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Show Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, December 10-13, 2005 The Park Record A-2 Required credits may rise Trash talk up to neighbors • Continued from A-1 ence fiction literature, debate, Student Council, peer tutoring, and internships. Would increased academic requirements detract from a student's capacity to take electives? Christensen praised "the rigor of coursework and diversity of coursework that we have at the school. I applaud what their doing and it's very important what they're doing for our students and their progress. How docs that fit with increasing the basic requirement levels? I'm not sure." The increased requirement could also affect students enrolled in the Latter-day Saint Seminary. Students who took a seminary class every year would then have no room for additional elective classes (28 credits + 4 seminary credits = 32 total available in high school). "It is a concern, it's an issue it's something to keep in mind, but it's something we've dealt with all along. It's just a matter of reality that we deal with,11 Chaplin said. About 200 students at both Park City High School and Treasure Mountain International School are seminary students, said Mike Cottle, the seminary principal. "It could affect" the number of students enrolled in seminary, Cottle said. "I'm not sure how many, but it could affect us." Many LDS seminaries have a class before school hours, but Park City does not at this point. The requirements could also reduce the number of students who get parental release to miss class for whatever reason, such as athletics. "That makes sense doesn't it? I think it does figure into the whole mix of things, less parent release,1' Chaplin said. Board members are interested in community input on the subject. Kirchenheiter said, "If we get enough feedback from stakeholders where they can tell us how this is going to be negatively impacting our child, it could be put off again." Chaplin said, "We thought it would be important to get it in front of the public by posting it so the feelings of other people might get back to us and we'll have a clear way to go." Board contact info: Dave Chaplin, 649-9613,dchapiin@pcschoois.us Lisa Kirchenheiter, 649-7786, Iisakirch@peoplepc.com Vern Christensen, 655-2941, vernc@outlookcapitai.com Kim Carson. 649-1743. kcarson@pcschools. us Kathryn Adair, 645-0S19, kadair@pcschools. us KPCW gets nod on tax grant • Continued from A-1 Committee. He stressed that funding from taxpayers cannot be used for managers' paychecks. However, Fey this week said that a portion of the grant would be spent improving host Randy Barton's afternoon show. Fey says the station also plans to use RAP Tax funding to improve Spanish programming and the station's Web site. A new program funded by RAP would highlight different organizations in the community and the volunteers who staff them. Fey added. "They provide a great service to our community," Richer said about the radio station. Feulner insisted during a recent interview with The Park Record that funding from the county would not soften his coverage of county government. "Absolutely not." he said. Fey's RAP advisor}' committee called a special meeting last week to discuss KPCW's request and applications from the Utah Music Festival and Park City Literary Festival. Utah Music Festival representatives "refused" to meet with the committee and don't qualify to receive public support. Fey said, adding that the organization's request for $37,550 was denied. "[The] application was incomplete and unfortunately the organization doesn't comply," he told the Summit County Commission Wednesday. Along with a $4,125 RAP Tax grant, in a separate motion opposed by Summit County Commissioner Ken Woolstenhulme - the organization was also provided $2,000 from commissioners' discretionary funds. "I have no qualms with the literary club," Woolslenhulme said, following the vote. "I just think it sets a precedent." The Summit County Commission voted unanimously for the following RAP Tax recipi- ents: • Alf Engen Ski Museum - $ 17,900 •Arts-Kids - $31,000 •Echo Community and Historical Organization - $4,500 •Kimball Art Center - $47,225 •Mountain Town Stages - $49,900 •Norwegian Outdoor Exploration Center - $25,000 •Park City Film Series - $17,150 •Park City Historical Society and Museum - $80,000 • Park City Jazz Foundation - $38,000 •The Egyptian Theatre - $62,200 • Park City Performing Arts Foundation - $70,000 •Park City Singers - $3,000 •Park City/Summit County Arts Council - $33,800 •Summit County Historical Society - $7,000 •Sundance Institute - $59,000 • Swaner Memorial Park Foundation -$10,650 •The Park City Chamber Music Society -$10,400 • Utah Symphony and Opera - $23,800 Lodge plan irks Basin residents • Continued from A-1 simple and pretty clear. It says, 'We approve your project."" .. . Recent affidavits from former County Commissioners Patrick Cone, Shauna 'Kerf and Eric Schifferli, who granted the project's preliminary approval, hint that 140 bedrooms was the limit of their intent. "We shouldn't be having to interview prior commissioners to glean their intent, we're looking at the record," Haft said, criticizing the past commission for its sloppy approval. "A county board cannot deny our vested property rights on the basis of popular demand."1 The prior commission mentioned "140 keys" but no limit was placed on the building's square footage or number of bedrooms, said Bill Marnmen. an architect in Summit County. The Summit "County Engineer's Office has determined the hotel would not cause road conditions in Sun Peak to fall below an acceptable standard. But according to Sun Peak resident Brenda Lake, "this complex is not compatible with the surrounding neighborhood." Drawings show the hotel and condominiums situated in a small canyon south of Bear Hollow Drive. According to the Sun Peak stipulation agreement, which governed growth in the neighborhood-, development rights OIK the hotel parcelinclude- only.;-l40 "rooms,11 opponents claim..,,. "The rules of the game life* a 140-room hotel," said Bruce Shapiro, an attorney representing the Sun Peak homeowners. Commissioners are reviewing the plan under a past western Summit County zoning ordinance, Summit County Commissioner Bob Richer said, adding, "the new code would not allow this degree of development and the process would be a whole lot simpler." UGS brochure enjoys boom in sales A new brochure recently released by the Utah Geological Survey is breaking sales records. "I've never seen sales like this before for a UGS publication," said Carl Ege, a geologist with UGS. The Geologic Guide to the Central Wasatch Front Canyons, Salt Lake County, Utah is an illustrated, first-of-its-kind. concise, geologic road guide to Salt Lake County's Wasatch canyons. "The book has been one billion years in the making," said Sandy Eldredge, program manager of the geologic and information outreach program. "It attempts to describe the beauty, recreational opportunities, mining and pioneer history, and unique geologic features of the six canyons in the county." Recently, the brochure was featured in local media. In the following week, more than 160 copies were sold from the Natural Resources Map and Bookstore. More than half of the brochures have been sold to people who are interested in local geology (teachers, former teachers, geologists, and general public). However many people were buying the brochure as Christmas presents. "It seems the Guide is the perfect gift for the person who has everything," said Ege. The 28-page brochure is filled with color pictures, illustrations, and foldout maps of City Creek, Emigration, Parleys, Mill Creek, Big Cottonwood, and Little Cottonwood Canyons. The information provides a quick synopsis of the local geology. The cost of the publication is $3.95. The bookstore is located in the Utah Department of Natural Resources Building at 1594 West North Temple, and is open Monday through Friday, 7:30am to 5pm. Or, call 801-537-3320 or 1-888-UTAHMAP; mapstore.utah.gov. For additional information about the brochure, contact Sandy Eldredge at (801) 537-3325, sandyeldredge@utah.gov or Mark Milligan, one of the brochure's authors at (801) 537-3326, markmilligan@utah.gov. The Utah Geological Survey is an applied scientific agency that creates, interprets, and provides information about Utah's geologic environment, resources, and hazards to promote safe, beneficial, and wise use of land. Park City Council rejects residential trash can ordinance By ANNA BLOOM Of the Record staff If creatures knock them over, that's one thing, but just because a trash can looks unpleasant on a street, does not necessarily mean a city needs an ordinance, according to the Park City Council and Public Works. At Thursday evening's council meeting, council members determined that neighborhoods should take care of their own backyards when it comes storing garbage bins. The city decided neighborhoods need to self-police their area when cans appear to crowd the street, over-flow, or looked as though they haven't been moved for a while. After six complaints primarily from Old Town residents, the council asked Public Works Director Jerry Gibbs to look into drafting an ordinance to keep trash cans out of view. Other ski areas do have trash can ordinances, he notes. In Vail, Aspen and Sun Valley, residents are required to take cans off the street after pickup because of the threat of bears, raccoons and other wildlife dumping contents out on streets, according to Gibbs. "I was talking to a man from Aspen and he said a bear actually got into his kitchen," he said. In fact, the city requires Main Street business owners to keep their trash hidden until 10 p.m., and remove their trash before 10 a.m. for pedestrians' health and safety, Gibbs says. "What was happening was that the next morning, business owners were discovering cans had been knocked over and spilled by the bar crowd and it wasn't conducive for pedestrian sidewalks," Gibbs explained. Residents on Woodside Avenue, Park Avenue and Empire Avenue rarely have wild animal trash concerns, he observes, and staff determined in its recommendation "in Old Town, the cans do not represent a health hazard." For Old Town and the rest of Park City, trash can removal tends to be an aesthetic issue, Gibbs concluded. If the city had opted for a trash removal ordinance, it would likely be difficult to enforce. In the first place, few homes in the historic district have alleys or gangways to hide their garbage, Gibbs noted. Secondly, unlike cars or bicycles, cans are anonymous and unregistered, and in the wintertime, garbage companies ask residents to line their cans up on one side of the street, notes Gibbs. Without the ability to assign a can to an address, issuing tickets to violators would be next to impossible - unless the city wanted to begin to label 600 to 700 cans in Old Town, or 3,500 to 4,000 citywide, said Gibbs. Park City Code Enforcement Officer Michelle Downard said an ordinance would require the city to hire new officers to police the streets. The staff's report estimated the fiscal impact for the added enforcement would cost the city as much as $4,000 a month. Gibbs would rather communities become proactive, and deliberate trash problems amongst themselves first, and ask for city intervention later, he said. "I think it's important that the neighborhoods get involved with coming up with a solution, as opposed to the city saying that you can't have the can out there and ticket them," he explained. "I would agree that putting trash cans out is not the most attractive thing, but again, I think it's one of aesthetics, and something they should fix themselves." Councilman Joe Kernan expressed an interest in labeling bins with addresses sometime in the future. He'd like to see the streets cleaner, he said. "At some point, I'd like to solve the problem. I think [trash bins] look really bad. With all the attention we pay to keep things beautiful, people should do something about [their bins,] rather than leave them out year round," he argued. The rest of council appeared to side with Gibbs. "Lets all just be neighborly and take five minutes to move a can," Councilwoman Candy Erickson said. Councilman Jim Hier suggested the city could confiscate cans that sit out on the street for too long, if anything. "I'm still trying to figure out the magnitude of the problem...it seems like it's a uniquely Old Town issue," he said. Gibbs admitted there were no "format complaints" about trash left out on the street. The list of grievances he compiled mostly came from residents who approached members of the council or city staff individually. Mayor Dana Williams concluded that he did not see trash bins on residential streets as an "insurmountable issue," but assured that council would keep the item on its radar screen. Roommates meet at roundup • Continued from A-1 couches or squeezing into hotel rooms, she says. "Unfortunately, there's no hostel for [seasonal workers] to stay at. The Base Camp [hostel] on Main Street closed this November, and that was a really great resource," Butolph said. "As far as I know, it's just sitting there ribW with a bunch of empty rooms." ,: At the'i'Nov. 30 roundup, Butolph spoke with more than 40 people at Bad Ass. She plans on having one more event at the cafe next week, Dec. 14, before the holidays, to help a few more people with housing and roommates. Why the shortage? Tim Dahlin, who directs Park City's Christian Center and its furniture thrift store, has also seen a staggering number of seasonal workers seeking housing help this year. "'We get groups of five, six, seven, eight people coming in, and it usually takes them about a week to find a place," he said. "On my desk right now, I've got 25 names of people looking for spots." Property owners have run out of inventory for the most part, he says, and then there arc homeowners who would prefer a longer lease and older tenants who have graduated from school, he says - which does not fil the profile of the typical seasonal worker. "For individual homeowners, it's that they don't want to rent to kids," he claims. "I've talked to two of them within the last week, and they've said, 'I just don't trust them, if something goes wrong, I can't find them, they leave, they go back to South America, and I can't collect on any damages.'" The other homeowner he spoke with said he remembered what he was like when he was young and that he would not rent to anyone like himself, Dahlin said. "It seems like they'd rather let the house stand empty than risk it,"' he concluded. Dahlin adds that he's puzzled as to why there would be a seasonal housing shortage, since he has reason to believfc that resorts recruited fewer international workers, this year than in years past. Deer Valley Resort Human Resources Director Kim Mayhew confirms that at 300 international workers, the resort has recruited 100 fewer workers than it did last winter. But the resort also has fewer workers in general. By this time last year, more positions had been filled. "This spring we decided to cut down on international recruiting since our domestic hiring had been so good," she explained. "We had no idea that this year turnout at the Salt Lake, Provo and [Park City] Chamber/Bureau job fairs would be so poor." Hiring at the resort has fluctuated in the past few years according to the economy's swings, and local residents have been willing to take on seasonal jobs, but not this year, Mayhew says. The resort still needs cooks and lift operators. A typical Deer Valley liftee earns $4,500 for a winter at $7.75 cents an hour with a 50-cent hourly bonus paid out at the end of the season, according to Mayhew. The scasonality makes it tough for domestic workers, she says, so they end up choosing year round jobs instead. "It's not just here. I've talked to colleagues at other resorts in Colorado and California - there's an industry-wide [shortage of seasonal workers,]" Mayhew claims. Mayhew cannot account for the large amount of Brazilians who come in, since Deer Valley does not recruit in that country, she says. Brazil is a country that issues what she calls "independent" J-l visas to students, which means those issued the visa do ;j notneed proof that, they will jj^jjtiouflfrig or shelter when they arrive'in the J United States. ,;UVJ "We get kids who walk through the door with their suitcases to fill out an application, and then they ask us for housing help," Mayhew explains. "We can't prepare for that." Deer Valley provides housing for 170 of its employees, and gives priority to early recruits, she says, and at this point, all beds are full. Odd man out: an Internet solution Roundup attendee Brad Proudfoot, 21, drove out from Washington, D.C., to work as a Park City Mountain Resort liftee, after spending last winter at Snowbird Ski Resort. Last year, through Snowbird's Web site, Proudfoot was able to find housing by contacting other resort workers who had posted their contact information to meet a roommate, he says. None of the Park City area resorts offer similar employee Web sites that he could find, Proudfoot claims. He found contacts for potential roommates, but did not get housing Wednesday night. "I spent a summer in Ocean City, Maryland and coming out here this winter is all I talked about," Proudfoot told The Park Record. "I didn't realize how though it was going to be to find a place to live." Eat, Drink & Be Generous! February 2-5, 2006 P A R K C I T Y Culinary, Wine & Ski CLASSIC All proceeds will benefit the: Highlights of the 2006 Event Community Night Kick-Off Soiree Vintner Dinners Masquerade Ball and more... The Underdog Foundation's mission to fund community youth programs in the areas of education, arts, advocacy and athletics. Visit our website for a list of our preselected 2006 beneficiaries. www.theunderdogfoundation.org • www.parkcitywineclassic.com |