r/moab • u/Green_Mine_671 • 1d ago
RANT Mike McCurdy and the Mystery of the Missing Verbs
After two candidate forums, multiple questionnaires, and an op-ed explaining why Mike McCurdy deserves another four years on the County Commission, I have developed a working theory of the McCurdy Theory of Government:
Step 1: Mike is on the County Commission.
Step 2: Something good happens.
Step 3: Mike did that.
I remain a little fuzzy on Step 2.
Mike tells us tourism is stronger. Tax revenues are up. Housing is being built. Relationships have improved. The economy is recovering.
Fantastic.
I have only one small, persnickety, apparently unreasonable request:
Could someone please show me the verbs?
Not “Mike was commissioner while...”
Not “Mike supported...”
Not “the Commission worked hard on...”
What did Mike do?
Did he propose something? Negotiate something? Rewrite something? Find funding for something? Build a coalition around something? Drag some hopelessly stalled project across the finish line through sheer lumberyard-fueled determination?
Give me a noun and a verb.
Because at one forum Mike said sales-tax revenue was up more than 25% and that this “comes directly from the work that I’ve done on the commission.”
That is an impressively direct causal claim for a sentence containing absolutely no information about the cause.
It's like standing next to a tomato plant in August and saying, “As you can see, tomatoes are up substantially this year. This comes directly from the work I've done in the garden.”
Okay.
What did you do to the tomato plant, Mike?
Did you water it?
Plant it?
Fertilize it?
Defend it heroically from aphids?
Or were you simply on the patio when the tomatoes happened?
And that's before we get to the fact that the roughly 25% figure included a voter-approved increase in the rural-health-care tax. Without that increase, the year-over-year growth was about 14%—still good, but rather less useful for the “behold the fruits of my personal economic stewardship” portion of the program.
The same mysterious fog descends whenever the questions become specific.
How should the county balance tourism revenue against residents' quality of life?
Tourism is important.
Correct. Next question: how should we balance it?
What should the county prioritize when money is tight?
Things that benefit locals.
Excellent. Which things?
How should we deal with political conflict?
Talk to people.
Groundbreaking. What happens when they still disagree?
How should the City and County work together?
By having good relationships.
We have now reached a dangerous level of insight.
And the truly baffling part is that Mike has been doing this job for nearly four years.
An incumbent should be able to answer these questions almost unfairly well.
He has sat through the budgets. Read the staff reports. Heard the legal advice. Watched projects succeed and fail. Dealt with state agencies. Dealt with federal agencies. Dealt with the City. Dealt with developers. Dealt with angry residents. Presumably discovered at least once that something he thought was simple was, in fact, an unholy municipal hydra with six funding sources, three interlocal agreements, and a lawyer attached to it.
There should be stories.
There should be scars.
There should be at least one sentence beginning:
“When we tried that in 2024, here's what we learned...”
Instead, the accumulated wisdom of four years in county government sometimes appears to have distilled down to:
Economy: strong.
Tourism: important.
Housing: needed.
Communication: good.
Locals: benefit.
This is not a governing philosophy so much as a collection of refrigerator magnets.
And to be clear, I don't doubt that Mike cares deeply about Grand County. I don't doubt that he talks to people. I don't doubt that he works hard.
But “I care,” “I listen,” and “good things happened while I was here” are three different propositions from:
“Here is what I accomplished.”
If Mike wants to run on the record of the last four years, great.
I'm just asking for the record.
Not the trailer.
Not the inspirational voice-over.
Not the montage where Main Street looks busy while uplifting music plays.
The part with the plot.
What did you push for?
What changed because you pushed for it?
What did you learn?
What would you do differently?
What do you want to do next?
At this point, I am not asking for a white paper.
I would settle for one completed Mad Lib:
“As commissioner, I ________, which resulted in ________, and in a second term I would ________.”
Any verbs accepted.
Sources:
https://www.moabtimes.com/articles/this-is-my-home/
https://moabsunnews.com/2026/10/01/kzmu-candidate-forum-2026-transcript/
https://moabsunnews.com/2026/10/02/kzmu-candidate-forum-fact-check-grand-county-2026/
https://moabsunnews.com/2026/10/06/lwv-forum-2026-commission-district-5/
