reaction that you are looking

for from your readers. I hope that we will not have to relive every record-breaking drug bust that has ever occurred in Tooele County. I know that that the Transcript-Bulletin is capable of doing better.Richard TrujilloTooele

City worker ruined cemetery treesMy parents and I visited the cemetery

several weeks ago and commented on how beautiful the tree was that my dad transplanted for my brother buried there 27 years ago. We made sure to notice that it wasn’t too low for maintenance to mow under it, which was our agreement with the cemetery. Last week we visited again. We were in shock. All the branches from the bottom two-thirds of the tree had been stripped. The tree was ruined. This tree was very special. My dad spent hours finding the right tree. When it looked like this tree might not survive, he told my brother he had done all he could. If he wanted the tree, he needed to take care of it. It started to thrive. My dad held a vigil with this tree for years, decorating it each Christmas and visiting the grave weekly. Now his tree is desecrated. The cemetery has a new manager who has only been in this job a short time, but the damage he has done is irreversible. My brother’s tree and many of the other trees are ruined. The branches will never grow back to fill out the tree. It’s too late for my brother’s tree and many others, but I would like to stop him from destroying the other trees. Dr. Seuss trees look great in a storybook, but not in our beautiful cemetery.Patty WheelerStockton

Open Forum• Editorial• Guest Opinion• Letters to the Editor

Voice of Tooele County since 1894

Jeff BarrusEditor

Scott C. DunnPresident and Publisher

Joel J. DunnPublisher Emeritus

OUR VIEW

GUEST OPINION

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Editor Jeff [email protected]

(435) 882-0050

TUESDAY November 27, 2012A4 TOOELE TRANSCRIPT-BULLETIN

by the Transcript-Bulletin editorial board

With the exception of the “Our View” column, the opinions expressed on this page, including the cartoon, are not necessarily endorsed by the Tooele Transcript-Bulletin.

Editorial Board

GUEST OPINION

The Transcript-Bulletin welcomes letters to the editor from readers. Letters must be no longer than 250 words, civil in tone, written exclu-sively for the Transcript-Bulletin, and accompa-nied by the writer’s name, address and phone number. Priority will be given to letters that refer to a recent article in the newspaper. All letters may be subject to editing.

Letters written to thank an individual or orga-nization should be submitted for “Notes of Appreciation”

Readers who are interested in writing a longer guest op-ed column on a topic of general inter-est should contact Editor Jeff Barrus directly via the contact information at the top of this page.

Email: [email protected]: (435) 882-6123Mail: Letters to the Editor Tooele Transcript-Bulletin P.O. Box 390

LETTERS POLICY

It’s been a busy couple of weeks for Tooele County’s head honchos.In between laying off 22 county employees and pitching an 82 percent tax

hike, county commissioners sent a delegation of leaders to a mid-week confer-ence in St. George. That pretty much symbolizes what Tooele County govern-ment is all about these days.

Next August, when county leaders try to sell this tax hike to voters during a truth in taxation hearing, they’ll say — just as the Tooele County School Board did earlier this year — that recent declines in revenue inevitably led them down this path.

Don’t fall for it.On a personal level, each of us know that a dollar spent today is one we won’t

have tomorrow. We understand that dipping into our rainy day funds to make a big purchase means, if rains come, we could be in trouble. And we all know that guy on the block who comes home with ATVs one week and waverunners the next, then goes around the neighborhood with his hand out when he falls on tough times.

A good way to think of the county’s proposed tax hike is to look backwards at projects already completed. When you drive by the new convention center at Desert Peak, think of your taxes being raised and ask how often you’ve either participated in an event there or reaped the economic rewards of a large group coming into town for a conference there. Then take another look at the Deseret Peak Complex as a whole. It runs at a deficit of well over a million dollars every year and used to have legions of county employees on its rolls before the layoffs, yet how many times have you personally enjoyed the chariot track, indoor rodeo arena, outdoor rodeo arena, horse stables or horseshoe pits?

Would you want your taxes raised to pay for the Emergency Operations Center? In 10 years, that empty facility will be about as relevant as the SPECTRE headquarters in a James Bond film. How about to pay for the new jail, which was built larger than actual needs based on wildly unrealistic predictions of revenue generated by housing federal prisoners?

The amount the county’s proposed tax is expected to generate is $2.6 mil-lion. That’s enough to possibly make businesses cut back and depress personal spending just as a gradual economic recovery is underway locally. It’s also, inci-dentally, only slightly more than the $2.3 million it cost to build the convention center, or the $2.5 million the county chipped in to pay for the EOC.

The county’s debt load has increased almost tenfold since the current county commissioners have been in office, from $3.3 million in long-term debt in 2006 to $31.4 million as of the end of 2011.

Commissioners will say all that borrowing and spending is just water under the bridge at this point — nothing to do with the currently proposed tax hike. We don’t agree. A spend-and-tax philosophy amounts to the same thing as a tax-and-spend one.

In this case, county leaders’ past performance is a pretty good indicator of our future returns.

County tax hike will rob recovery to pay for past sins

Every time I throw away an empty metal can or plastic bottle, I feel a twinge of guilt.

It’s about as bad as the day I climbed down the fire escape during chapel in grade school and got busted by Mother Superior. Now that the blue bag program has ended (“Blue Bags recycling program scrapped,” Nov. 2), and curbside recycling hasn’t spread to Grantsville yet, I’m going through withdrawals.

For as long as I can remember in my 20 years of marriage, my hus-band and I have always recycled. We collect our newspapers into a card-board box on the dog crate. When the county started the Blue Bags program five years ago, we tossed our empty cans, squished milk jugs and my husband’s Dr. Pepper cans into a dedicated trash can.

We still recycle our newspapers. That hasn’t changed. I still lug a box to the parking lot at Grantsville Junior High and chase after L’Oreal ad inserts on windy days trying to get everything into the recycling dumpster.

But the plastics and metals, I admit, I still throw some in a blue bag in the garage. It’s a habit I can’t seem to break.

On the other hand, recycling is a habit some people can’t seem to start.

I’m not here to lecture anyone on the wonders of recycling. Or play sad music while showing a sad world being defaced by dirt, a la “Sesame Street.” (Even though that made an indelible impression on me as a schoolgirl in the Philippines.)

What I’m asking is that you take your family to the landfill to see first-hand that the stuff we throw away every week doesn’t just disappear nebulously into some neat, tucked-away place. Our garbage, multi-plied by a lot of other households, amounts to a stinking lot.

I did that one afternoon this past

week with my 12-year-old daughter on the way to her flute lesson. We segued past La Frontera down the highway out to what used to be a mining town called Bauer but is now our county landfill.

If the sight and smell of a ware-house full of garbage doesn’t turn you on to recycling, I don’t know what will. According to landfill rules, my daughter had to stay in the truck, but her dismay was written plainly on her face.

I got out, trying to not inhale too deeply, and surveyed the mound of stuff waiting to be sorted in a build-ing with two open bays. There were broken TV sets and ripped couches, as well as cans and papers that could have been recycled but were now co-mingled with filth.

The landfill does its best, now that workers have a machine that can sort recyclable materials. But imag-ine what a savings in manpower it would be to have all that pre-sorted before recyclables end up there.

Some people are skeptical of recycling programs. They’re just feel-good, they say. The conspiracy theo-rists say there are mounds of recy-cling just languishing somewhere, as was discovered in Chicago recently.

You know what, though? All we can do as residents is to do our part, so when our local programs get their act together, we can recycle more efficiently.

As for me, curbside recycling can’t come soon enough to Grantsville.

Jewel Punzalan Allen is a memoir writ-ing coach and a long-time journalist who lives in Grantsville. She blogs at pink-ink-pink.blogspot.com.

Curbside recycling program can’t spread fast enough

Jewel Punzalan AllenGUEST COLUMNIST

Jewel Punzalan Allen

Tooele Transcript-Bulletin

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