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Utah Highway Patrol offers Citizens Academy for local leaders; Bluff intern details addressing, .gov transition and online forms
Summary
Trooper Brian Robinson outlined a four‑night Citizens Academy with hands‑on scenarios for local leaders; intern Sam Michard reported adding dozens of addresses to the state ArcGIS system, creating an addressing manual, moving the town website to a .gov domain and building 13 online forms for town services.
Bluff — Trooper Brian Robinson of the Utah Highway Patrol briefed the Bluff Town Council on a proposed Citizens Academy aimed at building rapport between law enforcement and local leaders. Robinson described a four‑week program (one night per week) with each of three nights led by a different agency — Utah Highway Patrol, San Juan County Sheriff’s Office and Blanding City Police Department — and a fourth night focused on building/school clearing drills with local schools. He said the Highway Patrol night will include a controlled 'wet lap' scenario and field sobriety testing so participants can experience impairment detection firsthand. Robinson asked council members and local officials to sign up by email; he said the first session is scheduled for Aug. 21 in Monticello, with a Sept. 11 session tentatively planned in Bluff.
“I am Trooper Brian Robinson…we really wanna develop trust with our leaders,” Robinson said during the meeting, emphasizing hands‑on scenarios and an opportunity for local leaders to 'be in our shoes.' He asked for contact emails and offered to share a presentation and contact information at the close of the meeting.
The council also received a summer internship report from Sam Michard, who summarized digital projects intended to improve emergency response and resident access to services. Michard said he entered more than 70 residential addresses and about 175 hotel/RV room records into the state ArcGIS addressing system, identified roughly 22 incorrect addresses in town and created a town addressing manual intended to ease emergency dispatch and internal use. Michard also described transitioning the town website to townofbluffutah.gov (a .gov domain on GoDaddy), implementing a new WordPress theme, creating 13 online forms on Express bill‑pay for payments and permits, and migrating planning and zoning files from Google Drive to OneDrive to standardize records.
"I identified about 22 incorrect addresses in the town…" Michard said, noting that corrections will require outreach to homeowners to explain the process and possible paperwork implications. Council members praised the intern’s work and said the addressing improvements would aid EMS and other responders.
What happens next: Trooper Robinson will collect RSVPs and distribute location/details for sessions; town staff will continue outreach to residents with incorrect addresses and complete integration of new web pages, forms and online bill pay.
