Dear Editor:
After reading Curtis Wells’ diatribe in last week’s paper, I was tempted to roll my eyes and move on. But I couldn’t get Mr. Wells’ inaccurate claims and accusations out of my head. It was especially disheartening to read his ugly accusations thrown at local council members, like they are bumbling incompetents. Wow. And his theory that a citizen-representative council would more likely raise taxes or approve irresponsible spending than a highly paid commission of partisan politicians is ludicrous on its face.
The bottom line is that Mr. Wells and a few of his cronies have long wanted to get rid of Grand County’s non-partisan seven-member council form of government. His little cabal knew that Grand County voters wouldn’t agree, so they went rogue and bypassed the pesky voters. What do voters know, anyway? The cabal went to the highly partisan Utah legislature to outlaw Grand County’s non-partisan form of government. As we all know, it doesn’t take much nudging to get the good old boys in Salt Lake City to tell Grand County citizens what is best for Grand County. Thus, HB 224 was passed with only a few folks in Grand County in the know.
HB 224 doesn’t offer anything new — the forms of government that HB 224 allows have been available to Grand County for the past 25 years. Yet, the voters of Grand County have never opted to adopt any of these forms of government. We have voted to keep our non-partisan, citizen-representative government three times — every time the issue has appeared on the ballot. Now, due to the backdoor tricks of a few, the majority will not get to vote to keep our current form of government. That choice was taken off the table.
Grand County’s non-partisan form of government encourages regular folks to get involved to make a difference for the future of our community. I’m saddened that we’ve been robbed of this choice.
Kiley Miller
Moab
