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Show r Page A14 Thursday, May 21, 1992 Park Record he in t Lns i : - i - -roc AT&T, the nation's leader for 'In Home and Away" home security systems, is presently offering a FREE "In Home" security analysis for Park City residents! Our local authorized home security consultant, Mr. Joe Womack, will show you the very latest in AT&T's stale of the art technology! Call Joe at 1-800-800 9479. Installation growing in ihc love ojjol neighbor ,arj idf. PARK C H Y 7 ;X)M.U!MTV! CHl'RClll ! 649-81! Fully Adjustable Finest Wood Products Free In-Home Estimates Fully Guaranteed Spotless Clean-Up 100 Financing 90 Days Same As Cash easi IHflli WML RENTERS! You don't need Homeowners Insurance, but you do need protection. . State Farm's extensive coverage at affordable rates. Tom Ligare, CLU 1662 Bonanza Dr. Park City, UT 649-3332 3 3BB Slate Farm Fire and Casually Company Home Office: Bloominglon. Illinois Like a good neighbor, Stale Farm is there . WHERE LOCALS NICHT IS EVERY NICHT (EXCEPT WEDNESDAY) FRIDAY & SATURDAY WEDNESDAY GOLF TOURNAMENT Sunday, June 7th - Details at the bar Limited entries, so sign up early! aSO E7JAIN STT. 6a9-G03Q A private club for the benefit of our members i r CUSTOMER OF THE WEEK Lead guitarist for Johnny and the Rockers, John Winston can always be found with a girl on his arm. Rumor has it the star of the Anti Jam Night has turned gigolo. When asked why, he replied, "chicks dig me". Redeemable for one Blue Plate Special In case of emergency by Robert Elliott Ah. Spring is with us once again and the sights and sounds of the season all around: dump trucks and tractors clamor through town seven days a week, cement mixers drone their way up Deer Valley Drive beginning at 6:30 a.m., earthmovers overturn still more of the landscape as open space slowly acquiesces and trees and families fall alongside Highway 224 in the name of getting in and out of town quicker and more efficiently, yes, another season of unprecedented development is upon us again. Sitting here in the midst of this latest attack upon our peace and quiet and rural style of life, I am reminded of an article I read this winter in the Park Record. The story portrayed an all-too-believable scenario sometime in the not too distant future of Park City. If I may paint again for you that January evening sometime in our near future: a new 491 seat theater filled to capacity during Film Festival week, 1000 people attending a performance in the new fine arts auditorium and 1500 Shrincrs conferring at the new Town Lift conference center, as I sat in traffic beholding all the activity surrounding me, other images also raced through my mind: thousands of new homes springing up in the suburbs of Snyderville Basin, thousands of shoppers miraculously appearing from nowhere to avail themselves of the bargains at Wal-Mart, Wal-Mart, Kmart and the factory stores. And lasdy, God help us all, the Olympics. From this vantage point, it was truly an overwhelming image. The concept of development paying its own way has only recently surfaced in the barrage of development inundating Park City and Summit County. It is an idea whose time has come and has yet to be fully realized. But ask yourself, with all this development, have we considered all the services needed to maintain this burgeoning population? Issues such as adequate water for all the new development is quietly swept under the rug. Other issues receive even less attention. I can't help but wonder who is going to provide this exploding population with all the essential services most of us already take for granted? Specifically, I wonder who is going to provide emergency prehospital pre-hospital care for this, the future of Park City? The same underpaid, undervalued, paid volunteers of Holy CrossPark City Ambulance? The ambulance service is already stressed to its limits. Look beyond the flashing red lights and whining sirens of your local ambulance service and you will find the same, tired vehicles and many of the same tired "volunteers" who have been watching over this community for years. These same dedicated individuals assume the vigil over our community and respond to your frantic calls for help 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. For this service they are compensated a mere five dollars per night and 20 dollars per day to structure our lives around your calls for help. When we are called out in the night and wee hours of the morning frequently to one of the many new offensively large and absurdly expensive homes in our community, I can't help but sense the distinct disparity of the situation, this disparity is reaffirmed as I drag myself into my "real job" following one of these sleepless nights. Today I often find myself sitting in the new phenomenon of traffic behind guess who? Those same people we so humbly served last night in their Range Rovers and BMWs. Any sense of dedication to "my" community is rapidly growing thin. In a community recently assessed as having one of the highest household incomes in the state, but where most of us "normal people" can't afford to buy a home, why should we continue to provide this service without adequate compensation? Development continues to rage on in our once-little community, all the while expecting those services we all take for granted to be there at the touch of a few phone keys. Among those most acutely affected by the spiral ing cost of living in our town are those dedicated individuals at the other end of that phone line. From the roster of 17 qualified, "front page" members of Park City ambulance personnel, only two still reside within Park city limits. As of this writing, this one of the two will be joining in the emigration of the service out of the city and into the county where we are being forced to live. So what do you say? The brain suffers irreparable damage after four to six minutes without oxygen. Diabetics in insulin shock need an immediate infusion of dextrose to feed their starving brain cells. Hemorrhaging accident victims need immediate volume replacement to combat shock. As I See It Consider these scenarios in light of the now-common 10 minute plus response times by our-of-town ambulance personnel;. Consider this when someone you know is in trouble or on the bedroom floor unconscious. Can we as a community continue to take this service for granted? Or have we perhaps overlooked something very vital to our community in our efforts to keep up with growth? It probably doesn't occur to the bulk of the residents of Park City, particularly our newest members, that our ambulance service still operates under the same basic structure that it did ten years ago; paid volunteers. And no, contrary to what some may have been led to believe, this community doesn't even resemble the place it was ten years ago. Unlike the Park City Fire and Police service which taxes the blossoming population base for their operating budgets, the ambulance service does not and continues to lag behind. Think about it. How excited were you about your last minimum wage job in a resort economy, no matter how dedicated you were? And why does one real estate transaction in this town yield those parties involved a hundred fold in monetary compensation to that of saving a life on the streets? That strikes me as a distorted set of values. Some of us responsible for providing one of our community's most essential services are being forced out of town and even out of the ambulance service by the rising cost of living and the utter lack of compensation. As a result morale suffers, response times lengthen and enthusiasm wanes. The community as a whole will be the recipient of this trend. Most of us still involved with emergency prehospital pre-hospital care with the Park City ambulance service do so still as a hold over from the past when things weren't quite so busy around town and the money really didn't matter. Remember way back when there was actually a quiet period around town? Times have changed. Today that sense of community we all seek to serve is becoming tenuous at best. Today the money really does matter, that's reality. Many of us still choose to work for the ambulance service on the basis of the genuine satisfaction it has always brought to us. But even that has its limits. It has taken many of us years to become proficient at what we do and therein lies much of the frustration. As the demands of the job continue to grow and the disparity within this community continues to widen, even our volunteer spirit and sense of dedication will go the way of affordable housing and open spaces. The fact that all of us have second jobs, can't afford to live in town and lose money when we leave our regular jobs to respond to your calls for help should be of concern to the whole community. I guarantee that as this community continues to grow as it does and the structure of community services does not keep pace, we will continue to lose highly capable and dedicated individuals to the reality of earning a living in this community. There will no doubt be critics of my contentions that we of the ambulance service are merely technicians, that we are hot-dog volunteers who love the rush of adrenalin and the sound of the siren. These have little validity in the face of the facts. You are cordially invited to look into what we really do. Ask us about the sleepless nights, the countless auto accidents, heart attacks, medical emergencies, household accidents and yes, the ski injuries we respond to. Ask us about the continual education and training we must keep up with on our own time. Then ask yourself, before you really need help, is this service an important one for our community and how can we preserve its high quality while keeping up with the demands of a burgeoning population. One thing is for certain- this community has had it too good, for too long. It is time to pay the piper. Public forum (As I see it) letters must be submits ted exclusively to the Park Record and bear writer's full name, signature, address and telephone number. Names must be printed on political letters but may be withheld for good reason on others. Writers are limited to one letter of 350 words or less every 28 days. All letters are subject to condensation. Mail letters to: As I see it, Park Record, P.O. Box 3688, Park City, UT 84060. MB Stop Smoking. American Heart Association I Thesnow'sDyin' umSp neuw I -I SPEC1JILISTS III OUTDOOR EMDEV0KS May Bike Labor Specials yT Summer Programs Full Tune-Up Weekly Time Trials Reg. $35.00 Special $24.95 Thursday PM Group Trail Rides Overhaul Saturday AM "Learn to Ride" Class Reg. $90.00 Special $69.95 Rock Climbing Clinics All skill levels welcome! Fun & safety emphasized Open Daily: 10 AM -7 PM We're Bikin' Hikin' Campln' Climbin' Folks! Drop in and chat with out friendly qualified staff at 363 Main Street, Park City, Utah 801-649-8710 TOME -UP On all makes and models . For the entire month of Mayi 1992 oris TOUCH motoh OIL s18.95 LUBE, OIL & FILTER WITH 21 POINT CHECK We recycle motor oil. 1155 Ironhorse Dr. 649-2886 most cart 2S m a i inon HORSE dUTOmOTIVE L4 A' .-. MUM aU |