OCR Text |
Show Mayor responds to resident's pipeline proposal slopes could be skied upon, although al-though they too are somewhat unpredictable un-predictable in terms of snowpack. Finally, the City of Bountiful considered the potential of developing develop-ing Mueller Park into a winter recreational area, and concluded that a large-scale recreational development de-velopment of the canyon was not in the best interest of the City nor the citizens. To begin with, we have a number of large residential homes east of Bountiful Boulevard on both sides of the canyon, which would be impacted by increased traffic going up the canyon. Secondly, the geometries of Mueller Park are such that it is a very narrow canyon with little or no room for parking, unlike i Big or Little Cottonwood Canyons, Parley's Canyon, and other canyons where present winter recreational opportunities occur. Finally, the inconvenience in-convenience to our citizens incurred because of the Winter Olympics will be for a very short frame, after which all of our citizens will enjoy the facilities that have been installed. install-ed. I appreciate (he thought and effort you have put into this idea, and know that there are several advantages, ad-vantages, but we sincerely feel at the City that the disadvantages far outweigh any advantages that could accrue to the City or its citizens. Robert D. L inn ell Mayor Editor: Thank you very much for your letter of February 16th regarding a potential solution to our "pipeline wars." Your proposal to build a "Mueller Park Mountain Family Winter Park" certainly has some appeal. Bountiful is a family-oriented family-oriented community, and has tried to build recreational facilities which serve the needs of different groups of our citizenry. Nevertheless, there are significant problems associated with your proposal, which when taken in sum, would lead the City of Bountiful to oppose such a proposal. pro-posal. Let me explain our major concerns to you. As you know, the City of Bountiful Boun-tiful allowed tubing and sledding on its golf course property for many years. However, the Supreme Court stripped local government of immunity im-munity in a case involving a tubing accident on the Mountain Dell Golf Course, a Salt Lake County facility. The Court held that the county (or in our case Bountiful City) could be held liable for injuries resulting from winter activities occurring on our facilities, and that we had a duty to reasonably assure that serious injuries in-juries did not take place. As you know, by their inherent nature, tobogganing and tubing are dangerous activities, and accidents and injuries occur even with the best constructed runs. People inevitably in-evitably push their luck, go off the track and hit into trees, or have other problems. In our particular instance, in-stance, we had a serious back and a serious neck injury, both within a 24 hour period, before the City decided to discontinue allowing tubing and tobogganning to take place on the course. We do allow cross-country skiing at our golf course during the winter time, and when there is sufficient snow we groom runs in order to allow people the opportunity to use it for some winter activity. With regard to ice skating, we are actively pursuing with the Winder Sports Authority the construction of an additional sheet of ice at our Recreation Center. We feel that an additional ice rink could be used year in and year out by the Utah Figure Skating Club and the Salt Lake Area Hockey Association, and our existing sheet of ice could be utilized to give more hours of public pub-lic and "learn to skate" sessions to increase recreational opportunities in this area. An ice skating rink up the canyon in an outdoor environment envir-onment would create the need for additional supervision facilities, skate rentals and ice grooming, all of which are expensive. The proposed pipeline route traverses tra-verses through Mueller Part at levels between 6,000 and 8,000 feet. On the north slope, and 6,000-7,000 feet on the south slope. The south, or north facing slope, is simply not high enough to accomodate ac-comodate ski runs, inasmuch as there is not enough snow falling at that evelation to give consistent skiing ski-ing opportunities. There are several areas high up in the mountains of Mueller Park, where north facing |