UAC officials offer legal, data and grant support to Daggett County; commissioners question flat $10,000 fee

Daggett County commissioners heard from Utah Association of Counties (UAC) representatives on staffing, data management and grant opportunities during a brief session resumed at 12:23 p.m. Speaker 4, later identified as Kyle Jensen, said UAC can help the county with legal projects, data work and grants and urged the county to designate a records point of contact in compliance with state requirements.

"UAC now has Eric Clark who is our full time employee," Speaker 4 said, introducing new in-house legal capacity and noting Eric Clark is an attorney and former Washington County attorney who can assist with both routine and complex matters. UAC also described Curtis Cope’s involvement guiding MCAT (an interlocal property-tax technology effort among 29 counties) and said UAC is serving as MCAT’s trustee.

The UAC representative discussed efforts to centralize county-sourced data so the state and counties can rely on consistent, county-vetted information, citing UDOT and UGRC as examples of state–county data partnerships. On tourism-related revenue, UAC said raising the county’s TRT rate opens access to roughly $6,000,000 to $7,000,000 in funding and that UAC is working toward a direct-distribution model that would use improved EMS and search-and-rescue reporting and other county data.

Commissioner comments focused on cost and implementation. "The problem I had with there was a proposed rate of $10,000 per county," said Speaker 1, arguing that a flat fee would unfairly burden very small counties. Speaker 4 responded that UAC’s approach would be handled on a case-by-case basis and that UAC would follow up to explore pricing tailored to county needs.

UAC notified the commission that the state is advancing data-governance work and said, "at some point this fall, we do need you all to adopt an ordinance" designating who will serve as the county’s records officer or point of contact; Speaker 4 offered to provide a model ordinance and to have UAC’s attorney customize it for Daggett County. Commissioners discussed whether the county clerk or IT staff should be assigned that role and noted the clerk was absent from the meeting.

Separately, commissioners discussed representation at the UAC convention scheduled for Sept. 8–10 at the Layton Convention Center in Davis County and agreed to confirm who could attend so the county would be represented at the board meeting and related sessions. Kyle Jensen introduced himself as a recent UAC staff member who will work on land-use and community-development issues and on the land-use task force.

Procedural items concluded the session: the commission voted to return to open session at 12:23 p.m. and adjourned by acclamation at 12:41 p.m. No formal ordinances or votes on policy changes were recorded during the visit; UAC staff committed to follow up on pricing and to provide draft ordinance language and other support.