With its new infrastructure, beautiful parks and renovated schools, Uintah County is the envy of communities throughout the country and residents don’t always understand how those blessings came to be. In fact, thanks to the blessing of mineral lease funding, former Commissioner Mike McKee says residents largely don’t know how good we have it here in eastern Utah. Whether it’s the rec center, schools, conference center, or parks, “the debt we have is minimal for what all we have here and it is not even paid by our property taxes.” Mineral lease funds overwhelmingly pay for the community improvements that the community enjoys as well as expected construction and maintenance of roads which averages a cost of $2 million dollars per mile of construction. “I think the county does an outstanding job with the resources we have,” says McKee. “We are very blessed to have the [mineral lease funds] used by the special service districts.” With economic downturn the county has made major cuts to budgets and even lowered the tax rate, though the state centrally assessed taxes caused some increase this year. “Last year was our most difficult year since the 80’s,” says McKee, “but we still had a million dollars more in revenue than we did in spending…The health of the county is in a very strong, healthy spot.”
Image source: uintahrecreation.org
