25K jobs tour rolls through Emery County

By Phil Fauver
Staff Writer

Lt. Gov. Spencer J. Cox brought to Emery County on Aug. 9, 2017 the Utah 25,000 jobs launch tour with flags flying on the Main Street of Castle Dale. This tour will visit 25 counties in Utah and make presentations about what resources are available to help businesses grow and individuals find and gain employment. The goal of this 25,000 jobs tour is a program to bring businesses leaders, community members, government officials and resource partners together to showcase what resources were available to strengthen the local economy, create jobs and support local businesses in Emery County.
County Commissioner Keith Brady introduced Derek Miller of the World Trade Center of Utah, who said we are leading this 25K jobs tour with the office of the Lt. Governor. We have with us over 20 business service providers and will visit all 25 counties. This is our ninth stop on this tour. Our purpose is to connect the Emery County businesses here with service providers that can help Emery County businesses to grow. We are not here to create jobs. We are here to help local businesses to create the jobs, to be more successful, to expand and grow their businesses. Job growth comes from local communities. We are here to provide that support. The World Trade Center Utah helps businesses to expand their market, get more customers and sell more product. That is what will help our economy to grow. Our motto is make more at home and sell more abroad. We are bringing service providers off the Wasatch front so they become familiar with what is available in the rural parts of Utah.
Over 20 resource organizations sponsored and participated in this tour of 25 Utah Counties they were as follows Zions Bank, the Utah Office of Tourism, the Governor’s office of economic development, the Department of Workforce Services, the Utah Small Business Development Center, USTAR Utah’s Technology Catalyst, the US Department of Agriculture Rural Development, the Utah Office of Rehabilitation and the Utah Office of Energy Development.
Derek Miller in his remarks mentioned Commissioner Brady and Commissioner Siterud, Commissioner Cowley, Mayor Brady of Green River, Mayor Swenson of Orangeville, Mayor Gordon from Huntington and members of her city Council. He said it is critical to have the local support for the success of this jobs tour. We appreciate the support of the local businesses and community leaders. The purpose of the 25K jobs tour is to support the 25,000 jobs initiative mentioned by Gov. Herbert in his state the state address.
“We are bringing service providers off of the Wasatch front into our local communities, into our local economies with a support network that can help them to grow. Our goal is to help them find more customers, grow their market, be more successful, be more profitable and create more jobs in our local community.
“We have learned in Utah that every County and every community is different. He used an example of Cache County.
When Derek asked the local officials what their biggest problem might be. They replied our biggest problem is finding people to fill jobs. Our current unemployment rate is as low as 2 percent. The lowest in the country. Some of our counties have double digit unemployment. There is a great inequity throughout our state that is why the governor was so concerned. He said Utah cannot be economically healthy until all of our Utah counties are economically healthy.
Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox spoke of the town of Fairview where he lives that most of their jobs were in Emery County. We have felt the loss of jobs as you have in Emery County. Gov. Herbert told him that we don’t have enough rural representation in Utah government. The government has more representation along the Wasatch front than they do from rural Utah. I am always reminding people about rural Utah.
He pointed out that Representative Albrecht and Sen. Hinkins were in the audience. They are two of those voices in the wilderness. We have a very small handful of representatives that are truly from rural areas. It’s not that they don’t care about us on the Wasatch front it is that they just forget about us.
A representative asked Lt. Gov. Cox why should I care about rural Utah. He replied, rural Utah is where you get your food, your water, your energy and where you like to recreate other than that I can’t think of any reason. Those are four very important reasons he replied.
How nice it is to come here. We do have our problems but there are places in the state that have much worse problems. A few days ago the governor gave me the responsibility to look into the lawless issue among the homeless in the Rio Grande District of Salt Lake City. I have walked down that street and seen many of the serious things that are happening there. It is so nice to come here. We have hard problems but there are places that have it much worse.
From this 25,000 job tour I hope to use Emery and Carbon County as examples five years from now or 20 years from now of how we changed those economies as they continue to grow and innovate doing things differently than we’ve done in the past. We know there has been a war on coal certainly our Federal Government has not helped us in any way. They have hurt us in so many ways when it comes to the job losses that have happened here. We can change all the regulations on coal and it is not going to affect the price of natural gas. Natural gas is a cheaper energy and a cleaner energy.
We have a lot of tourist poor areas in this country. you cannot take away a coal mining job and replace it with a job in a motel. You absolutely cannot feed a family on those wages.
We need people to come here and bring their jobs with them. On the Wasatch front we have more jobs than we have people. Good jobs and high-paying jobs. We have jobs paying hundred and $130,000 a year that we cannot fill.
We have the opposite problem in Emery and Carbon County we have more people than we have jobs.
We are asking companies on the Wasatch front to look at some of their jobs to see if they couldn’t be done more successfully in rural Utah.
The state of Utah is one of the biggest employers in Utah and we are looking at the possibility of moving some of those jobs to rural Utah.
If you’re waiting for government to bring all those jobs here it’s never going to happen. The government isn’t very good at solving our problems. When we try to solve a problem we end up creating a lot more.
Tell businesses that the World Trade Center or Zions Bank and these other service providers may be able to help you grow your business. We need your ideas and tell us how we can help create 25,000 jobs. We now have $5 million for use in developing infrastructure in rural counties. We can do hard things in rural Utah we can do hard things in Emery County. Let us know how we can help work together.