In making comparisons between the Summit County Jail and the County Commission, a couple of things are apparent.
- The commission has two vacancies. The jail has none.- Neither entity runs as efficiently as it could.
Those are the facts facing voters as they ponder a pair of questions on the ballot Tuesday.
One, whether to endorse a $9 million bond issue for a bigger, better-located jail. And, two, whether to proceed with a study on reorganizing the commission form of government, which puts three elected people in charge of every political problem in the county.
"It seems to me the pressures are such that we need to look at any method we can to make our government more effective," said Gene Moser, a commissioner who is opting for retirement over re-election this year.
The job, says Moser, nowadays is a full-time task that demands - in addition to political aplomb and cross-county diplomacy - arcane knowledge of land-use issues and the ability to see the forest for the trees in an ever-growing avalanche of paperwork.
Moser said the kind of government-reform study he's recommending would explore at least four issues:
- Whether representatives should be elected by district. "We've really got three distinctive areas," said Moser, noting the vast socioeconomic difference between Park City and the rural quarters of Summit County, which traditionally is divided into two broad areas, the Kamas Valley to the south and Coalville to the north.
- Whether commission membership should be extended to five people, diluting the current authority the incumbent trio enjoys.
- Whether professional management should be brought in. "I just don't think we can continue to elect commissioners unless they're full time," said Moser, who wants the county to look seriously at bringing aboard a county manager to serve as a day-to-day executive.
- Whether the county's tax system works like it ought to. "We're a little bit unique in the fact that we let a lot of growth take place in unincorporated areas," said Moser, who wonders whether Sum-mit County ought to take an approach similar to one adopted by its neighbors to the west. "Salt Lake County has a tax for urban services . . . the question here is are we missing out on some income opportunities like that?"
In weighing the jail-bond proposal, Sheriff Alan Spriggs said voters ought to consider that most arrests in Summit County are in the Park City area, 25 to 30 miles from the jail at Coalville, the county seat.
"If it doesn't pass, the next commission will have to do something," said Spriggs, who presides over a 28-bed jail that is full more often than not and a department whose officers spend an inordinate amount of time transporting criminal suspects from the scene of their alleged crimes to Coalville.
"About two-thirds of our arrests are in the Snyderville Basin area," said Spriggs, who supports putting a new facility much closer to Park City, probably in a politically acceptable area of a small industrial park east of U.S. 40 south of Silver Creek Junction.
Because Park City and the adjacent Synderville Basin is a resort attraction, it attracts every element from out of state and from more urban areas of Utah.
"That's where a lot of Wasatch Front residents do their rec-reat-ing," said Spriggs, who noted demographic projections call for more growth around Park City, which has already seen a population increase of 25 percent since 1990.
A pair of recent studies commissioned by the county show the immediate need for a 68-inmate jail somewhere near Park City, said Spriggs, with a capacity that could reach 100 under double-bunking conditions.