LOGAN — David Erickson oversees the north district of Cache County on the Cache County Council and he’s running for reelection.
On KVNU’s For the People program on Wednesday, Erickson said it’s been a challenge in his part of the county, as it is elsewhere, in dealing with growth.
“I know Smithfield is experiencing some tremendous growth, Richmond also. The only thing that stymies those things is possibly the development of some water and water resources. But as far as the county, that’s kind of a big chunk of what is actually still county out through there in a lot of those areas. We’re only limited again by what the policies of each of the cites will allow in the growth,” he said.
Erickson defined what the county’s role is in managing growth
“Number one, everyone kind of says that the county is in control of those things and actually we want the cities to be in control of their own destinies,” he explained. “They are the ones that…their growth, their type of city that they want, the style, the size of their homes, what they want to do, their percentage of rentals, all those kinds of things. That’s their business.”
He explained that growth should always be internally from those cities, then built out. If there are county pockets of developments, it becomes very costly to maintain services to those areas.
Erickson said cities are much better equipped to handle other issues that have been discussed, such as recreation needs for its citizens.
“Again, the cities do so much better of finding and having places for people, and mass people. They’re the ones that can have the parks, they’re the ones that can have the recreation sites and centers and stuff like that that they need,” he added. “The county shouldn’t. We’re not in that business, we don’t even have a recreation department.”
Erickson’s challenger is Jon-David Jorgensen, who was a guest on Monday’s program.