in Schools
Park City School Board and the Curious Case of the Communications Conundrum
The Park City School Board had a plan. They knew they could benefit from hiring a communications specialist to help push through a new bond offering for rebuilding Treasure Mountain Junior High. The only question was whether they should hire someone full-time or to just get a consultant that could help through the bond election in November.
But something happened on the way to hiring their specialist. It turns out, it’s illegal.
Hiring someone to help with communications, of course, is legal. Both Summit County and Park City have communications personnel. However using public funds to try and influence a bond election is not legal. This was pointed out by Park City School District Business Administrator Todd Hauber during a recent school board meeting.
Now the Park City School Board and the Master Planning Committee, the committee deciding on whether to suggest rebuilding Treasure Mountain School and who originally suggested hiring communications personnel, are trying to figure out what they should do. It appears they would still like to engage someone to help with dissemination of information related to the bond but are trying to walk the tight line of making sure that no public money is spent related to “pushing the bond on the public.”
From comments made in the last Master Planning Meeting, it appears that their strategy is to come up with a list of all tasks a communications person could perform… that wouldn’t violate state statute. They will then ask their legal counsel to review the list. Then, if there is enough to do, they may engage someone.
The one thing to note, and which was stated during the meeting, is that they will only need this person if they decide to go forward with the bond. So, should the Master Planning Committee decide not to move forward with offering a bond for the rebuild of Treasure Mountain Junior High, this position would likely not be needed at all.
We at the Park Rag believe they are walking a slippery slope. If they hire a communications person to help, it will be difficult to constantly ensure that every action taken by this person could not be construed as “attempting to influence the public” using public funds (the money paid to this person). Even if they have a list of duties, approved by a lawyer, we all know that mistakes happen and that this person may cross the line into influencing the public. If that happens, it could put any potential bond election in jeopardy.
This should be interesting to watch over the next few months. Someone who knows how to work the local media and influence the public could be very useful to the School District. That said, how does that person stop at tasks like “surveying the public on their desires” and ensure that none of their activities actually influence the public. Could even this person creating a survey, which was suggested during a meeting, be construed as influencing the public? Sure. If the survey wasn’t written with great care.
If the school district decides to proceed forward, it’s going to be tough.
Video of Tuesday’s Meeting on the General Plan
Below are three videos taken during Tuesday’s Snyderville Basin Planning Commission meeting regarding the General Plan. They do a good job of explaining Summit County’s ideas on planning for growth, resident’s opinions, and what the Planning Commissioners took away from the evening’s discussion.
If you only have a few minutes of time, we would recommend either watching the first two citizen speakers in Video #2 or Video #3 (it’s pretty short).
Video #1: Planning Ideas from Summit County
Video #2: Public Comment
Video #3: Planning Commissioner Feedback
in Schools
Treasure Mountain Junior High School Faculty Will Be Asked For Opinions on Potential Changes
During Thursday’s Park City School District Master Planning Committee meeting, they discussed realigning grades. This means shifting which grades attend which school in Park City. For instance, the high school may become a 9-12th grade building. On Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, Treasure Mountain faculty will be asked to attend a meeting to gather their input on this process. They will be asked for feedback regarding various options such as should Treasure Mountain keep its current structure (8th and 9th), have 7th and 8th grade instead, or possibly include 5th to 8th grade.
Administrators will be looking for the pros and cons of changes. It should be a great opportunity for the faculty to speak their mind on upcoming issues. We feel the faculty have the best understanding of the impact of these type of changes on their students. In case the faculty hadn’t heard (we know that’s unlikely since the decision was made last night… and info flows fast), we just wanted to make sure they had the weekend to prepare their thoughts, in order to provide the best feedback possible.
in Schools
Park City School District’s Master Planning Committee is Considering Grade Realignment
The Park City School District formed a Master Planning Committee in 2014 to look at the options related to Treasure Mountain Junior High School. Many people within the school district feel that Treasure Mountain needs to be rebuilt and this committee was charged with providing a course of action (and potentially launching a bond offering to rebuild the school). As part of that, an interesting topic has surfaced: grade realignment. Grade realignment is the process of changing the grades that are held at each physical school . For instance, instead of only 10th-12th grade at the high school, it may now be 9th – 12th grade.
What realignments have been considered so far? Originally the committee was looking at one option:
- Pre-Kindergarten to 4th grade in the current elementary schools
- 5th to 6th (middle school)
- 7th to 8th (junior high school)
- 9th to 12th
In this scenario the district would likely build a new Treasure Mountain Junior High and add a wing to the high school. Other changes include ending elementary school at 4th grade. Ecker Hill would have 5th and 6th grade. Treasure Mountain would house 7th and 8th grade. Park City High School would hold 9th through 12th.
School Board President, and Master Planing Committee Member, Moe Hickey brought up an additional idea at Thursday’s meeting of the committee. He asked whether it would make sense to take a slightly different tack with regard to realignment:
- Pre-Kindergarten to 4th grade in the current elementary schools
- 5th to 8th (middle school)
- 9th to 12th
This plan would require additional expansion to Ecker Hill (to support all 5th-8th grade students) and an expansion to the high school to support the adding of the ninth grade (9th – 12th). However, no new Treasure Mountain school would need to be built. During the course of the discussion, they discussed research which concluded that minimizing transitions between buildings (i.e. the fewer different buildings that a student had to go to during their educational tenure) was better.
In this scenario, the benefit of expanding Ecker Hill is that it has a lot of land which could be used for expansion. Committee members asked about 5th graders mingling so close with 8th graders. They felt this could be handled through a separate wing to help segregate the younger students, much like they generally segregate 6th and 7th grade students between floors at Ecker Hill, today.
This, by no means, is the last discussion on this topic. Currently the committee is just tossing around ideas trying to understand what the options are. However, it is important that the Park City public be brought into the discussion. This not only includes teachers and administrators at these schools but the parents of all children attending our schools.
Right now, the committee is formulating ideas and planning a way forward. It is no reason to “freak out” but it is the right time to voice your opinion. Once the School Board receives a recommendation from the committee they will likely take it and run. So, now is your chance to actually make an impact.
If you have feelings about grade realignment, you can contact the School Board President Moe Hickey via email: . We personally feel that realigning grades may be a great solution to our current school issues and also provide a more sustainable course going forward. However, we completely understand if you see things differently. If so, you should let the Park City School Board know.
Summit County Council Person Roger Armstrong on a Tunnel to Park City
This morning Roger Armstrong was on KPCW with Lynn Ware Peek. She asked him about the Mountain Accord and a proposed tunnel to Park City. His response was one that is likely shared by many of us in Park City.
Ms Peek: Most recently we have heard this notion of a tunnel coming through from Cottonwood Canyons to Park City. What are your concerns?
Mr Armstrong: Cost is a big one. Mountain Accord brought experts in for a roundtable meeting and cost was one of the big show stoppers for them. They don’t see the cost benefit. The big plan is [something like] $6 billion. That sounds like a lot. I’m concerned… I view Park City as having a terrific brand. It really is a shining light in Utah and the ski industry generally and I’m concerned we will lose business if we have a connection … and this came up with a panel of experts…I’m concerned, if we have a number of day skiers from the Wasatch Front, they probably don’t do a lot for us. If you’ve skied PCMR this year, I think the addition of the Epic Pass has caused some crowding that I don’t think we’ve seen before. It’s more akin to holiday weekends that we’ve seen in the past. And I think adding to that probably doesn’t help us and if we degrade the visitor experience whether its inability to get into restaurants, or they have to ski a crowded slope, or traffic as we saw with ‘carmageddon’ … if you degrade that experience I think people spend their money somewhere else. I’m not saying we should abandon the process but we don’t have enough information right now.”
in Economy
Summit County Has Good Job Growth
Summit County seems to have experienced good job growth year over year.
Jeremy Ranch Citizens Demonstrate That You Can Make a Difference
During Tuesday’s Snyderville Basin Planning Commission meeting, regarding the next phase of the General Plan, 200 people filled the Ecker Hill Middle School Auditorium. It is likely 150 to 175 of those people were from Jeremy Ranch. In general, Jeremy Residents were concerned about their neighborhood receiving more development as part of a new concept called “receiving areas.” Receiving areas enable certain land owners to “send” development from their land to other places across the Snyderville Basin. While nothing has been set in stone, one of the proposed areas for sending development was a hill across from the Jeremy Store at the entrance to Jeremy Ranch.
To say that Jeremy residents were not enthusiastic about this idea would be an understatement. The evening began with the President of the Jeremy Ranch Home Owners Association reading a statement that criticized the plan for fundamentally altering the characteristics of a neighborhood that is well established. She said that “people live there for specific reasons” and a receiving area was not what they bought into. At one point she asked all residents from Jeremy Ranch who agreed with her statements to stand up. Gazing out into the crowd, we were hard pressed to find many people still in their seats.
Many of these Jeremy Ranch residents also chose to speak on their own behalf — so much so that Planning Commission head Colin DeFord said on multiple accounts “Jeremy Ranch, we hear your concerns.” The response shouted from the crowd, multiple times, was “yeah… but what are you going to do about it.” To his credit, Mr DeFord did a commendable job of managing a meeting that was tense at moments. He successfully balanced making sure public opinion was heard while trying to capture actionable items. On many occasions he would ask the speaker specifically how the speaker’s ideas could be incorporated into the General Plan. He was doing his best to focus the conversation on making the General Plan better.
However, Tuesday night belonged to Jeremy Ranch. The incorporation of a Jeremy Ranch receiving area into the General Plan struck a nerve. That nerve caused somewhere between 5-10% of the Jeremy Ranch’s 2000 residents to show up in solidarity. The official stance was that the Planning Commission would have to deeply consider what they heard from residents. However, perhaps Planning Commissioner Mike Franklin said it best when he said he felt the Planning Commission needed to take a hard look at whether they really wanted to make any area, that isn’t already heavily commercial-based, a receiving area.
From our view, we couldn’t be more thrilled. People became engaged in a topic that will impact them one way or another. Now they own part of the process … and that ownership has the potential to help us make a better Park City.
It was truly one of those nights that gets us excited about Park City’s future. Our community has a number of challenges ahead of us but this gave us hope that we can all work together to solve them. It also should give people the knowledge that they can individually make difference. Because of each of those persons that showed up on a random Tuesday in January, it is likely their hill will remain open space for the foreseeable future. That’s all they really wanted, and because they chose to get involved, they will likely get it.
in Economy, Environment
Uinta Black Waxy Crude Prices Keep Falling
Uinta Black Waxy Crude is down 13% in the last week. On Jan 5th it was $32.04. Today it is listed at $27.89 per barrel.
It has to be hard to make capital decisions for energy companies when your prices (and thus profits) are falling like a rock.
We Live Blogged the Snyderville Basin Meeting on the General Plan Phase 2
We were at Ecker Middle School to cover the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission (SBPC) meeting regarding the General Plan Phase 2. Click read more below to read all the gory details. We will also be posting a video as soon as we can.
There is a Distrust of Summit County Government When it Comes to Development
We’ve followed the Snyderville Basin planning process in great detail for a while. Granted, by many people’s standards across the Basin, who have been here since the 60s, 70s, or 80s, we’ve only been here for a drop in the bucket. That said, we were so upset with some events a few years ago that we began going to every possible Planning Commission and County Council meeting we could.
During that time, we gained great respect for many of our county leaders. While we don’t always agree with their opinions, a reasonable person can see that our leaders are generally good people who try their best.
That said, as you talk to people across the community, many don’t share our opinion. They look at what Park City and the Basin has become (in their eyes) and blame that on the powers that be. In some ways, that is also reasonable. We have a representative government for a reason. Not everyone can provide input or attend every meeting and they depend on the people they elect, and thus the people the elected officials appoint, to make good decisions.
Often, the squeaky wheels get labeled as “crazies.” Yet, many of the people we’ve talked with don’t fit that mold. Other times, they are called tree-huggers, because they never met a business they liked. Yet, a decent portion of people we’ve talked to are worried about property-owners’ rights. They want to know when they can build what they want on their land. They frankly don’t trust Summit County to ever let them do what they think is their fundamental right.
Perhaps the best you can say is that if no one is happy, maybe something is being done correctly. Yet, that view doesn’t lead us to where we need to go as a community. We need to be able to have open conversations that are backstopped by trust in our government. That trust isn’t something that will be gained back overnight.
We believe the General Plan Phase 2 discussions are a great starting point, though. Often times the public will come together to provide input on topics. Yet the moment a citizen concludes their comment, it’s the last time they ever hear of what became of their idea or concern. The party line is that “ideas are incorporated” into the final plan. It’s frankly a copout.
What we hope happens is that every idea or concern is recorded by the Planning Commission and the Community Development Department. We then hope that each is discussed and a written response to each general idea (there are bound to be overlaps) is made available on the county’s website. Someone wants a 100 foot statue of Jesus straddling I-80 like the Colossus of Rhodes, don’t ignore the idea, tell them that’s really up to UDOT but that it would be dangerous…so it is not being considered by the county. Someone says we need to stop all development now. Tell them there are 2.7 million square feet of commercial space and 3,100 units of residential property that have already been approved. There’s nothing that can be done about existing rights, just like they wouldn’t want the county to confiscate their house or land.
Regaining trust is about treating people with respect, telling them when they are right and wrong, as well as providing good explanations that they understand. As part of that, it’s likely the county will learn something too. We understand that a process like the one suggested above will take a lot of time. However, if done well it goes a long way to help people understand not only their concerns but the concerns of others too… as well as why decisions are being made.
The alternative is to listen to 300 people speak at Tuesday night’s General Plan event, write down some of it, incorporate a little of it, and produce a new draft of the General Plan. That will leave people wondering if they were even heard and more importantly why they even showed up. They’ll feel like they weren’t part of the conversation and they will learn nothing… except that the county is just like they knew it was.
This really is a good opportunity to change a number of impressions across the Basin. We just hope the powers that be seize it.
Parkrag
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