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Show VIEWPOINTS A-21 www.parkrecord.com Wed/Thurs/Fri, January 18-20, 2017 EDITORIAL Park City plays a critical role in nurturing independent filmmaking T LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Park City should consider Oregon’s ADU model Editor: I was so happy to see the letter from Brad Baker regarding small accessory dwelling units or ADUs. Personally, I am moving to Oregon as soon as the just-listed house sells and am having an ADU (Tiny House in my ongoing senior adventurous life) built that I can place on one of my two sons’ properties or on my granddaughter and her hubby’s property in three different Oregon towns. Oregon is so accepting of these types of living structures for extended family members. GO OREGON! Park City — take notice. Arla E. Baragar Park City State park is grateful for avalanche safety equipment, lessons Editor: To the Canyons Village Snow Safety patrol: a big “Thank You” from the staff and volunteers at the Wasatch Mountain State Park. Thanks for the three avalanche practice transmitters we can use to as part of our new program at the Park called Hide and Seek. We bought two Tracker 2 transceivers, shovels and probes in addition to these units. We now offer single- or multi-beacon search activities, mimicking single or multiple burials, on the grounds of the park’s Visitor Center. Thanks for your support! Nancy O’Toole Wasatch Mountain State Park Volunteer Park City Institute enriches our community Editor: My husband and I came to Park City 17 years ago for me to teach skiing at a major resort in the West. For a few years we were here only for the ski season, but then we decided to sell our big house on a lake in Michigan to live here in our tiny condo fulltime. All of our family members had also left Michigan and were spread far and wide across the country. Two years ago my brother and sister moved closed to each other in Colorado where a niece also lived. They asked us to join them, however, as we were returning home from an event The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER Andy Bernhard Editor Nan Chalat Noaker Staff writers Jay Hamburger Scott Iwasaki Bubba Brown Angelique McNaughton Griffin Adams Contributing writers Tom Clyde Jay Meehan Teri Orr Amy Roberts Steve Phillips Tom Kelly Joe Lair Intern Jessica Curley Emily Billow Copy editor Frances Moody ADVERTISING Classified advertising Jennifer Lynch Office manager Tiffany Rivera Circulation manager Lacy Brundy Accounting manager Jennifer Snow Advertising director Valerie Spung Advertising sales Lori Gull Jodi Hecker Erin Donnelly Lisa Curley Bill Thomason Photographer Tanzi Propst Production director April Hendrix Production Ben Olson Nadia Dolzhenko Patrick Schulz here one night, we realized we couldn’t leave Park City because we are too entrenched. There are so many special things about Park City that we appreciate that simply do not exist anywhere else. I want to express my appreciation for just one of the organizations that has enriched our lives here, the Park City Institute. We have been volunteers for the program for many years and have seen it enlarged and improved each year. After attending the program with Van Jones last Saturday I felt it necessary to publicly acknowledge my appreciation to Teri Orr for all the work she has done to “entertain and illuminate” our community. Saturday’s program certainly accomplished all of that and more. Before the event people were gathered in the lobby with enthusiasm it was impossible to miss. During the program there was an intense interest and concern throughout the auditorium and when Van Jones finished his last statement the audience erupted in applause. People stayed in the lobby visiting and expressing their appreciation. We all left realizing that we had experienced an event which had changed many of our perceptions, enriched our lives, and would be shared with many in our community. Thank you Teri Orr for your commitment to the arts in Park City and making our city so special. We truly appreciate you and what you have given to the Park City Community. Lorraine Stuecken Park City It’s time to enact term limits Editor: Unless we enact Term Limits on the United States Congress we will not see the change so critically necessary in Washington. Our catastrophic U.S. debt situation is precisely because no Congressman has wanted to jeopardize his chances of staying in office basically forever by trimming the fat. So they just keep kicking the can farther down the road hoping that someone else would take the hit for being fiscally responsible. Term Limit legislation is the ONLY way to restore true accountability! We now have the momentum to get this legislation passed. Everyone needs to be aggressively pushing for it. Our U.S. Senators and Representatives must know if they won’t pass it, we’ll vote them out and get some that will. his week, Park City residents may feel somewhat overrun by the film industry — but they should be proud of the work that is being done here. The Sundance and Slamdance Film Festivals are vital incubators for films that incorporate bold artistic expression, social activism and new technology. And the organizers say they couldn’t do it without Park City’s help. That support comes from every department in the city, from business owners and from regular citizens whose lives, in many ways, are disrupted by the festivals’ growing slate of activities and immense popularity. But, it is worth it. Despite the hard work and inconveniences, mostly packed into the first four days, being the focus of global attention generates a sense of civic pride. Once again, the films being screened this year both embrace and critique the human condition. Many examine the most relevant issues of the day — from justice reform and climate change to freedom of speech. Others test our capacity for compassion and explore our evolving relationship with technology. In fact, many filmmakers told us they have been re-editing their films to reflect the latest upheavals of our political landscape. Unfortunately, though, many Parkites won’t see what’s on the screens. Tickets, these days, are hard to come by. Instead they will be looking through their windshields at lots of traffic and no parking. They may not be so quick to praise the heroic documentarians shedding light on humanitarian shortfalls or the breakthrough performances of up and coming actors. We understand. So does the city and so do the festival organizers, and they are trying to mitigate the impacts. This year the city is offering free and frequent bus service between the big Richardson Flats satellite parking lot on S.R. 248 and the Eccles Center. There is also a new transit center at Kimball Junction, where people can grab rides into the city without worrying about finding a place to park. As to those hard-to-score tickets, Sundance has devised several ways to ensure locals get special treatment. This year, online ticket sales opened to Utah residents several days ahead of the general public. The festival has also established a tradition of giving away tickets for a Tuesday screening during the festival and offers free post festival screenings of many winning films. Best of all, thanks to new technology including many video-on-demand platforms like Amazon, Netflix, HBO and YouTube, more independent films than ever will soon be available on your own screen at home. So open your senses, hop on a bus and take pride in being a Parkite whose town hosts a couple of the finest film festivals in the world. GUEST EDITORIAL Rich and powerful are destroying democracy MIKE ANDREWS Park City The Constitution was, among other things, an attempt to balance the varying business and commercial interests of that time. Many of the compromises needed to achieve its creation were an attempt to balance competing interests of slave-holding cotton growers whose survival depended on cheap labor (slavery). They were a relatively small part of the population. On the other side was an emerging class that relied on trade and business growth for its success and who wanted a strong central government. Hence, a major part of the explanation for a two-part Congress based on equality of states in the Senate and on population in the House of Representatives (with a special 3/5ths allocation to count the slaves). Both sides had great distrust of “the rabble” and of anything that even hinted of the concept of “direct democracy through a referendum of the voters.” That is how the electoral “college” came to be. But the economic system and society that led to much of the Constitution has not existed since the late 1860s. Popular democracy has grown and flourished over the centuries. The founders provided a way to amend the Constitution to accommodate changing times but made it onerous. Yet, today those who call themselves “strict constructionists” argue fervently that we should only interpret the Constitution in light of the intent of the founders and assert they have cornered the market on knowing what it was they intended and what we should do 240 years later! So, the Constitution itself became – unintentionally — an instrument for the destruction of democracy, where an 18thcentury political Electoral College could be used in 2016 to determine our President. A political class or group that believes the circumstances of a time long past should be the basis for a society’s political de- cisions, or that the person with the most votes should not win an election, is clearly out of touch with reality. As a result, on Friday, the man sworn in as president will have lost the election by almost 3 million votes! Also, the founders never envisioned a Congress whose members would make it a lifelong profession. Public service was seen as a civic responsibility of the propertied and commercial classes that would be taken on for a period and who would then return to their normal careers. Now, in Utah, we have been informed that our senior senator, at the age of 82, may be intending to grace us with his wisdom by standing for his seventh term. And then there is gerrymandering. Elbridge Gerry whose ignominious contribution to our history was to cut the population of states into areas known as congressional districts, favorable to your political party, a process so highly refined by BOTH PARTIES that today only a mere handful of congressional seats are described as contested. Most representatives reside in their uncontested gerrymandered districts fearing only a primary of their own party for failing the power brokers of their district. In 2017 some would have us make decisions as if we lived in 1787. Others believe the wisdom of the populace is limited to a group of professional “pols.” Together they believe the rule of the majority should prevail only if it agrees with their agendas. That same group controls the means by which their dominance of the process is assured. Either change occurs or our democracy will not exist 50 years from now. If you believe that our president-elect will bring that about that change, I have a bridge I’d like to sell you. Dr. Andrews was an educator of 40 years, teaching history, government and economics in high schools for 20 of those. He became an administrator and from 1991 to 1999 worked in Park City Schools as high school principal and district supervisor of construction projects. Utah Rep. chastised for ignoring Trump’s business conflicts Ski resort must help fund transportation improvements Editor: Three million voters had their ballots thrown away because of the Electoral College. Al Gore lost the 2000 election because of the Electoral College. My vote in Utah doesn’t count because of the Electoral College. It is past time to change the system. Women across the country are organizing a march on Inauguration Day. Where are the men? Why the divide? Maybe men don’t want to wear silly pink hats. Marching is fine and everyone will feel good after. But, will the march effect change? Certainly, No. 45 won’t give it any credence, perhaps a Tweet. Pete Seeger said that people feel good singing protest songs but then everyone goes home and nothing changes. Leaders must be found to organize more than marches. Political changes come from political action. Let us put our support fully behind those elected who have been given the opportunity to effect change wherever they are across the United States. Thank you for listening. Dear Representative Chaffetz, I must write to you on the subject of President Elect Trump’s conflicts of interest. I heard you on CNN on Thurs., Jan.12 stating that “Mr. Trump has bent over backwards,” to satisfy the Emolument Clause. Nothing could be further from the truth. Mr. Trump’s conflicts of interest compromise the integrity of the office of the president and they put our country at a grave disadvantage in regards to our National Security. Better minds than mine have weighed in on the subject and it is clear that Mr. Trump has done nothing to satisfy the Emolument Clause or separate himself from his businesses. By simply putting the Trump businesses in the hands of his sons is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Instead, your threat to subpoena Walter Shaub of the Bi-Partisan Office of Government Ethics and punish him for doing his job of looking into the conflicts is counterproductive. It was just weeks ago that Congress tried to do away with the Office of Ethics entirely but, the American people spoke loud and clear and the idea was smashed within 24 hours. The People not only want an Office of Ethics they want an active Office of Ethics. The only solution as stated by all of the Experts is for Mr. Trump to put his Businesses in a blind trust. That protects both America’s National Security and the people’s trust in our institutions. You’ve become intoxicated by power and privilege and it shows. As a Public Servant, integrity and the proper use of power, or restraint, in using that power will guide you to a more lasting happiness. Please take my critique in the spirit of respect and concern. Thank you for working on behalf of the Great People of Utah. Bette Scarlet Park City Debra J. Dimick Heber City Editor: I was very interested to read the letter by Robert Neumeister in Saturday’s Park Record regarding the potential purchase of the Dahle parcel by the county for affordable housing and for a parking lot/bus station to serve drivers from Salt Lake City. Before I moved to Park City, I worked for a top management consulting company including on some major traffic and facility planning and scheduling problems in the USA, UK, Italy and France. So, a year or so ago, I volunteered for a joint city/county committee to study parking and traffic. Meeting just one or two hours per month it was incredibly inefficient. I resigned after six months after I was told by the county’s transportation coordinator that my suggestion for a potential large and cheap parking facility for winter traffic coming from SLC was outside the scope of the study as “skier parking was Vail’s problem.” If Mr. Neumeister’s information that Vail is involved in the planning of this parcel is correct, it appears that the rules changed. Probably for the better, because currently by far the biggest traffic problems are during ski season. After my experience with this committee, I have zero confidence in the skills of the county’s traffic “experts” and so I would like to see some detailed plans and economics for this space made public and discussed. Total costs for the transportation portion will eventually amount to multiple millions of dollars when one includes land purchase, Interstate 80 junction and access road improvement, parking lot development, new buses (most used only for limited periods each day), and additional staff. Much of this development — and it may well be the best and maybe only option to improve winter traffic flow — will be to Vail’s benefit, not taxpayers, James C Green Heber City Citizens are disenfranchised by Electoral College and hence Vail’s contributions should be publicly disclosed before the county moves ahead. Frank Fish Park City Another way to reduce health care costs: go vegan Editor: With Republican Congress bent on depriving 22 million Americans of medical insurance, this is a great time to provide our own, totally free and totally effective health insurance — a plant-based diet. A study with 131,000 participants, in last year’s Internal Medicine, found that consumption of animal protein is associated with higher risk of death. A couple dozen other massive studies in the past four decades had similar findings. None reached opposite conclusions. According to National Institutes of Health, 1.4 million, or 68 percent, of identified U.S. deaths are attributed to heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes, linked conclusively with consumption of animal products. The cost of medical care was estimated by National Institutes of Health at 3 trillion dollars in 2014, or $24,000 per household, and rising at 6.5% annually - nearly four times the rate of inflation. Incredibly, this amount rivals our national budget and represents 17.5 percent of our gross domestic product. Even so, it does not include the costs of lost productivity, disability, and premature death. We have little control over the national cost of medical care. But, each of us has a great deal of control over our household’s $24,000 share every time we visit the grocery store. Pruitt Richardson Park City |