Does Utah Need to Become “Weird” Again to Save Itself?
We were reading in the New York Times about Utah bringing back firing squads and it got us to thinking…. Everyone attributes the 2002 Olympics to the start of Utah’s growth. The experts say that the Olympics showed the world what Salt Lake City and Park City had to offer. Once they witnessed it, they had to come here and see the beauty for themselves… then they never left. Extrapolate that sentiment forward to 2040 and Park City will grow from a town of 7,000 to over 7 million, with Hong Kong Style high-rises as far as the eye can see (ok, that may be a bit of a stretch — except in bonanza park).
Yet, what if it wasn’t the Olympics that really changed things? What if it was the changes, that accompanied the Olympics, that drove growth. We’re sure you remember a time when you had to find a “sponsor” to enter a bar. Have you been around long enough to have brought your blender to your local, in order to have a frozen margarita? Ever sucked down a beer because your waitress couldn’t leave your next beer until you finished the first? We specifically remember a time seeing two young tourists taking a picture of a Utah State Liquor Store because it was so weird to them.
A lot of that is gone.
Utah used to be weird and the weird used to keep people away. Since 2002, Utah has become a lot like every other place in the US. We even have a distillery on Main Street. Now we are forced to account for traffic. We have the biggest ski resort in the US being sewn together in front of our eyes. Frankly, we have problems that we never knew existed.
What’s the solution?
Well, your average politician will tell you that we need plans to confront the growth. As Chris Robinson, Summit County Council Member, said on KPCW radio this morning, “growth is coming whether we want it or not.” We believe that most people in our parts would prefer no growth. Yet, we are told that it’s inevitable.
We don’t think so. All we need to do is return to our roots:
- Require bar memberships and sponsors again.
- Allow only half bottles of wine to be sold (375 ML).
- Allow only beer less than 3.2% to be sold in Supermarkets (yes, that would leave only Guinness being sold).
- Make people mix their own drinks at bars.
Unlike the LDS Church, we aren’t trying to save your soul. We are trying to save your lifestyle. The more “solutions” we see to the problem of growth, the more we realize there is no solution to growth. The only choice is not to grow. Stopping growth requires something out of the ordinary…something weird… something like firing squads and bad liquor laws.
Occasionally you’ll see a bumper sticker around town that says, “Keep Park City Silly.” We say, let’s borrow from Austin Texas and instead “Keep Park City Weird.”
in Schools
Are You Willing to Trade Early Release for a Later School Start?
In a recent Park City School District Master Planning Committee meeting, School Board President Tanya Knauer said that “all things are on the table” when talking about realigning grades. The talk shifted to starting school later, especially for high school students. According to the University of Minnesota, it appears there is research that says starting school later is better for high school students.
Yet, it’s hard to start school at 10 AM and have early release a few hours later. Early release is a program that allows students to end their school day early to pursue other activities. We believe that was the point that Master Planning Committee member and Park City High School Principal Bob O’Connor was trying to make when he said, “are you willing to give up early release?” in response to the discussion.
We’ve talked to a few parents, and unless they think they have the next Lindsey Vonn (or Lindsey Van), they don’t seem to mind if early release was no longer an option. If starting classes later is really better for performance and health, it seems like a no brainer. For those that need to follow their olympic dreams, there is always the Winter Sports School.
Impact of Mountain Accord Tunnels on Water Rights
A Friend of the Park Rag recently pointed out something about the Mountain Accord that we hadn’t heard discussed… the impact on water and water rights. Evidently one of the things known by those mining the Wasatch is that the mountains are very “wet.” That means that a large amount of water is stored in the mountains. The water that does not runoff is stored in the mountains and eventually finds its way through the rock and comes out through springs, months or years later.
What the miners report is that when you dig tunnels in the Wasatch, you encounter a great deal of water. When those tunnels are built, they likely displace the water and potentially change how the water is stored in the Wasatch. There are at least two impacts to this.
First, how much water is lost in process of building and maintaining the tunnels? Is water that comes into contact with the tunnel treated as sewer water and lost to treatment facilities? Is it in effect “wasted water.”
Second, if a tunnels displaces water that would have belonged to someone (their water rights), how will this be accounted for? Is it a case of eminent domain… just like the Tesoro Pipeline?
We have more research to do to better understand the impacts, but we thought it was a topic worthy of considering since its impact could be so great.
Online Debate Serves as an Example for Park City and Summit County Governments
On Wednesday Mountain Meister is holding an online debate about Mountain Accord. We are excited for the debate but perhaps more excited about the technological aspects. Holding an event online allows a broad audience to participate and the fact that it will likely be recorded will make it even easier for community members to participate. Perhaps more exciting, is that questions can be submitted beforehand via their website and social media and they will be answered during the meeting.
While we are looking forward to seeing how it works out, the simplicity of the idea leaves us wondering why our local governments aren’t doing this already. The Park City School Board is as close as we come to this concept. They record videos of each meeting and post them on their website within a few days. Park City and Summit County councils don’t even do this.
As for taking questions online, no local government organizations, that we are aware of, take questions online and then answer them during meetings.
This really is the future of transparency and serving citizens interests. Here is how it could work:
- City Council, County Council, Park City Planning Commission, and Snyderville Basin Planning Commissions would be brodcasted via Youtube Live Events
- Questions could be posted to the Summit County, Park City, or Park City School District websites. They could also be posted to Twitter or Facebook with special hashtags (i.e. #ParkCityCouncilQuestions).
- As part of the Public Comment portion of each meeting, all questions (as long as they met certain guidelines) would be answered.
In today’s world, why do we have to drive to Coalville at 6PM to formally ask a question of our County Council? More importantly if you were really involved and had a lot of questions, you would be in Coalville at 6 PM on Wednesdays, at the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission on Tuesdays at 6 PM, at the Park City Planning Commission on Wednesday’s at 5:30 PM (yes two places at once), and the Park City City Council on Thursdays at 6 PM.
We do understand the apprehension involved with live meetings. We’ve filmed enough meetings to know that it changes the dynamic. We’ve also heard our public officials ask us “please do no put that online?” more than once. If the comment doesn’t serve the public interest, we kindly oblige. So, there is risk from our officials’ point of view. However, the good it does for our community far outweighs the small snafus that inevitably take place.
We often talk about wanting to bring technology to Park City. If you want to bring technology, you have to live technology. We have an opportunity here to not only implant technology into our DNA but serve our citizens interest in a much better way.
While we understand we are likely far away from this happening, there are no impediments that are stopping it. Going forward, if we hear from our officials “we haven’t really heard anything from the public on that.” We are no longer going to view that as the public’s acceptance, we going to view that as our government officials not taking the time to ask.
Is Mountain Accord’s Plan for a Train Built for A Different Kind of People?
Sometimes you want something so badly that you ignore reality in order to fool yourself into thinking that it will work.
We’ve learned more about trains in the last few weeks than we ever thought we would (and 6 of my uncles used to drive/ride trains for Union Pacific).
- We’ve learned that it likely won’t be high speed rail, like Trax, going up Little Cottonwood.
- We’ve learned that Cog Rack and Pinion rail will likely be necessary to go up a steep hill like the Cottonwoods.
- We’ve learned that a Cog Rack train travels between 6 and 16 mph. Pikes Peak’s Cog Rack train averages 9 MPH.
- We’ve learned that Brighton is almost 1900 feet above PCMR.
- We’ve learned that a train won’t likely be able to come down the grade between Brighton and PCMR in a straight shot. It will have to switch back and forth.
- We’ve learned that it will likely take about 2 hours to go between the base of Little Cottonwood and PCMR via the train.
Yeah, we guarantee we knew nothing of that in January. Yet, a conversation we had this weekend With a Friend of the Rag, causes us to ask even more questions.
He asked, “How does snow get removed from the tracks? They must have it figured out because they do it in Europe.” That’s another question we knew nothing about, so we researched it. It appears that a “plow engine” clears the track for Cog Rack trains. Here is Engine No 22 at Pikes Peak.
According to Cograilway.com, this engine allows Pike Peak operations to open the mountain after most storms. Of course, they are closed five days a week in the winter.
So, we imagine something similar to this “500 horse-power, 12-cylinder Cummins diesel engine” will be used as part of the Mountain Accord. Our question is, how long will this actually take to plow the track up the Cottonwoods in the Winter? After Avalanche Control and track plowing, will the road open at 11AM on a good snow day? Will the road open before the railway? Will the plow slow travel during the day, if there is significant snow?
The reason we ask is that we’ve heard it can take 2-3 hours to get up some of the slopes in Switzerland via rail. Now we see why. More importantly, would that timing work here?
We’ve travelled Europe and there seem to be an innate patience there, not often duplicated here. Vacations are long and tolerance can be high. People in Switzerland may be willing to get to the mountain a few hours later than your average Utahn… Do fresh tracks exist at Alta at 10 AM?
We wonder if Mountain Accord’s hopes and dreams may be stronger than their logic. The current plans seem to fly in the face of the old “Quickstart” program where you could ski for free on the same day you flew into the SLC airport. In this case, you fly in today and ski a half day tomorrow.
It just doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. As they say, “Hope is not a strategy.”
Vail Announces Earnings Results This Thursday
Since we are all now technically invested in the success or failure of Vail (whether you planned on or not, when you moved here 15 years ago), you may want to hear about how they are doing.
Vail is hosting an earnings call (aka an investment call) on Thursday at 9:30 AM MT to fill everyone in and answer questions from people with as much money as Mitt Romney.
If you want to listen in, the information provided by Vail is below:
The call will be broadcast over the Internet at www.vailresorts.com. To listen to the call, go to the website and select the Investor Relations section. Those wishing to participate via telephone should dial (877) 718-5108 to be connected. Callers outside ofNorth America should dial (719) 325-4841.
Mountain Accord Debate Live Online This Wednesday @ 5PM
Want to learn more about Mountain Accord but you haven’t been able to make the meetings? This Wednesday, four key parties will he having a discussion online about the Accord. It’s billed as a debate, so we hope some hard questions are asked and answered during the meeting.
The participants include:
Laynee Jones, Mountain Accord
Carl Fisher, Save Our Canyons
Paul Marshall, SkiUtah
Peter Metcalf, Black Diamond Equipment andOutdoor Industry Association
You can also post your questions ahead of time using Twitter (#MountainAccord) or at the bottom of the Meeting Page.
If you have a computer, it truly has never been easier to learn more about Mountain Accord and get your questions answered.
The meeting starts Wednesday, March 11th at 5pm MST. To watch it live on Wednesday click here and then you’ll see a Youtube video window with some trees in it. Press the play button and you’ll be good to go.
Thanks to @mountainmeister for letting us know about this meeting.
Representative Kraig Powell Would Like Your Input on Mountain Accord
On Friday we had written about Utah Representative Kraig Powell’s response to a question on Mountain Accord from KPCW’s Leslie Thatcher . We had written that we felt Representative Powell should take into account his constituents’ opinions when deciding to vote for or against appropriating more money for Mountain Accord.
Representative Powell was kind enough to respond to our story. It genuinely seems that he would like to hear from you. So if you support the Accord or are opposed to it, please let Representative Powell know how you feel and why. His reply to our story and email are below.
This is Kraig Powell. I am very happy to continue this discussion.
I have been in touch with both Park City and Summit County officials on Mountain Accord. I understand that Summit County residents are rightly concerned about the plans that may emerge from MA. I will certainly express to other legislators the concerns that I am hearing from Summit County residents. It’s just that at this time it does not seem wise to me for us to ignore or pull back from the process, if the many other parties are going to forge ahead.
There will always be concrete steps available to fight and oppose any attempted actions that emerge from MA, at the right time and by the applicable government entities. But the study, collaboration and dialogue that are occurring now on MA is something that I don’t believe should be squelched.
I may be wrong, and so I invite those who disagree to share with me your views and arguments at .
PCMR is 1850 Feet Below Brighton… How Does That Impact the Mountain Accord’s Plan for Trains?
One thousand eight hundred fifty feet is over a third of a mile. It’s also the elevation difference between Brighton and the base of PCMR. After writing our last article about the time a cog rack train would take to get up Little Cottonwood Canyon, a concerned citizen enlightened us on a factor we had not included in our calculation. He felt our estimate of 15-20 minutes between Brighton and PCMR on the Mountain Accord train was way too conservative.
Using a maximum gradient of 5% for a Cog Rack train, he calculated that the path a train would have to take to get to PCMR from Brighton would be almost 8 miles. Given that a cog rack train would likely go about 10 miles an hour… that’s a 50 minute trip. So, if you are boarding a train at the entrance to Little Cottonwood Canyon, you are looking at almost a two hour trip to PCMR via rail.
So, who is going to do that?
h/t to A Good Friend of the Park Rag for pointing this out
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