While Cedar City is seeking that new developments contain a certain percentage of affordable housing, seven of 10 new people in the city are from outside the state and building large homes or even second homes. "They're elevating everything to the point where people are now asking, 'Are my kids going to be able to have a job and still live in this town?' " Sherratt said.

Sherratt said he fears Cedar City is becoming like Ashland, Ore. "It's come to the point there that you cannot work and live in Ashland. You have to live in Medford and drive over because it's been taken over by the people who come in and build great, big homes. San Francisco came in, bought up all the Main Street and made it kind of a resort town for the wealthy, and that could easily happen in Cedar City," Sherratt said.

The mayor suggested that GOED's primary help to rural Utah could be getting out the word that good jobs are available there. But he, like others, suggested a targeted approach to problems.

"I think you have to be guided by the people who live in that area," he said.

Bill Boyle, a board member from Monticello, said rural Utah "is not a monolith."

"There's no one solution that's going to fit any one criteria. I think that the solutions for the most part are held by those in those local areas, and I would think that the state would be well-served by serving as a resource to each community or each county or each individual area to find the solutions that would be unique to those areas ... because downtown St. George is a world away from downtown Montezuma Creek."

"I think we've figured out the problems — if we could just figure out the answers," McKeachnie said. "We're working on it."

Board Chairman David Simmons, who prompted the rural Utah discussion by asking what the board could do to get more high-tech jobs in remote parts of the state, said any approach should result in quality jobs. In order to help the board get suggestions on ways to help rural Utah, Simmons proposed conducting board meetings in locations outside the Wasatch Front.

"We get too centered here in Salt Lake, I think, on these meetings," Simmons said.

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E-mail: bwallace@desnews.com