SUMMIT COUNTY — The most recent survey, conducted during the first two weeks of August, showed local business conditions have improved and future expectations remain high. The Summit County Business Barometer is a quarterly survey that attempts to monitor local economic activity and compare it to state and national trends.
  The current activity component of the latest survey rose to 3.38, up from 3.11 in the first quarter of this year. A scale of 1 (lowest activity) to 5 (highest activity) is used to tabu­late the results. On a comparative basis at the state level, the Business Leaders Confidence Index produced by the CU Leeds Business School contracted to a record low of 41.7 in the second quarter, compared to 45.1 in the first quarter.
  Another component of the recent survey, the business outlook indica­tor, is intended to gauge confidence and expectations over the upcoming 12 months. The second-quarter reading of 3.53 was down only slightly from the first-quarter level of 3.64. At the national level, the Conference Board Consumer Confi­dence Index fell to 51.0 in June ver­sus 65.9 at the end of March, and consumers were the most pes­simistic about the future in the 41-year history of the index.
  The focus question for the latest survey was “How would you sug­gest we solve the Dillon Dam Road issue?” The survey received an extremely wide range of sugges­tions ranging from the most comi­cal (unprintable) to the most drastic — “drain the lake and move Dillon back to its original site.” The most common sugges­tion referred to the continued mon­itoring/ surveillance of the traffic across the Dam Road and limiting access to certain types of vehicles.
  The Summit County Business Barometer survey is e-mailed each quarter to the Summit Chamber of Commerce members but is accessible to all Summit County residents via a link on the Summit Daily News web­site. The survey is sponsored by the Summit Chamber of Commerce in partnership with Edward Jones Investments, the Summit Daily News and J. Boozer and Associates.