Summit County Council member Glenn Wright has been re-elected to another term. Now he, and other council members, are moving on to such items as management of their national forest lands, and preservation of open space.
Several incumbents had no challengers running against them on the ballot this year.
Glenn Wright did have a write-in opponent, Josh Mann, appear at the 11th hour. Wright said that, in fact, he like having to work on a campaign about the issues.
“It’s good to have conversations on issues during a campaign. So, it forced me to get online, create a website go out and knock on doors, speak at community events. It’s something we should be doing every election, I salute Josh for filing as a write-in because it made me work a little harder.”
Mann succeeded in getting about 1,000 write-in votes. Wright talked about the issue she wants to focus on in his next term.
“The main reason I wanted to stay on the council another four-years was to promote our renewable energy and carbon footprint issues. I’ve also been working heavily on the forest fire protection issues with the national forest rangers.”
During Wednesday’s agenda, the council voted 4 to 1, to send a letter with recommendations for a proposal from Governor Gary Herbert for a Utah-specific plan to manage the Roadless areas of the national forest.
Wright said while they want to curb fire danger, they’re concerned about the motives of other jurisdictions in the state.
“A little bit afraid that some of the other counties really want to essentially rip-up the Roadless Rule. We have a different opinion on it, at least four of us do, we want to create some restoration areas in our parts of the national forest. Because of all the damage that has occurred from beetle kill up there and the drying climate, the warming climate is causing much higher forest fire issues for the county. We’re very concerned about protecting the watershed and if you look at what’s happened some very large forest fires they debris flow after those fires can have just catastrophic consequences on some of our communities. I would be particularly concerned in the Oakley and Kamas area with the debris run-off.”
In other business, the council approved a grant of $500,000 to help purchase a conservation easement for the Osguthorpe farm along Old Ranch Road. This followed many months of discussions between the county, the Osguthorpe family and the Summit Land Conservancy.
“In my nearly two years on the council what I’m finding is that any kind of land-use negotiation takes a long time. We went back and forth with the Osguthorpes and Summit Land Conservancy for quite a while. I think we’re all happy now with the results of our conversation. There will be very little public access to this land. This land is an agricultural preservation agreement. It’s basically just to take development rights off the land so there will never be a housing development there but the Osguthorpe family can continue to farm the property.”
