Salaries a concern for Collins, roads a concern for Yeates

He was a Logan police officer for 23 years and for the last four years Eric Collins has worked at Logan Regional Hospital in the area of preparedness and security. Now Collins is a candidate for Cache County Council’s Logan Seat 1, challenging four-term councilmember Cory Yeates in the June 26 Republican primary election.

On KVNU’s Crosstalk show Monday, Collins said one reason he decided to run was his concern for the salaries of employees, especially those in law enforcement.

“I have a lot of friends that have left the sheriffs office and left county employment because of wages,” Collins said. “I think we’ve lost a lot of valuable employees and I consider that assets to the county.

“To retrain new personnel is costing taxpayers a lot of money. I think we’re throwing dimes to save dollars.”

On the same program, Yeates said the county is now working to improve the salaries for law enforcement and other county workers. He said, unfortunately, Cache County has only two sources of revenue: sales tax, which has been down because of the bad economy, and property tax, which most people do not want to see increased.

Yeates also said he is proud of his work on the council during the past 16 years, especially leading the right to maintain and keeping county rights of way on public roads.

“As we began the process there were 63 roads that were determined to be county rights of way that had been blocked, obstructed or land owners just assumed they owned them so they blocked them in some form or another,” Yeates explained. “Some cases have been challenged legally. As of today, there are four roads left and two of those are in court.”

Collins applauded the work on the roads but said the salaries of county employees should have had a higher priority.

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