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Show The Park Record A-14 Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, March 29-April 1, 2008 MORE DOGS ON M A I N STREET By Tom Clyde • Partisan Potholes O Of Who Skiers, Riders & Sledders (Ages 24 & Under) What Original Snow Sport Videos (5 minutes or less in length) v The Best of the West Film Competition is hosted by the Shea Family Foundation. Scholarships, Gear, Trophies When Video Submission Begins - 3/1 Award Ceremony - 4/12 bestofthewestfilmcompetition.com myspace.com/botwfilmcompetition ;fleet; •COMP- All proceeds to benefit the youth altilttcprograms of the Shcj Family Foundation. REEUomp is our Double Black Diamond Sponsor. Proud Sponsor SAVE AN ADDITIONAL WRITERS O N THE RANGE By Alison Williams OFF OUR LOW PRICES • Your feet can also get you there o "Discount does not apply to American Upholstery® or Ekornes. Sorry, this offer does nof apply to prior purchases and may nol be combined with other special offers. We won't know who won for a couple of weeks, intervention), or but the first big step in electing the new County they join up and file Council was taken this week. All of us could have under one of the participated in this pre-election. We just had to parties. Whether drag ourselves off the couch and get to the local the party wants school where the caucuses were being held. Then „ them or not. We we had to get ourselves elected as delegate to the had a fair amount of County Convention and give up two Saturdays for this happening in the county election. conventions. Competing against this great process Just to make it more confusing, each of the five was the "Frontline" series on PBS called "Bush's available council seats is a separate race. So Yogi War," which marked the 5th anniversary of our glo- can't just file for council, he has to file for council rious victory in Iraq with an excellept documentary seat A. Well, if Huckleberry Hound also filed for on how we got into the mess in the first place. I seat A, we can't vote for both. Deputy Dawg, who think I made the right call, and ended up watching is an idiot, was unopposed for seat B, so we're "The Colbert Report," before going out to the hot stuck with him, but have to discard either Yogi or tub. Huckleberry, even though both of them should be The state Legislature set up the various optional on the council. This happens on both party legers, structures for county government, including the though the Republicans are always better organfive-member council that Summit County voters ized and generally avoid having multiple people filadopted. Separating the local legislative/policy ing by dragging anybody who threatens to gum-up function from the day-tothe works out in the day administrative grind alley and beating them seemed like a good move. There are few Small parties On up. This is the party of But the legislature decided values-it's just that "good government" the ballot but filing under one of family the'sopran^f^ny. was too dangerous. They So on Tuesday couldn't abide that, so they the small party banners is like night, at the neighbormade sure it was tainted announcing that you cannot be left hood caucuses, deiewith petty partisanship. , .. __. . . gates were elected to People running for council unsupervised with anything sharper the parties'county are required to join a party than a nrai/nn " ventions. Those are and go through its nomiman a crayon. nating processes. he|d in April Unlike Apparently there are ^ ^ H ^ ^ ^ ^ H ^ ^ ^ M ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ H B B M ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ M the national political Democratic snowdrifts and Republican snowdrifts, ture lots of liquor and prostitutes, the county conconventions that feaand if you have been a member of the legislature, ventions are dreadful affairs with red punch and or some party chieftain, you have a secret gift that day-old baked goods. There is lots of skullduggery lets you see the difference. For the rest of us, we and intrigue as candidates try to win over delereally just want local government to plow the gates. Yosemite Sam will stop at nothing to win streets, pick up the garbage, and protect us from their votes, and Roadrunner has Wile E. Coyote having our neighbor build a high-rise hog farm on working on his behalf in the background. You the lot next door. > don't get to participate in this election, but it will have more influence in choosing the county council But we are saddled with the partisan system. It's a real disappointment, because it gives a few than your vote in November. After all. you can't partisan zealots, tiny-but-loud groups with some vote for somebody who isn't on the ballot. axe to grind, or special-interest groups huge influBoth parties have different rules, but basically, if ence in the selection of candidates. If you wonder a candidate gets a certain percentage of the delewhy the state legislature is so far to the right of gates at the county convention, he or she advances even normal Republicans, it's this process. It keeps to the November election without a primary. If the wingnuts in power. By the time normal people they can't get the necessary majority, Porky Pig and get to vote in the real election, people you've prob- Foghorn Leghorn will have to face off in a primary. ably never heard of-many of them crazy droolers The party officials always hope they can avoid that, you avoid at the market -have already rigged the but it's possible that we could end up with 4 of the outcome. five seats narrowed down to one candidate from Here's how it works. The Looney Tunes party each party, but have to pay for a primary election elders start beating the bushes to find people will- for one of the seats in one party or the other. This ing to run for office. Same with the Hanna-Barbera will cost the taxpayers many thousands of dollars party. By the time the filing window closes, Looney that could have been better spent patching the potTunes will have convinced Bugs Bunny, Yosemite holes in the street in front of my house. Sam, Porky Pig and Foghorn Leghorn to run. The In the end, we will survive. But the system Hanna-Barbera party will have twisted the arms of would work so much better if any interested person Huckleberry Hound, Yogi Bear, Deputy Dawg, could file for office. Then it would be up to the votGeorge Jetson, and Ranger Smith to file (and per- ers to decide who had cooties. A primary would suaded Scooby-Doo not to). narrow it to 10 people, and a final election in Dudley Do-right, Boris and Natasha all wanted November in which the top five vote-getters are to run, but they aren't affiliated with either of the elected. And then the local party chiefs could big parties. There are a few small parties on the retire and spend their time worrying about those ballot, but filing under one of the small party ban- black UN helicopters. ners is like announcing that you cannot be left unsupervised with anything sharper than a crayon. Tom Clyde served as Park City attorney in the 1980s So Boris and Natasha have the option of trying to and is the author of "More Dogs On Main Street." figure out how to get on the ballot without a party He has been a columnist at The Park Record for affiliation (which can be done, but only with divine nearly 20 years. PARK CITY 645-7072 1890 Bonanza Dr. MON.-SAT. 10-6 SALT LAKE 467-2701 2970 Highland Dr. M-F10-7 SAT. 10-6 It struck me while I was. waiting to cross the street at a light, at the intersection of two major roads. A thought, luckily, not a car, although that almost happened. The woman in the car waiting to turn right across the far end of my crosswalk sat patiently. But the driver of the car behind her was impatient, and he started honking. While I was crossing, he backed up and pulled into the lane beside her, aiming to turn right in front of her and possibly into me. I made it to the curb and stepped up; she turned, slightly ahead of him. His face was all anger. This made me wonder: Do so few people walk where I live, which is Albuquerque, N.M., that it wouldn't occur to a driver that the wait to turn right is based on a pedestrian's right? I had just gotten off a bus, one hour after leaving my house 11 miles away, and I was walking about a half-mile to work. The Park and Ride at the end of the line where I got off had one car in it. It may be hard to take an extra hour of your day to take the bus if you have kids, but for the rest of us, is there really an excuse? (And I confess that many times I drive because I choose to sleep in.) Are we afraid of strangers? Do we have no hour to spare? Is the threat of climate change still too abstract? I realize buses are slow, but there are some new transportation options coming on-line in the sprawled-out West that should make the transition to pollution-reducing commuting much easier. And make excuses harder. Although a light-rail proposal for Albuquerque was shot down, at least temporarily, we do have the Rail Runner, a heavy-rail commuter train that takes about 2500 people a day between job-heavy downtown Albuquerque and towns to the north and south along a 50-mile track. You can connect to nearly all the Albuquerque bus lines at the downtown station. A route between Albuquerque and Santa Fe is scheduled to open in December 2008, since, for various reasons, thousands of people live in one city but work in the other. Even though a state bus system currently services the route, the Rail Runner should speed up the commute and perhaps, one day, offer more schedule options, including the weekend. In Phoenix and its suburbs, a light-rail system is also under construction, disrupting traffic across town. The line will run from downtown Phoenix east to Tempe and Mesa, and west toward Glendale along one of the area's most heavily traveled corridoTs. Sure, many commuters will have to drive to one of the eight park and ride locations before boarding the train, but even a partial reduction in driving could do wonders for the brown cloud hanging over the valley. It might also reduce road rage from the often-horrendous Phoenix traffic. (I know about the ill tempers of Phoenicians: I lived there for five years, one year without a car.) The light rail should also be in operation, by December 2008, with service covering 20 hours per day, seven days a week, every 10-20 minutes. These new public transportation options join existing and successful rail transportation in such places as Portland and Denver and the popular BART - Bay Area Rapid Transit - in the San Francisco Bay Area. I challenge every commuter to support these new and existing public transportation options. Try it once. See how it goes. Write to the mayor or the city council if you have suggestions for schedule changes or extended hours or connections or anything else that would make it easier to ride the bus or rails. Try catching up on your reading. Try meeting new people, who might turn out to be your neighbors. Try getting those 30 minutes of exercise in on the way to and from the stop. Join me in reducing pollution. Save gas-money. Utilize your tax dollars that go to support mass transit. As for me, I'm sitting on the bench at the bus stop, winter fading into spring, sun sinking through wispy clouds toward the horizon, breeze ruffling my hair, my back slowly loosening up after eight hours behind a computer, catching up on my writing. And I wonder, why would I, why would anybody, want to be in a car today? Alison Williams is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a service of High Country News (hcn.or'gj. She lives, writes and takes buses in Albuquerque, New Mexico. |