What’s Does the Mountain Accord Truly Mean?

You may have heard of the The Mountain Accord, but what is it? That’s a good question. We wish we had a good answer. So let’s try to figure it out. The Mountain Accord Website describes it as:

So, the goal appears to be preserving natural resources, providing recreation, establishing transportation systems, and contributing to the economy. How will that be achieved? There have been many meetings over the past couple of years with stakeholders from government entities and local groups. These have culminated with a Proposed Blueprint for what the Mountain Accord would like to achieve in each of the four areas above.

• Environment
  • Preserve land and watersheds by securing federal lands, working with ski resorts to put land in protective ownership, acquire private lands from sellers,
  • Monitor environment with management plan
  • Implement an environmental restoration plan
• Recreation
  • Connect trails
  • Work with ski resorts to put land into public ownership to preserve back country access
  • Improve transit service to recreation destinations
  • Explore additional user fees
• Economy
  • Encourage development patterns that preserve community character
  • Increase tax revenue that can be reinvested in preservation and restoration of central Wasatch
  • Ensure Utah’s tourism market is competitive in the future
• Transportation
  • High capacity transit in cottonwood canyons and Park City
  • Transit incentives and automobile disincentives including pricing/parking strategies
  • Improved transit between Quinn’s Junction and Kimball Junction
  • Improve transit connections in Summit County

So, that’s basically it. There is more detail in the Blueprint but that’s the gist of it. The problem we have as a citizen is that we don’t really know what that means. We get that there are some good ideas in the plan but we also see some bad ideas. We see ideas that conflict. We see some things very specifically laid out and others that seem to be included to feel good. We see winners. We see losers.

So, we are going to try and explore the concept on Park Rag. As we figure it out for ourselves, we hope it may help others get their heads around the issue as well.