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…
in Huh?
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.
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: mhickey@pcschools.us. 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.
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