The mother had been pregnant for longer than it seemed. The father had big plans for the child that was about to come. On January 10, 2015 a baby was born to a very excited family. Was it a boy? Was it a girl? No, it was a transportation program.

A reader sent through an anonymous tip entitled, Attached is the Birth Certificate for Mountain Accord. Make no mistake – it is a transportation program. It included a Federal Register notice Headlined by “Notice of Scoping Meetings on Regional Planning Effort To Improve Public Transportation in the Central Wasatch Mountains in Salt Lake and Summit Counties, UT.” The Federal Register is the Federal Government’s Newspaper and includes notices of potential federal government proposals and rule changes so that the public can participate in the process.

In this case, the notice is very interesting for people concerned with the Mountain Accord. It begins with a summary:

“The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) and the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) issue this early scoping notice to advise other agencies and the public that they intend to explore potential alternatives for improving public transportation service to and within the central Wasatch Mountains of Salt Lake County and Summit County, Utah. UTA is conducting this work through formal agreement and partnership with numerous state and local agencies, including Salt Lake County, Summit County, Wasatch Front Regional Council, Salt Lake City, Cottonwood Heights, Sandy City, Park City, Town of Alta, and others. This early scoping process is part of a regional planning effort to examine regional connectivity for the central Wasatch Mountains. ”

It continues, somewhat damningly, “The purpose of the project is to improve regional transportation connectivity and to facilitate safe, convenient, and reliable year-round transportation to destinations within the central Wasatch Mountains from the population bases, recreational destinations, and the regional transit networks in the Salt Lake Valley and Park City/Summit County.

It’s fairly hard to argue with our tipster when the document says the purpose is to improve transportation connectivity. It’s even harder when it starts talking about year-round transportation and regional transportation networks.

That said, the notice does mention watersheds, land use planing, forests, wilderness, and air quality. The problem with these statements, though, is that they are clearly secondary to the transportation elements. For instance it says, “This notice invites the public to help frame transportation improvements, while considering the inherent interdependence of watershed protection, wilderness protection, land use planning, and economic opportunities in the central Wasatch Mountains.” What it is saying is that they want to make transportation improvements but as part of that, environmental concerns shouldn’t be ignored. I take that as them saying, let’s not cut down an entire forest to build a road. It’s not that we need to protect the watersheds, so in order to do that we need to address transportation. There is a clear distinction there.

Later in the notice it says the need for the project arises from (in order):

• The need to meet the growing connectivity needs of the central Wasatch Mountains for the region’s workers and recreationalists by increasing mobility, access and transportation capacity to and from activity centers in the region.
• The need to serve increasing worker and recreational trips between Salt Lake City environs and Wasatch Mountain locations in Salt Lake and Summit Counties.
• The need to support source water protection goals.
• The need to support land use and forest management plan goals.
• The need to improve air quality in the Salt Lake City Valley to maintain Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards.
• The need to improve road safety conditions in the central Wasatch Mountains

Those who would argue the Mountain Accord is about the environment would point to the later bullet points and say, “see it is about the environment.” So, I’m not going to deny that either there is some intention to improve some environmental aspects of the Wasatch or that the environmental clauses were added to placate certain groups that could derail the Mountain Accord process. Either one of those options seem plausible.

Yet, when we take the entire notice as a whole, the environment seems a distant third to transportation. The notice says proposed transportation corridors and routes are based on the Wasatch Front Regional Council Transportation Plan. I took a quick look at that proposal and it seems to deal very little with the environment. It also references the Utah Unified Transportation Plan. As you might expect that is entirely a transportation plan devoid of “environmental protections for the Wasatch.”

So, where does that leave me. More than ever this notice convinces me that the Mountain Accord is foremost a transportation plan designed to get more people into the Wasatch, increase tourism, and drive revenue for the state.

That said, I COULD BE CONVINCED that Mountain Accord is really an environmental plan with some transportation components. How would they do that? Here are some ideas:

• Tell me specifically what will be done to protect the watershed in the Wasatch. Don’t give me flowery language that says, “we will endeavor to work with parties to preserve the watershed.” If they have picked the train company to go up Little Cottonwood (which they allegedly have with Stadler), they can create a 100 page, deeply documented, resource that will explain EXACLTY what will be done. It needs to be highly technical enough so that a panel of university professors would say, “yes, that makes sense, will probably work, and the outcome will be X.”
• They need to do the same for the protection of wildlife and forest land.
• They need drop the tunnel or prove how that benefits the environment.
• They would close Little Cottonwood Canyon to car traffic, like Zions. They would start by using busses to transport people up the canyon. That has to be the most environmental thing they could do. Then, if for some reason after 5-10 years they find rail would make better sense for some reason and Uncle Orrin wants to convince someone to give UTA billions for rail, then fine. At least we started with the more responsible decision and worked our way into bankruptcy  a bigger solution.

I don’t expect that to happen, though. Why? Because I don’t think the impetus behind this plan was ever the environment. Just alter the Mountain Accord Blueprint to take away that rail from Little Cottonwood Canyon, leave the environmental aspects, and see how fast this thing falls apart. I could be wrong about that but the more I read, the more the logical conclusion points in that direction.

Here is the notice addressed in the article

If you been following recent Mountain Accord developments, you’ll know that they often say that the Accord’s Executive Committee will make decisions based on “consensus.” So for instance, if Park City didn’t want a gondola going from Brighton to PCMR but other parties did, the Executive Committee would decide what to do based on consensus.

So, what is consensus? I thought I new. I’m sure you probably think you know. I’m sure most people in our local government think they know. I’d bet you a steak dinner at Grubb Steak that you, me, and our leaders don’t really know what it means.

I thought consensus meant that a simple majority wins in any vote. That’s not necessarily the case. According to the Wikipedia article on consensus decision making, the decision making process lies somewhere on the spectrum below:

• Unanimous agreement
• Unanimous consent (See agreement vs consent below)
• Unanimous agreement minus one vote or two votes
• Unanimous consent minus one vote or two votes
• Super Majority thresholds (90%, 80%, 75%, two-thirds, and 60% are common).
• Simple majority
• Executive committee decides
• Person-in-charge decides

So consensus decision making is either a unanimous vote, the person in charge decides, or somewhere in between.

So, I have two questions. Who is the PERSON in charge of the Mountain Accord process. And do you really feel that “a consensus” gives Park City and Summit County some level of protection against a tunnel?

On Friday I learned from a concerned citizen something that sounded so crazy I didn’t believe it. He told me that all state of Utah funding for the Mountain Accord was now coming from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development (GOED). What’s GOED’s mission you ask? According to their website, “The mandate for this office is to provide rich business resources for the creation, growth and recruitment of companies to Utah and to increase tourism and film production in the state. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development accomplishes this mission through the administration of programs that are based around industries or “economic clusters” that demonstrate the best potential for development.”

Holy crap. And it’s true.

If you listen to Mountain Accord supporters they’ll tell you the impetus behind Mountain Accord is protecting watersheds, wildlife, and our mountains. They’ll put the complete environmental spin on the program and downplay the transportation aspects. If that was the case why isn’t funding for the program coming through the Utah Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ)? What’s DEQ’s mandate? “Safeguarding human health and quality of life by protecting and enhancing the environment.” Wouldn’t a Mountain Accord funded through that organization make a little more sense if the powers that be were interested in an environmental solution?

So, how much money is GOED putting into Mountain Accord? $3 million this year and a total of $22 million between now and 2017. This compares with a total of $5 million being put in by all other organizations, including Park City and Summit County. People in Mountain Accord like to say that we need to stay in the process so we can have a “seat at the table.” That’s great but realize that GOED’s chair at the table is 88 times bigger than ours in Summit County.

GOED has also been given a seat on the Mountain Accord Executive Committee, which I guess isn’t surprising since they have all the money. The issue with that, of course, is that any disputes, like say Park City and Summit County not wanting a tunnel but Salt Lake County and Sandy do, are decided by a consensus of the Executive Committee. Of course, they also added “an environmental representative to the board as well. But that’s like your favorite baseball team trading for Clayton Kershaw and a player to be named later. Which is going to have all the power ? The player that makes the most — or in this case the one contributing all the money.

So where does that leave us? At least all the pretenses are gone. We now know this is chiefly an economic plan, with a few environmental pieces inserted in order to try and appease the right people. It’s really a shame as there were some good ideas in the Accord but the truth seems to be slowly rising to the top. Perhaps our theory that this wasn’t a plan to manage growth but instead was a plan to encourage growth wasn’t so far fetched.

I’ll be patiently waiting for the second act of the Mountain Accord where cost is no object and growth targets must be met. It will likely include a train up Parley’s, a tunnel through to PCMR, and 5 new hotels north of Highway 40. Whatever it takes to get as many people here as fast as possible.

I’ll look forward to Governor Herbert standing on top of PCMR, gazing down at Park City, with a banner behind him that says “Mission Accomplished.” His speech will begin with the words, “sometimes you have to destroy the village to save it.”

Any time there is contention over the Mountain Accord, supporters of the idea will always say that the detractors shouldn’t focus on the transportation aspects… what the Accord is really about is the environment.

I’ve been reading through the 13 pages of meeting minutes from an October joint meeting of the Summit County and Park City Councils regarding Mountain Accord. Do you know how many times the environment, or watershed, or sustainability, or wildlife, or pretty much anything not to do with transportation came up in the meeting? One time. The minutes read: “Liza thinks there are possible economic and environmental benefits to getting people out of their cars.” That’s it. How many times did the word transportation show up? 25.

If the environment was the focal point of this process, I would have expected at least one comment like, “a tunnel doesn’t sound great but if it allows us to continue to have clean water it is worth it!” Was there anything like that? No. The pro Accord talk was all basically we need to study the economic benefits/consequences more, see what positive impacts it could have on transportation in the Basin, and do whatever it takes to keep Guardsman Pass closed.

I know they would like us to think it’s about the environment, but when they don’t even talk about it, it makes one wonder if the environmental angle is all just marketing.