As promised, local officials in Uintah County met on Monday to continue the process of deciding what to do about the drastic decline of mineral lease monies and the Special Service Districts that depend on that funding. Uintah County Commissioner Bart Haslem presented the following as the Commission’s proposal of how to move forward: The Health District would remain intact and receive $1 million dollars in mineral lease funding. The Animal Service District would remain intact and receive $854,000 dollars in mineral lease funding. The Transportation, Recreation, and Impact Mitigation districts would be combined into one district moving forward. And finally, the Fire District would be dissolved and the responsibility of fire services would be divided between the cities and the county and no longer funded through mineral lease monies. Essentially the fire services would go back to their original form before the creation of the Special Service Districts. The Districts as they are now would need 11 million dollars to keep all services but Commissioner Bill Stringer noted that best case scenario is Uintah County will end up with $9 million dollars in mineral lease funding but it is much more likely to be $7.5 million to $8 million dollars in total. Feedback from other local officials requested that no big changes be made while waiting to see what funds come in at the end of the year. The Commission emphasized that it was not feasible to wait because decisions need to be made before budgets are allocated for the next year. While special service districts operate independently from Uintah County, the Commission is responsible for determining how mineral lease monies are dispersed between the districts. The Commissioners invited the Cities to come up with better recommendations otherwise their proposal will move forward as a resolution to be passed during the September 14th meeting.
