The Moab City Council meeting Tuesday night was chock full of important news: Ken’s Lake is “very near” its minimum level, prompting the opening of a couple of wells for agricultural use.
From a percentage of lost revenue perspective, no city in Utah has been harder hit by the pandemic than Moab. And that’s not the worst of it.
The Council will continue to hold electronic meetings — until it’s safe to resume meeting in public — but people can begin to participate in the Citizens to be Heard segment of meetings at City Hall via the city’s YouTube channel.
Voters are invited to learn about Proposition 8, which if approved will provide tax revenue for recreation, arts and parks.
Finally, keeping residents in their aged trailers at Walnut Lane is depleting the city’s budget for its planned affordable housing project.
Ken’s Lake
City Council Member Mike Duncan in a report on water said Ken’s Lake, the source for agricultural water in Grand County, is dangerously close to as low as it can get, 400-acre feet, and two wells have been opened to pump groundwater to farmers. The Moab Irrigation Company also has been using a pump since midsummer, said Duncan, all due to a profound lack of precipitation. Faux Falls above Ken’s Lake is flowing much slower than it was just a few weeks earlier.
“We’re trying to convince people there’s not an infinite amount of water out there,” said Duncan, who said Grand County is looking to purchase unused water rights. “It’s funny how all of the sudden there’s a substantial market for water rights,” he said.
Duncan also noted the city’s “will-serve” commitments to water users in Moab, and those commitments are made decades in advance. “It’s a clear conflict … we can’t keep blithely assuming there will be water out there forever and ever.”
He said State water resources officials are hesitant to take action because “they don’t want to hurt anyone.”
City Council Member Karen Guzman-Newton thanked Duncan for his work on water issues, saying we owe it to future generations to preserve this most essential of resources.
Moab’s No. 1, but not in a good way
City of Moab Finance Director Klint York followed up on a request Guzman-Newton made at a previous meeting regarding a compare and contrast study of how the pandemic has impacted Utah cities.
York’s analysis produced some surprising results. He said he did a “deeper dive” into COVID-19’s impact on revenue March through May, the big “COVID months.” The city collected $54 million in gross taxable sales and purchases compared to $94 million for the same period in 2019, a drop of $40 million in sales. Salt Lake City lost a couple billion dollars, making it No. 1 in terms of lost dollars; Moab was ranked 5.
On a percentage basis, however, Moab at 43% was hit worse than any other city with another tourism-dependent community, Park City, coming in second at 41%.
Another surprising finding is that only 13 of the 62 Utah cities York studied has less gross taxable sales and purchases for those three months in 2020 than in 2019. For Moab, he said, “It’s a heavy number.”
Here’s where the rub is. While Moab was down more than any other city in the state, it received the least in federal CARES Act funding at about $474,000. By comparison, St. George made $49 million more March through May in 2020 than it did the previous year, or from $660 million to $709 million — and still received $8 million in CARES funding, which is doled out based on population.
“It just shows what this staff has been up against,” said City Manager Joel Linares. “We’ve been hit very hard and I just want to thank this staff.” He said the fact the city is still functioning “at the level we’re at” despite all of the cuts that have been made is laudable.
Citizens to be Heard
The City Council by consensus agreed to continue meeting electronically for the foreseeable future, and will revisit the issue monthly, but residents will be able to participate in the Citizens to be Heard segment of meetings live, rather than by submitting written comments that become part of the public record, but are not read aloud at meetings streamed on the city’s YouTube channel.
The support was unanimous to change the way public comments are gathered. Residents will arrive at City Hall and sit in the waiting room before their comments are heard, which will be aired on YouTube live. The change takes effect when the Council next meets Sept. 8.
Member Tawny Knuteson-Boyd suggested the segment be moved up earlier in the meeting so people don’t have to wait an inordinate amount of time to speak.
Guzman-Newton made it clear the Council was not holding out for the development of a COVID-19 vaccine before it resumed public meetings, as some have suggested, she said.
In a somewhat related matter, the Council agreed to change its September meeting dates from Sept. 1 to Sept. 8 and from Sept. 15 to Sept. 22. The change puts the Council back on its usual second and fourth Tuesday of the month schedule. It was made at the request of Linares, who said the city typically meets earlier in September because of the annual Utah League of Cities and Towns convention, which has been canceled due to the pandemic.
Prop. 8
Voters will decide Proposition 8 on this year’s election ballot and the Moab City Council believes it’s critical the .1% sales and use tax is approved as the revenue would be used to fund cultural, zoological and recreational facilities — such as the aquatic center.
The key selling point is that tourists will bear most of the burden of paying the tax, which at .1% is one penny for every $10 spent.
Known as the RAP tax for Recreation, Arts and Parks, if approved it will sunset after a decade unless voters reauthorize its continuance.
Walnut Lane woes
Senior Project Manager Kaitlin Myers, who is managing the Walnut Lane Apartments project — an effort to replace trailers in the Walnut Lane trailer park with affordable housing in the form of apartment buildings — presented to the council Tuesday evening a picture of a project mired in maintenance, property ownership and legal challenges.
Chief among the challenges are livability problems. Myers highlighted one example of a Walnut Lane resident who had recently experienced a gas leak that the city has since stopped. Although the leak is repaired, the resident’s gas has not yet been replaced due to concerns over the safety of re-establishing the gas line in her trailer. The city is working toward a solution it can implement before the colder months.
The example reflects the larger issue at Walnut Lane: The trailers were aging and crowded when the city purchased them, and they have only continued to age — though some tenants have moved out of the trailer park. In cases where tenants have moved out, the city has declined to rent the trailers out to anyone else because, according to Linares, those trailers do not meet the legal standard of habitability.
The city, as Linares put it, is now contemplating a “gap fill” housing solution by replacing the trailers with, say, manufactured homes. The alternative, Myers and Linares said, would be to continue pouring money into maintaining the existing trailers — something that might turn out to be more expensive than replacing them, even if that replacement is then itself replaced by the apartments the city plans to build on the lots as a long-term solution.
Reporter Carter Pape contributed to this report.
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