Emergency job debated

The Salt Lake County Council wants to avoid a power struggle in the event of an emergency.

Mayor Peter Corroon is asking the council to fund the addition of an emergency-management coordinator for the county, a position that will be debated tonight at budget workshop hearings. Corroon said creating the position is a matter of life and death.

"I don't want to risk people's lives because we're not ready," Corroon said.

After a brief debate about the position Friday, the council put off a decision until tonight and asked the mayor to rewrite the job description for the position.

Councilman Michael Jensen, who also serves as chief deputy for the Unified Fire Authority, said the UFA is responsible for handling county emergencies and questioned how the new position would coordinate with that.

"We have an emergency manager," Jensen said. "The fear is in the case of an emergency, you would have two people vying for control."

Corroon said that the emergency-services coordinator would "do the grunt work" to prepare for an emergency. The coordinator would find companies to provide the county with supplies, as well as look at surrounding cities and see what other emergency plans already exist. The emergency-services coordinator would also work with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to negotiate the use of church facilities in the case of a disaster.

The mayor and his staff first became aware of the need for the position when they held an earthquake simulation last fall to test the county's preparedness for an emergency, and the results were not pretty. Corroon's staff discovered that many of the emergency services that should be coordinated throughout the county were not. They also found that the county lacked a comprehensive management plan for big emergencies.

Jensen said the council is open to the idea if Corroon makes it clear that the UFA is in charge when any major disaster happens.

"We want as much help as we can get," Jensen said.

Councilman Mark Crockett questioned the move, saying county government should already be prepared for the worst.

"I think that's somewhat disturbing, and I don't think appointing a coordinator necessarily fixes a job that is somebody else's already," Crockett said.

The council has already approved several items in Corroon's proposed budget and added a few pet projects of its own last week: