Cache County Executive David Zook and Cache County Clerk & Auditor Jess Bradfield talk with Jason Williams on KVNU’s For the People on 5-4-2022
LOGAN — For the monthly County Hour on KVNU’s For the People program on Wednesday, our guests were Cache County Executive David Zook along with Cache County Clerk and Auditor Jess Bradfield.
Bradfield’s office is busy with the primary election coming next month, and he announced a venue that the public can come and view the process for themselves.
“We’re updating a building…looking at the space I should say, out at the (Logan-Cache) airport to hold our ballot operations center. Something that’s actually a space that’s going to house all of our records as well, (and) where we’re going to actually invite the public to come and watch us within six feet because of a new law that took place. We have to be able to allow everyone to watch everything, every part of the election within six feet,” explained Bradfield.
Bradfield said this is the only building in Cache County that would allow that kind of thing. Part of his job description has caused controversy in the county, that of also being auditor for Cache County.
Zook said, for him, he welcomes the audits.
“When Jess came into office, and he and I spoke about which departments would be most appropriate to audit, we talked about a lot of different things. And I actually volunteered, I said I want to be the first one. I was brand new in the office and I want to know how my office was going…how things had been going there, if there were things that we needed to change, I wanted to know about them. And then our recorder’s office also, Devron(Andersen), he was brand new. And he volunteered as well, and those were the first two that Jess performed,” said Zook.
He was asked about his encounter with a particular Cache County council member that led to a law enforcement investigation. Paul Borup later apologized to the county for his behavior.
“Jess and I…we kind of knew we were signing up for something a little more stressful than usual. When you run for office you know that you’re subjecting yourself to criticism and attacks and all of those things. And that’s why a lot of people stay out of this business, they don’t want to subject themselves to that. So we kind of knew that we were signing up for that kind of thing, although that doesn’t mean it’s okay for people to threaten elected officials. That’s never appropriate.”
But Zook said his employees did not sign up for that, they are there to serve the public and the whole situation has been very stressful for them.
Bradfield is hopeful that all parties are now ready to put the dispute behind them.