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Show A-15 Wed/Thurs/Fri, June 27-29, 2012 EDITORIAL School board candidates set fine example for all politicians S GUEST EDITORIAL Public transportation system should be revisited By Zachary Haskins Cooper City, Fla. Transportation is important for both our infrastructure and economy. Given that a major industry is tourism, residents and visitors need a reliable and convenient schedule to travel amongst the region and country as the current system in place is inadequate and insufficient. First, let us examine the present bus schedule. There are a limited hours of operation for our free bus service - opening up around seven in the The train system stopped running in Park City quite some time ago. … We should have (it) reinstated. It is important for commerce, tourism, and the transportation needs of our residents and visitors." morning until about ten at night. This prevents commuters, residents and out-of-towners from getting around our town in early mornings or late evenings. When sporting events, concerts, outings, work shifts, nightlife, conventions and other interesting developments may take place after hours in our resort, why inconvenience the commuter by having to resort to carpool, driving oneself, or taxi? In turn, this increases spending more than necessary on parking, gas or cab fares when the city transportation could extend its hours even for an after-hours surcharge, which may be affordable and fair if cost is an issue for the transit system. I call on Park City Transit to consider revisiting the schedule to coordinate nights and early-morning commutes to work or school while ensuring people ride it more often (through publicity, demographic surveys, incentives). The budget, logistics, convenience and efficiency may be factored in this request, maybe even redrawing the routes and transit maps, collaborating with experts for cost reduction and fuel efficiency. Carpooling and owning a vehicle might not be an option for some people, and bikes are not much better especially when time or appearance is an issue. So Park City buses should run in early mornings as well as evenings after ten, especially on weekends - people might be out and about in Main Street or hanging out at Redstone; the buses end earlier than desired and evenings are cut short or taxis are called, both which are a hassle, financial burden and inconvenience. If there is a concern for the budget of our bus shuttles, since they operate based on a tangible service fee and not on fare, then either the board should issue a fare for after hours, seek subsidy from our government representatives, or increase the service charge. Secondly, the train system stopped running in Park City quite some time ago. Ogden, Provo, and Salt Lake City have one (sponsored by Amtrak), but we do not. We should have ours reinstated. It is important for commerce, tourism, and the transportation needs of our residents and visitors. By working with Amtrak (or other train companies), Utah Department of Transportation and our own city coun- cil, we could bring back the trains to our town - for local, state and/or domestic travel. If turnout or cost is an issue, because of our small population or fiscal conservativeness, consider the tourists, business visitors and students that could use the train stop for their personal, academic or professional needs (without having to transfer to or from a nearby town). Our country was idolized in the early days of the romantic and nostalgic railway system, trains transporting passengers and cargo from one point to another, for business or pleasure, regardless of the class or time. Even though we are a small town, our development in industry, commerce and tourism are important and we should be pinpointed in the train system. Just like with our buses, this initiative may be affordable and convenient: • We can have the train stop by Park City on a case-to-case basis if there are enough passengers that sign up. • We can study demographic surveys and trends to find out who uses trains, under what circumstances, and how to best market for a steady or seasonal turnout. • We can request the county, state or federal governments to subsidize the costs involved for construction, operations and maintenance for reviving a train station and making it less expensive. LETTERS POLICY The Park Record welcomes letters to the editor on any subject. We ask that the letters adhere to the following guidelines. They must include the home (street) address and telephone number of the author. No letter will be published under an assumed name. Letters must not contain libelous material. Letters should be no longer than about 300 words (about 600 words for guest editorials) and should, if possible, be typed. We reserve the right to edit letters if they are too long or if they contain statements that are unnecessarily offensive or obscene. Writers are limited to one letter every seven days. Letters thanking event sponsors can list no more than 10 individuals and/or businesses. Send your letter to: editor@parkrecord.com The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER Andy Bernhard Editor Nan Chalat-Noaker Staff writers Jay Hamburger Scott Iwasaki Christopher Kamrani Megan Yeiter Sarah Moffitt Gina Barker Contributing writers Tom Clyde Jay Meehan Teri Orr Amy Roberts Copy editor David Hampshire ADVERTISING Classified advertising Jennifer Lynch Office manager Tiffany Rivera Circulation manager Lacy Brundy Accounting manager Kate Fischer Advertising director Valerie Spung Advertising sales Lori Gull Rachael Young-Tilton Barbara Yarbenet Jodi Hecker Erin Donnelly Photographers Grayson West Tyler Cobb Production director Matt Gordon Production Scott Schlenker Pat Hamaker Megan Maynard erving on a local school board is arguably one of the most thankless jobs in public service. It requires deft handling of complex financial issues, high-level diplomatic skills for balancing the needs of children, parents and staff, and the ability to help local administrators anticipate future challenges. And the remuneration for these valuable talents? Barely enough to cover gas and snacks. So, it is no small miracle that anyone at all wants the job, let alone that, this year, there were enough candidates for two seats on the Park City School Board to call for a primary. What is even more remarkable is the way the six candidates vying for these two seats have conducted themselves during the primary season. In each case, the candidates have actively campaigned and their supporters have submitted scores of endorsement letters to our newspaper. They have each responded to multiple interview requests from the local media and have shown themselves to be well informed on the issues and committed to improving our schools. This is the way democracy is supposed to be - nonpartisan and untainted by corporate funding - with citizen candidates (not professional politicians) running out of a sense of civic duty rather than personal gain. The Park City School Board race has been a refreshing reminder of a time before our enthusiasm for political process was squelched by cynicism. The 3,629 registered voters in Park City School Board Precinct #2 and the 3,738 in Precinct #3 have an extraordinary opportunity to select from a field of truly dedicated candidates to represent them. You can reward their efforts by offering constructive feedback and support as the campaign season continues. Our hats are off to Eric Oberg, Nancy Garrison, Ron Huggins, Kristen Brown, Paul Marsh and Tania Knauer. To those who received enough votes to continue on to the November election, we look forward to hearing more about your views on the challenges facing our school district. To those who were eliminated, we hope you are not discouraged and that you continue to be involved in the public process. LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Breast-cancer survivors Drivers need to slow Can we count on were treated like VIPs down in neighborhoods Mitt to save us? Editor: Image Reborn Foundation wishes to acknowledge Park City's kind and generous contributions which make it possible for us to invite local and international breast-cancer survivors to our beautiful town for liferenewing retreats. This past weekend we honored, welcomed, and hosted two survivors from Orem, two from Canada, and one from Japan at our retreat at the luxurious Chateau in Deer Valley. Not only did the Chateau graciously donate the accommodations for the survivors, their staff treated our attendees like dignities. Mitt Romney had plenty of VIPs visiting Park City, but the retreat participants felt they were also warmly welcomed as VIPs as they enjoyed their weekend stay in our friendly town. Thank you for extending your services, smiles and hugs, Park City! With appreciation, Editor: While I was home on vacation recently, I noticed a couple of cars going pretty fast in my neighborhood. I think that because there are many little kids who run around and play outside with their bikes and scooters, people should be more aware and slow down while driving in their neighborhood. Having cars go slower in neighborhoods will further prevent injuries to little kids, elderly people, and even you. By the time you have read this, I hope you will take notice about neighborhood safety. Thank you for your consideration. Paloma Gohary Park City Editor: Except for the notable exception of the Great Depression, it must have been nice back in 1933 when our government wanted us to believe that fear itself was all we had to fear. Today, though, government doesn't seem satisfied that we fear only fear itself, that a "nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror" is sufficient to keep us in line. If we're not able to find fear beyond fear itself by ourselves, they seem happy to fill in the blanks to where some real fear lingers - flying commercial, immigration, bird flu, swine flu, Asian flu, flu, Obama's religion, your own religion, torture, rendition, Catholic priests - it just gets worse. What we need is a War on Fear courageously waged, but who will take the helm? Can we really count on Mitt to save us? Nick Wright Keiko Ito Park City Interim executive director, Image Reborn Foundation GUEST EDITORIAL You're hearing the sound of tires wearing out and gas being wasted By John Haney Park City I'm very sure that every American knows that federal highway funds are one of the largest criminal organizations on the planet. It's mostly wasted on needless repaving and chip seal. It's most evident in Idaho where they chip seal every square inch of asphalt. Idaho is also one of the most undesirable states for bicycles. They have a really high injury and death rate for the low number of cyclists there. Almost 100 percent of the crashes there are caused by piles of gravel from chip-seal jobs that accumulate in intersections. I've broken bones in races on courses that were chip sealed the day before the race. There is absolutely no reason to chip seal or slurry seal residential areas; dumping tons of gravel into stormdrain systems is probably not a very good idea. It's also no picnic driving in Idaho; you know you're going to run into a traffic jam caused by chip sealing and you know you're going to do some damage to your windshield and your car. Chip seal is also becoming a serious problem to the health of all Americans, especially truck drivers. Long-term health problems caused by being rattled to death by all the really bad chip-seal jobs on almost all the highways today is not being recognized. For some reason, 90 percent of all chip-seal contractors do as bad a job as possible because the government really doesn't care. These nasty chip-seal jobs are also the main cause of fatigue and a major cause of most accidents. The main reason for chip seal and slurry seal, other than to waste federal highway funds, is that they Ninety percent of all chipseal contractors do as bad a job as possible because the government really doesn't care. These nasty chipseal jobs are also the main cause of fatigue and a major cause of most accidents." wear your tires out faster and cause your car to get poorer fuel economy. The tire-wear problem is especially noticeable on semi trucks. It's hard not to notice the radical increase in chunks of retreads on the highways. I'm sure that if Idaho residents could vote chip seal and slurry seal out of existence, they would. The chip-seal Mafia would be out of business and Idaho would no longer Please be aware: The Park Record's content is copyrighted and, other than limited excerpts that are clearly attributed to The Park Record, cannot be reproduced without express written permission from the publisher. That includes both written and online distribution. The Park Record welcomes dialog about its content, but any unlicensed distribution of its content is a copyright violation. In particular, articles and photos may not be displayed on other websites. Links to the be "the chip-seal state." Park City was one of the main players in the formation of the slurry-seal Mafia in Utah. Park City public works was looking for a road surface that would get bicycles and rollerbladers off the streets of Park City. First they tried chip seal with never-dry tar, sort of a disaster, if anyone remembers. Then they found slurry seal (almost as bad). Slurry seal is really bumpy, really slippery and causes the road to fall apart faster. Perfect! Slurry seal almost completely eliminated rollerblading, made it treacherous for bicyclists, and is sort of scary to drive on. There is still no reason for the existence of slurry seal except to waste federal highway funds or make parking lots look black. Salt Lake used to be a good place to ride bikes for transportation. You could easily avoid traffic by riding through residential areas (no traffic except for crossing main traffic routes occasionally). Now they are starting to slurry seal residential areas. Everyone who lives on a street that has been slurry sealed or chip sealed says the same thing: "I sure wish they wouldn't have done that." The residents don't really need to hear every SUV or pickup truck that passes their house. Speaking of that sound, it's the sound of tires wearing out and gas being wasted. content on www.parkrecord.com, however, are permissible. 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