I had a delightful lunch at Idle Isle with Brigham City Mayor Dennis Fife and two of his council members last week. Our talk reminded me once again of the hard, if not impossible, jobs we expect our elected people to do.
Fife & Co. deal with a ration of crud. ATK Space Systems, historically the city's mainstay employer, is shedding jobs. The economy is lousy. Brigham City, being a conservative area, is full of people who can't figure out why government costs so much.
But if Fife & Co. cut government spending, they catch crud all over again.
"I may be a one-term mayor," moaned Dennis, and knowing how things work these days, he may be right.
Fife is catching it from any number of directions.
Brigham City is as large as it is today because the company that is now ATK Space Systems set up west of town 50 years ago to build rockets.
With Box Elder's agricultural economy flagging, a huge factory was a godsend. Now that's going away. ATK has laid off 2,000 workers in the last two years, and more layoffs could be coming.
Fife worked at ATK as a chemist and said only 20 people are left in a lab that used to have 150.
What will save his city? Pickings are slim.
Autoliv employs 1,000, and Nucor Steel, which came to the county 32 years ago, has held fast, cutting hours rather than employees.
The Wal-Mart Distribution Center near Corinne brought jobs, as has a new $40 million Procter & Gamble factory, although the latter is so automated it hired only 140 people.
I told Dennis, half joking, that Brigham City ought to make the new civic symbol the bowling ball because of Storm Products Inc., which makes high-end bowling balls in Brigham City and has seen sales increase 33 percent despite the economic downturn.
"But all of these small numbers don't make up for 2,000," Fife said.
More significantly, the new jobs aren't absorbing many former ATK folks.
Those who don't move away entirely are marketing their engineering skills in Ogden, at Hill Air Force Base and points south.
This costs the city money. One example: Foreclosures mean the city is not collecting $6,000 to $10,000 a month in utility bills.
Federal spending cuts are biting Fife in the butt.
Remember those evil earmarks that were bankrupting the nation?
An earmark put an elevator in the city's senior center. Another upgraded the city's water system.
Federal funds built the new road to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge that Brigham City invested $300,000 to buy rights of way for. A Department of Energy grant is helping the city's electrical company produce more solar and hydroelectric power.
Fife said candidates for city council tell him that they'd turn down all federal funds because they oppose federal spending, "but I tell them, 'Then how are you going to do anything?' That's the system we have."
Fife and the council earlier this year did cut spending and caught heck.
In a sweeping change of how the city's fire department is structured, Fife and the council eliminated health insurance for new members and cut a group of support-status firefighters who were too old to fight fires but wanted to remain active and still get city health insurance.
The change will save thousands of dollars, but members of the fire department who lost benefits weren't happy.
"So I may be a one-term mayor," Fife said, "but we did what we thought was right."
Wasatch Rambler is the opinion of Charles Trentelman. You can call him at 801-625-4232 or email ctrentelman@standard.net. He also blogs at www.standard.net.
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