Weekly Newsreel – September 25, 2026

On this edition of the Weekly Newsreel, KZMU News and Public Affairs Director Margaret Osborne talks with Maggie McGuire, the editor of Moab Sun News, about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Moab on September 21st, the Red Rocks Arts Festival, Moab City speed limits updates, and the Fund 47 transportation fund.

Transcript:

Margaret Osborne: Welcome to the Weekly Newsreel. I’m Margaret Osborne, the news and public affairs director, and I’m here with Maggie McGuire, editor of the Moab Sun News.

Maggie McGuire: Hey, Margaret! Old friends.

Margaret: How’s it going?

Maggie: Good to see you again.

Margaret: We’re here to talk about the news of the week. So I want to start with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which was in Moab this week. What can you tell us about that?

Maggie: ICE came to town and actually arrested four Moab residents, two Mexican nationals and two Turkish nationals. They were calling it a targeted enforcement operation, but it really freaked people out all day on Monday. There’s plenty we don’t know, down to the fact that we don’t even know where these people are now being detained.

Margaret: And so the sheriff posted a video online this week in response. What did it say?

Maggie: Yeah. So actually, it’s interesting, because here in Grand County, the Sheriff’s Office and the Moab Police Department, neither of them participate in programs that deputize local officers to enforce immigration law. Both entities have said, like, we just don’t want to get involved in immigration law. But they do, of course, need to know if people are being pulled over and arrested. One of these arrests, actually, one of the women involved called 911 because, of course, there were people outside her car who were trying to to detain her. One of the things that maybe didn’t go as smoothly as planned is the sheriff was, I would say, peeved that he felt like he wasn’t given prior notice that there was going to be any enforcement activity happening in town. It seems like that’s was kind of a dispatch issue. We have a shared dispatch here in Moab, and that’s been kind of interesting and problematic in in a couple of different ways. And in this case, I guess ICE called dispatch and said, “Hey, we want to talk to Moab Police Department, ” and they got put through to Moab Police Department, and that message just didn’t get shared around. So, some structural problems there.

Margaret: Interesting. So, by shared dispatch, you mean shared between the police department and the sheriff?

Maggie: Yeah.

Margaret: What does this mean for for residents moving forward?

Maggie: I would say that this is obviously an escalation in ICE activity here in town. You know, this is the the second enforcement activity, I believe, this year. Sometimes we read about these issues on a national scale, but this is of course really impacting us here in Moab. And these are community members, you know, and it’s also something that impacts people who are just trying to drive through town or drop their kids off.

Margaret: Are there any resources available for people?

Maggie: Absolutely, yeah. We have the Moab Valley Multicultural Center here in Moab, which is an incredible resource. They do so much for the community, like it’s unbelievable. They offer low cost immigration legal services. On Monday, they were organizing rides for people, you know, providing translation services. They are offering help locating anyone who’s in custody. So, really trying to to be there for community members who who need a friend. One other thing I’ll say is that Moab Police Chief Lex Bell really wanted to stress that community members here should just know that they should never be, like, afraid of reaching out to local authorities because of their immigration status. That’s part of why they don’t have – aren’t participating in this deputization program. You know, he just wanted to really make sure that people weren’t concerned that, you know, if they call 911 about something that they’re they’re risking being deported.

Margaret: Okay, the next story that we have is about Fund 47. What is Fund 47?

Maggie: Fund 47 is a voter-approved quarter cent transportation tax. Now this was, like, passed years ago, back in 2015, and currently in budgets over the past few years, it’s been paying for the county’s trails crew and paved path maintenance. But since August 4th of this year, it’s also been used to fund the county’s share of the Arches shuttle pilot, or at least a large chunk of that. So that was actually the vote that, recently, a couple of commissioners actually walked out of that vote, because they were so in opposition of using this funding to cover this shuttle pilot. This is an interesting twist on that. It seems that the state auditor’s office was queried by by Commissioner Bill Winfield about how Fund 47 could legally be used. The auditor’s office is obviously the place where those decisions get made, and of course, Grand County, we went through, like, a f a irly terrible audit process that rules that some of the the tax usage was out of bounds. And Grand County actually ended up having to pay money back to the to the state, so. The auditor did send us a letter, and it opines that actually some of the uses of Fund 47 that Grand County is doing, in this letter, might be outside of what the state auditor’s office considers kosher. This is super interesting, just because this opinion kind of goes against the use of these funds, not only here, but in other counties. So this letter just basically says that that funds from this tax “must serve a practic a l transportation function, enabling moving between distinct points rather than independent recreational amenities.” The way that this is being interpreted by folks who are questioning the use of these funds to support the trails program is by saying, like, the majority of these trails, you know, are recreational, and so this money shouldn’t go to fund staffing, any of that. So this actually really threatens like a giant chunk of the county’s active trails and transportation budget.

Margaret: What does that mean for, you know, the county going forward?

Maggie: Well, I mean, right now, it’s just in the argument phase. This letter from the auditor’s office is – it doesn’t have like the weight of an order or anything like that. This is, like, an advisory, I suppose you would say. So, at the budget meeting for the county, you know, there was a philosophical argument, and what it came down to is both sides really are looking to County Attorney Stephen Stocks to come down with what his legal opinion is. Both sides claim that they’ve asked him for that for months, but you know, it is it is a a hot button issue . In this week’s edition of the Sun News, we’ve got a letter to the editor from Commissioner Jacques Hadler, you know, a proponent of the trails program. He’s been on the budget committee for quite a while. He says that it’s hard for him not to think that the attack on this trails funding is just to free up money to go towards future years of the shuttle program. So it’s going to be a fight. I think that’s what it’s shaping up for.

Margaret: What happens if the county decides something and the state disagrees with it?

Maggie: Yeah, it’s a great question, right? It would be a lawsuit. And this particular commission has been somewhat reticent to get involved in in legal battles, so we’ll have to see. All of these kind of like, complex policy stories too, you know, some of them stretch back years. Some of them involve, like I say, close readings of legislation and maybe listening to meetings from years ago. When these become like larger stories, we do try to like gather all of that information in one place outside of an article, so that if folks do want to go deep on it, they can. And so on Fund 47, we are putting together that page. So if folks are fired up about this, we do have basically one of our, like, primary source document pages. So it’s a timeline that has, like, everything that we’ve so far considered relevant, or someone has mentioned, where you can find that information, if there was a meeting, if you can listen to it, transcripts, all of that kind of stuff. So, go through them. Let us know what you find. Because, you know, we’re a small paper and we rely on the expertise of the community anyway.

Margaret: Also from the council, speed limits.

Maggie: Speed limits, yeah. If you like speeding on 100 West, the speed limit there has been reduced by five miles an hour. The speed limit on Mill Creek was not reduced. The city is doing a an immense amount of work on its, like, safe streets efforts. So actually, for Mill Creek, they were like, “Well, we’re not going to like pull the speed limit down, but it is on our list for like basically just redesigning the road so that naturally people are driving slower.” Part of the reason why this speed limit issue got kind of brought up separately from the safe streets efforts and the the redesigning of streets is because of another legal opinion, that there is a state law that basically says that we couldn’t have separate speed limits from for UTVs, which the city did have along these corridors. So when they basically pulled the UTV speed limit, you know, a lot of people who live on those corridors were like, “Please, could we figure out something that like keeps that effect?”

Margaret: Okay, the Red Rocks Art Festival.

Maggie: Yeah, are you planning on going to any of this?

Margaret: Heck yeah, I’m going.

Maggie: Ooh, all right. The Red Rock Arts Festival, I feel like, has really blossomed. This is the descendant of the Plein Air Festival that used to be here. And it was sort of reimagined a few years ago to be a more general fest and concentrate on a – basically a street fair. So there is going to be a bunch of musical acts, a lot of, like, local folks doing some vending, a bunch of workshops. So they’re actually going to do the premiere of a local play, which is great, super cool. It’s a new stage play that is a, kind of dramatization of a independently very fascinating historical incident where in 1955, two dudes decided to just swim the Grand Canyon. The end. Like, that’s incredible. So a local playwright, Sam Van Wetter, wrote this up. It’s being performed with actors locally. Incredible, like, weird props and sets. It’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s premiering at the Red Rock Arts Festival, and then it’s also going to be running at Star Hall from October first to the fourth, I believe. Again, there’s a lot of cool cultural things happening in Moab.

Margaret: There’s an all-female brass band coming.

Maggie: That’s what I’m excited about.

Margaret: Excited for that one.

Maggie: Mhm. There’s all kinds of awesome things happening and awesome people playing. Directly in front of Brass Queens, there is going to be a kazoosical, a kazoo-along.

Margaret: Oh my gosh!

Maggie: Isn’t that amazing?

Margaret: I’m so on board.

Maggie: I’m pretty excited about it. So that’s going to be at 4:30 p.m. right in front of the main stage. You can bring a kazoo if you have one, or there will be kazoos available. There will be a kazoo lesson, and then there may be a kazoo parade. So, you know, why wouldn’t you want to be involved in that?

Margaret: I want to be involved in that. When is the Red Rocks Art Festival?

Maggie: So it’s taking place all this weekend because there are workshops and events on Friday and Sunday. The main presentation of the Street Fest is going to be on Saturday, and that’s going to be right in front of the the Moab Arts Building for that whole block. So, you know, I call it downtown Moab.

Margaret: Downtown Moab.

Maggie: It’s the place to see and be seen.

Margaret: Well, thank you so much for being here, Maggie.

Maggie: I love it every time, and I’m thrilled by a new face.

Margaret: Thanks for listening, everyone, and have a great rest of your day.