Mr Putt Goes to School Board
One of the best movies of all-time is Mr Smith Goes to Washington. Jimmy Stewart plays an idealistic and naive man who gets appointed to the Senate. When he arrives in Washington D.C. he can’t believe how badly the system actually works. In the end, he launches a filibuster, in a final attempt to make sure land in his home state is used for a worthwhile cause.
We couldn’t help but think back to this movie when Summit County Community Development Director, Patt Putt, attended a meeting of the Park City School District’s Master Planning Committee. The meeting was largely about realigning grades and where ultimately to put the new Treasure Mountain Junior High School (TMJHS) . The conversation had culminated in two ideas, put TMJHS at Ecker Hill or put TMJHS somewhere on Kearns Blvd. The problem, as the committee saw it, was that adding 800 students to Ecker Hill would cause a “traffic nightmare.” The problem with putting it on Kearns is that it would add 400 students (and probably 400 cars) to the traffic problem coming into town on 248.
Mr Putt then speaks up and asks if they have considered putting it on some other piece of land. You see, Mr. Putt has been neck-deep in trying to plan for growth in the Snyderville Basin. He, members of his staff, and the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission have been trying to come up with creative solutions to handling the growth and the traffic that comes with it. He knows what land is destined for development. He knows what the impact of that development will be. He also knows areas that could handle more development. So, his question wasn’t without merit. He obviously had some ideas.
The response he received was that the committee had discussed increasing the boundaries of the school district but that it was complicated because they didn’t want to take tax dollars away from South Summit School District. So, if he could find some land inside the current boundaries, they could talk. Then talk shifted back to the options on the table. The problem with adding schools inside the boundaries is that there just isn’t much open land and it may not be optimal for handling growth. However, there is quite a bit of land outside of those boundaries that may be able to be much better suited for this.
We heard Mr Putt try once again after the meeting concluded. He said something, to a couple committee members, to the effect of, “If there was a way to use some land outside of the boundaries, without impacting South Summit tax revenues, could we pursue that?” The answer was pretty much, “probably not.” At that point, we left. Perhaps, then logic entered the discussion, and Mr Putt was able to convince at least one member of the committee to consider something else. But we doubt it.
This should be the perfect example of organizations working together to solve our collective problems. Everyone knows there is a traffic issue. Yet, it is likely that they’ll put TMJHS on Kearns and realign the grades. That means 400 extra kids will be going to school on Kearns Blvd every day. Add that to the new Park City Heights (200+ homes) and that entry corridor, or should we say parking lot, is going to get even worse. It’s like being 50 pounds overweight, but deciding you’ll eat 3 extra pieces of pie. It’s just dumb.
Frankly, if in even this obvious of a case, our different government organizations can’t work together, we wonder if they ever could. To borrow from another Jimmy Stewart movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, it’s unlikely even a guardian angel could fix this mess. At the end of our movie, instead of little Zu Zu saying “Look, Daddy. Teacher says, every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings,” she’ll say, “I wonder where teacher was today?” Jimmy Stewart will reply, “she was probably stuck in traffic.”
With Another Sundance Starting Today…
With another Sundance starting today, we thought this was appropriate on a number of levels.
And no, Sundance’s economic impact to Park City isn’t lost on us. It just reminds us that everything has its price.
Tesoro Pipeline On Hold
We just heard on KPCW that the Tesoro pipeline was put on hold on Tuesday. We don’t have any more information than that but as long as oil prices stay low, hopefully Summit County won’t have to worry about the pipeline.
The Likely Outcome With Park City School’s Grade Realignment
Park City School District’s Master Planning Committee has been looking at realigning grades (i.e., shifting which grades are in which school buildings) as part of its exploration of rebuilding Treasure Mountain Junior High School. The committee will then make a recommendation to the Park City School Board. The board then votes on it.
During Wednesday’s meeting, the group said multiple times that it was likely they would at least recommend pre-kindergarten through 4th grade in our elementary schools and 9th grade through 12th grade at Park City High School. This leaves the question of what to do with 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. There are a couple of competing ideas, one would be to have a building with 5th and 6th graders and another building with 7th and 8th graders. A second idea is to have a campus that would house 5th through 8th but have some separation so that 5th graders are not with 8th graders.
As Wednesday’s meeting drew to a close, it seemed fairly evident that a number of committee members were opposed to housing 5th through 8th on the same campus. This was due to the question of where that campus would go (likely at the Ecker Hill school site), the traffic it would generate, and just some general “bad feelings” about the idea.
So, as of now, our money is on Pre-K to 4th at elementary schools, 5th and 6th at Ecker Hill, 7th and 8th at the new Treasure Mountain Junior High (likely still on Kearns), and 9th to 12th at the High School. That said, this of course has to be finalized by the committee, passed by the School Board, and voters would need to vote on a bond for both building a new Treasure Mountain and adding on to Park City High School. So, it has a little ways to go but don’t be surprised if its the final outcome. If this isn’t a course of action you like, ">you need to email the school board immediately. They have received very little negative feedback about this idea. So, as they say, speak now or forever hold your peace.
Receiving Areas in The Basin Being Tabled For Now
We just heard from the Summit County Community Development Department and it sounds like they are holding off on the concept of receiving areas in the General Plan Phase 2. There will still likely be some language referencing that they may be considered in the future. It appears the county wants to consider all options and have details available for the public before they would move forward
So, if you were concerned about extra development occurring in your neighborhood, it appears there will be much more discussion before receiving areas happen in the Basin.
Please Just Tell It Like It Is… The Citizens of Park City and Summit County are Paying For Our Leaders’ Trips to Switzerland
In Wednesday’s Park Record, an article discusses Summit County and Park City officials going to Switzerland to learn about trains and gondolas. While we are sure we’ll have more to say about that, what really irks right now is a statement attributed to Park City Councilman Andy Beerman. The Park Record says, “The cost [of the trip] was not known at the meeting. Beerman said it is likely the Mountain Accord will pay most or all of the cost.”
Oh, thank god! At least our tax dollars won’t be used to fund this trip.
Wait. What’s that you say? The Mountain Accord was funded by Summit County and Park City governments, using citizen tax dollars? It can’t be true.
Unfortunately, it is. Park City agreed to contribute $100,000 and Summit County also agreed to contribute $100,000 to Mountain Accord. The State of Utah also agreed to contribute $2.5 Million (through UDOT).If we recall the discussions that were happening at the time, we were told that Summit County needed to contribute money to “get a seat at the table.” It looks like they also needed to contribute to get a seat on the Jungfraubahn Railway.
So, please just tell us the truth. Tell us that Summit County and Park City residents are springing for this. Don’t try to make it sound like the trip is being funded by some benevolent organization like “Mountain Accord.” When we hear that, it just makes it seem all the more fishy.
The New County Manager Needs to Know He Doesn’t Work FOR the County Council
This morning on the radio, KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher interviewed Summit County’s new County Manager Tom Fisher. He seems like a very affable fellow. He made a number of good points like “I just want to step in and learn and listen and understand everything I don’t know because I don’t know a whole lot.” That shows humility and gives the feeling this isn’t his first rodeo. However, one statement of Mr Fisher’s gave us pause:
“The main thing to understand is that I do work for the council and they give me my marching orders and the county’s marching orders.”
In one way that is true. The County Manager is hired and can be fired by the county council. As they say, he serves at the pleasure of the council. Yet, in many aspects of his job, he is an equal to the members of the council. His job is the Chief Executive Officer of Summit County. He runs the day to day operations of the county and has the power to appoint individuals to offices and positions. The council is the legislative body of the county. The difference is that the county council does not perform any administrative or executive functions. There are many decisions, like final approval of the Canyons golf course, that have fallen to the County Manager.
This is not to say that the council and manager should be odds. They should generally be working as a team. However, there are times when the manager has to stand up say, “No. This is my decision.” That’s something that former County Manager Bob Jasper was good at.
We hope Mr. Fisher realizes that’s his role too… and comes up to speed quickly enough to make those tough decisions when they are both important and HIS to make.
Why Living in Park City Is So Great
You never know what is going to run by at noon on a Monday…
Is Salt Lake County Providing a Blueprint for Incorporating the Snyderville Basin?
Two years ago, the idea of making Snyderville Basin into its own city was brought up during a Summit County Council meeting. A potential name was even bantered about: Moose Valley. It’s the name that likely caused most residents in unincorporated Summit County to give pause. They would lose their “Park City” address.
The upside of becoming a city is that we could finally collect Resort Tax from Canyons resort. Only cities can collect this 6.3% tax on spending, while counties can’t. With the revenues that could be brought through this tax, many improvements could be made throughout our community.
So, this brings us back to the topic of incorporating the Snyderville Basin. Today’s Salt Lake Tribune reports that Salt Lake County Mayor Ben McAdams “has a plan to create a ‘metropolitan township,’ preserving the tax base needed to provided services in unincorporated townships.. while maintaining the right of the communities to become cities. These townships are areas like Emigration Canyon and Millcreek, that are part of Salt Lake County, and are thought of as Salt Lake City, but are not officially part of the city. This is much like how Snyderville Basin is part of Summit County but not officially part of Park City.
McAdams plan is to make an official service district, that provides all services Salt Lake county provides. The Salt Lake County council would then meet (along with public hearings) to determine boundaries for townships and add specific structure to how the service district would work. McAdams is also working with the state legislature to draft a “Community Preservation Act.” If approved it would have unincorporated-area residents go to the polls in November to answer the question “Do you want your area to become part of a)a metropolitan township or b)city?” If an area votes to for this, a five member council would be elected to enable residents to have control over municipal services like road construction/maintenance and animal control services. After forming the Council, each community would have 6 months to decide whether to stay in the special service district or provide for its own services. Either way, they can continue to be a township or city.
While this proposal and legislation are targeted specifically at Salt Lake County, should it pass and be reasonably successful, there is no reason to think that the Snyderville Basin couldn’t follow in its footsteps. The Basin could use it as a blueprint for how to proceed with its own incorporation ideas.
Why would the Snyderville Basin ever consider such a move? There are a number of reasons: the resort tax, more control over policy, and potentially more control over tax dollars. Our future would be guided more out of [insert our new city name here] than Coalville.
That last sentence does bring up the elephant in the room… the address. Those of us in the Snyderville Basin would no longer live in “Park City.” Maybe that’s OK. People are saying Park City ain’t what she used to be. People are saying “Have you seen the traffic in Park City?” Perhaps the Park City brand isn’t what it used to be.
Maybe it’s time for “New Park.” We know, that’s clearly been done before. We at the Park Rag are clearly not into marketing… but we’re sure some bright people around here are. So, maybe some marketing genius can come up with something. If not, saying you live “right outside Park City” might be good enough.
Weren’t We Trying to Diversify our Local Economy?
Coming out of the Great Recession, we heard a lot about diversifying our local economy. We had to make sure that tourism wasn’t our driving force. We needed other businesses. We moved forward with ideas like the Boyer Tech Park, in order to bring Hi Tech jobs to Park City.
Yet 2 years later we don’t really hear about that anymore. We hear about traffic… and Vail… and growth… and more growth. However, we don’t hear much, if anything, about economic diversification.
Where did that go? Do we care about it anymore? Did Vail change everything? Does traffic outweigh diversification? Will we feel the same when the next recession hits? Did we give up?
It just seems strange and makes us wonder if today’s “hot buttons” will vanish in due time. If Utah doesn’t grow as much as forecasted for two to three years, will all our conversations about growth disappear into the ether? Who knows.
But we do still wonder if we should be figuring out how to bring 100s of manufacturing jobs to the Basin and not necessarily where “Trader Joe’s” should go. We guess only time will tell if we have focused on the right things.