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Show -f Page MOD September 7, 1995 The Park Record Sectioh A Letfjteips it ttflne -EMiton Labor Day Paddlesports Sale Storewide Savings 15 - 50 Off Whitewater & Sea Kayaks, Inflatable Kayaks, Keowees (canoe alternatives) & Sit-on-Tops Paddlesports accessories including Paddles, Helmets, Lifejackets, Paddleiackets, Wetsuits, & Drysuits Brand name merchandise by Perception, New Wave, Wave Sport, Prijon, Kokatat, Stohlquist, Mountain Surf, Lightning, Carlisle, Extrasport, Salamander, Protec, Northwest River Supply, Carlson & Thule Peak Experience 875 Iron Horse Dr. (Next to Payless Drug in Park City) 1-800-361 -UTAH (8824) or 645-5366 (Sale 9195 - 91095) AT HOME TOTAL SYSTEM SUPPORT FOR HOME AND JOHN CHAMPION em cow fo) mm, 1890BonmzaDme Mountain America Credit Union is opening the door to a new concept in financial institutions in Park City. We are opening a brand new Personal Service Branch on September 1 1th at 1890 Bonanza Drive, specifically designed with your convenience in mind. Two automated tellers (ATMs) will be accessible 24-hours a day for deposits and withdrawals 365 days a year. Our friendly staff will be available Monday through Friday 9:00 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. WITH COMPUTERS A PROFESSIONAL SERVICE SELECTING AND TEACHING PERSONAL COMPUTERS LET ME HELP: Choose a Computer that will Grow with You Shop the Best Price for a New System Upgrade Your Existing Computer Setup and Install Hardware and Software Performance Tune your System Provide On Site Training $35 PER HOUR 24 YEARS EXPERIENCE WITH to open accounts, process loans and familiarize famil-iarize you with our time-saving automated features. We look forward to serving your financial finan-cial needs. Look for our Grand Opening Celebration in mid-September! CL MOUNTAIN AMERICA PARK credit union IoVO SMALL BUSINESS IBM 649-8542 in park city 'lour Partner in Financial Fitness C,TY 0PENS SEPTEMBER 1 1TH BONANZA DRIVE A note of thanks Editor I would like to commend our school board representative, Colleen Bailey, for her work and support in our quest for safe transportation of our children to school. Colleen is doing exactly what we have elected her to do take our interests, investigate them and then make well-informed decisions from her research. She has first-hand knowledge of the hazards that face our children on the various routes to school. She challenged her fellow board members at the last school board meeting to get out and walk the routes the board members have mandated that our children walk. It will be interesting to see how many of these board members actually took Colleen's challenge to heart and "walked a mile in their shoes." The issue of safe transportation of all children should be the utmost priority of the Park City School District. The monies already allocated for the busing of children in hazardous areas should be used for this purpose only. Elementary schools in walking distance of safe residential areas are a fond memory of years past Educators must make a commitment to budget for safe transportation of all students to and from school, now and in the future. If the district vision statement, "Students are the center of our thoughts and the focus of our dreams," is truly what our school district board and officials believe, then the district needs to show us their support, as we did them, in passing a $40 million-plus bond. We have given our school district the means to provide an exceptional education for our children. Please, provide safe transportation for these children so they will be able to take advantage of this education! Debbie Wenz Don't wait for a tragedy Editor Park City Superintendent Don Fielder and other school board members have accepted a decision that hazards are not an issue in busing our children to school. All Park City children deserve safety. ..that is our No. 1 concern. Children are our future. We encourage children to be educated but will risk their safety over busing. I walkrun the Jeremy Ranch area every day and am amazed at the amount of traffic traveling our roads especially at the intersection of Rasmussen and Homestead roads. Speed limits are almost never followed. I wonder how children could get to and from school safely. Another item to mention: I helped out in the survey to gather statistics on the amount of traffic during a half-hour time period directly after school let out last spring. Approximately 400 cars and construction vehicles passed the Rasmussen and Homestead intersection. This will not stop as new homes continue to be built. It is not clear whether there will be sidewalks in all of the high traffic areas. Jeremy Ranch Elementary is in a commercially-zoned area which makes walking to school more dangerous. Please think of our children. Let's solve this busing issue amicably before one child does get hurt and then does become an issue. Bob and Teryle Caswell Call for an audit Editor I am writing in response to the Park City School Board's proposed busing policy, which will exclude busing for children within 1.5 miles of their school without additional financial support. My children are five and seven years of age and we live in Jeremy Ranch. It is my understanding that at the time Jeremy Ranch Elementary School was in the planning stages with respect to site location, that the board's intentions were to bus all children due to the hazardous location. What has changed since then? There are no safe areas that our children may walk to school, especially in extreme weather conditions. It seems the board members at that time were genuinely concerned about the safety and welfare of our children. I attended the last meeting of the board and it seemed we had only one member in support of busing in hazardous areas. We thank her for that Today I walked home from Jeremy Ranch Elementary with my five-year-old son. The posted speed limit on Rasmussen is now 25 mph, but it seemed 50 mph was the norm. Forty-eight cars passed us by. It took us 25 minutes to get home. My son was exhausted and almost in tears. The board proposed a fee of $310 per child for safe transportation. Considerable public outcry appeared to prompt a reduction to $180 per child per year. Equalization of school funding has sent our tax dollars throughout the state yet development fees (new school impact fees) in excess of $3,400 per house, and now transportation fees are necessary? Perhaps an audit by an independent source would help provide the school board with badly needed information and direction. We the parents of Jeremy Ranch Elementary School do not intend to give up or give in until the needs of our children's safety are met. Sincerely, Renee Laude A busing scenario Editor She is a single mother. Works for Park City Group. Lives in the gray condos at ParkWest Wolf Mountain now. When the buses stopped, she decided to drive her daughter to school. She didn't have the extra income to pay for buses. Didn't matter. There weren't enough takers in her area anyway. So the offer for paid busing was withdrawn. Besides, they only live a mile from school. It isn't far. If that was the only problem her daughter could walk to school. The problem is that most of that mile requires her to walk down S.R. 224. No sidewalks. Highway speeds. So she drove her to school. Sometimes it made her late for work. You would not believe the traffic over at the school. Her coworkers co-workers covered for her. But nothing works forever. It came out. The boss told her if she was late once more, her job was over. The next morning was one of those mornings. The tension building, as she tried to hurry, her daughter told her she would walk. It seemed OK, the weather was good. It wasn't that far, she reasoned, some of the other kids did it. After all, she was in the fourth grade she could handle it. Maybe she should let go, to not be so protective. She agreed, reluctantly. Her rusty Subaru pulled into the parking lot with two minutes to spare. She was at her desk at 8:02, radio on KPCW. Blair Feulner's voice came on. "An auto-pedestrian accident has been reported on 224 between Wolf Mountain and Silver Springs. Details are sketchy. All traffic is being rerouted to Highway 40. Avoid the area. They are bringing in life-flight and have blocked the road. We don't know how severe the injuries are or if there are any fatalities. The Summit County Sheriff's Department is attempting to reach relatives before releasing further information. Her phone begins to ring. She is ' afraid to pick it up. It seems a thousand miles away. Like a bad dream. It keeps ringing. This is why busing should be left in place. Call the school board members. Park City Board of Education: Nikki Lowrey (president), 649-0424 H, 649-9371 W; Colleen Bailey (vice-president), 649-1346 H; Carol Murphy, 649-3383; 649-3383; Roger Fulmer, 645-7844 H, 777-2206 W; David Chaplin, 649-9613 649-9613 H; Don Fielder (superintendent), 645-9902 H, 645-5600 645-5600 W. Art Brothers Facing reality Editor As a parent of two Jeremy Ranch Elementary students I cannot remain silent on the very important busing issue that has arisen. The realities of this issue are what is important and cannot be ignored. Reality 1: Approximately 400 vehicles travel through the intersection at Rasmussen Rd. and Homestead Rd. during the hours of 7:40 a.m and 8:10 a.m. when our children would be walking to school. Last spring I was asked by the committee that was organized by Dr. Fielder to study the busing issue to count the number of vehicles that traveled through that intersection for one-half hour prior to the beginning of school at 8:10 a.m. The conditions I observed last spring were too hazardous to even contemplate sending a walking child through the intersection let alone in the middle of winter. In aaauion, since last spring, construction has begun on the gas station and the sewer district that only adds to the heavy traffic. Reality 2: The current proposal by Dr. Fielder that was adopted ijy the school board greatly compounds the traffic problems at the RasmussenHomestead intersection. I do not feel that the committee took into account the impact of the proposal that was adopted. Perhaps the school board thought that most parents would just pay the money and put their children on the bus. However, most of the parents I have spoken to are planning not to pay to have their children bused. So as parents drive their children to school, the traffic impact on the Rasmussen Road Homestead intersection would be compounded. Reality 3: Not all parents can afford to pay the $180 to have their children bused. The solution may have seemed simple. Just pay $180 and your child can safely ride the bus to school. However, many families do not have the extra $180 to "insure" the safety of their child. And those families with more than one child attending school are faced with very few options. Many families are already two-income families by necessity. ; Reality 4: The proposal to bus the children living in the five hazardous areas that was given to the school board by the committee set up by Dr. Fielder was within the amount already budgeted for transportation. Need I say more? Reality 5: This is not an issue of convenience, rather it is an issue of safety for our children. In conclusion, the school board may feel that this issue of busing students who live closer than 1.5 miles and within the "hazardous areas" is an issue of parents vs. the school board. However, I hope. that as the realities are reconsidered we can say that this issue is one of parents and school board for the children. Sue Proctor t Outdated law Editor. I found it distressing that the story printed in the Aug. 31 edition of The Park Record regarding Ue busing issue quoted former district official who apparently has not worked in this district since 1988. - With all due respect to Dr. Maqk Simmons, the controversy that exists is not about people building homes on mountain and saying "come up here and get my child." I have yet to hear that from an; parent living in Ranch Place or Eagle Ridge or ParkWest Village-, not even Pinebrook. The children, who live on mountaintops are bused, they live further than 1. miles from their school! The current (1995) busing issue? that has many families outraged is the Park City School Board's insistence that "hazards should nqfr be an issue" when deciding who gets the benefit of our (not the school board's) tax dollars. Dropping the asking price to provide busing from $310 to $180 was not a concession to a public outcry, it was an error in addition that should have never been allowed to happen in the first place. The handwriting is on the wall,-we wall,-we must work to amend the', situation caused by an outdated' state law and use our tax dollars in' the most responsible way possible"? by seeing that our children, indeed all children in the Park City School' District, are safely transported trju and from school via school buses. Our current district budget allocated the dollars required fori busing children living in a! hazardous area within the 1.5 mile radius of their school. The number one recommendation from the? transportation committee to the school board was to utilize this money for its original intent and. provide busing for all children hv. grades 1-5. We are working, shoulder to shoulder with our next, door neighbors as well as with people that we have just met from) other neighborhoods. This issue has; united us in a common goal: To: respectfully ask that the Park Cityj School Board reconsider thein previous decision and act on behalf of the people they were asked to represent. . n Contrary to the offensive comment in the story that we are. only caring for our own children! and not arguing on behalf oL students in other areas, we ark further suggesting that future district budgets should providej transportation for every child inj elementary school in the entire Park: City School District. If we are asked again to vote for a multi!1 million dollar bond for the district, let's ask that some of that money" be earmarked for transportation. "? Cindy Bopes ' More letters on Page A12b and A13 ' re i |