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Show Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, February 18-21, 2017 The Park Record A-18 Meetings and agendas More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde to publish your public notices and agendas please email classifieds@parkrecord.com Deja vu all over again SUMMIT COUNTY COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS SUMMIT COUNTY COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS (COG) will meet Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Summit County Courthouse Conference Room 2 60 N. Main Street, Coalville, UT 6:00 p.m. AGENDA All times listed are general in nature and are subject to change by the Chair. County Option for Transportation Implementation - Concept Development Application for County Wide Projects and Small Municipality Transportation Improvement Fund Grant Program; determine project criteria and ranking – Derrick Radke Flood Preparation Resources –Derrick Radke Review and Description of the Oakley Grant –Dave Thomas Minutes: December 20, 2016 Other items ITEMS *Public comment may or may not be taken* Next meeting: May 16, 2017 Chair, Vice-Chair and Secretary Election Individuals with questions, comments, or needing special accommodations pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding this meeting may contact the Community Development Department, (435) 336-3126. Review Eastern Summit County Development Code Amendments –Patrick Putt Summit County Board of Adjustment Notice is hereby given that the Summit County Board of Adjustment will NOT meet on Thursday, February 23, 2017 The next Board of Adjustment meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 23, 2017 Published: February 18, 2017-Park Record letters to the editor Support for women equals support for all Editor: I am writing in response to the opinion piece, “Equal Pay bill has a serious Downside,”that was published in the Feb. 15 issue of The Park Record. Although I value financial security for all families in our community and country, I disagree with several ideas presented in Mr. Green’s argument. First, I want to recognize that according to PEW Research Center, the mother is the primary breadwinner in 40 percent of all households nationwide. Mr. Green stated that if we are to enact the Equal Pay Act, we will be taking away income from the primary breadwinners, men, thus creating a vicious cycle in which men can’t support their families and women have to go to work. However, based on the previous statistic, it is undeniable that by supporting equal pay, the Utah Legislature will simply be supporting all families, regardless of their structure. Second, I would like to note that gender roles should not factor into the merit of the Equal Pay Act. According to PEW (2016), about half of all working dads with children under 18 say that they’d prefer to stay at home with their kids. Mr. Green noted that many working mothers hope to stay at home as well. Yet, he failed to recognize the flip side of his argument. By enacting the Equal Pay Act, the gender of the parent staying at home won’t have to be a deciding factor. Rather, either parent could choose to work without having to worry about whether they are receiving fair pay. Finally, as a female senior in high school who aspires to become an engineer one day, it is concerning to me that Mr. Green feels “the marketplace” should determine whether or not I get equal pay in my field. In fact, as a female going into a male-dominated field (even in 2017), I am concerned that without government regulation, I won’t make as much as my male-counterparts simply because of the ingrained biases my employers may (or may not) have. I am a girl. I am going to be an engineer. Regardless of where my career takes me, I deserve equal pay. Liz Cantlebary, student Park City High School The real issue is guns not borders Editor: If Donald Trump and the Republican Congress are really concerned about American lives then they have to go no further than legislating for stricter gun laws. Not one American life has been lost to a terrorist attack from any of the seven countries on President Trump’s Executive Order, but thousands of American lives are lost each year to gun violence. Real facts from the U.S. Center for Disease Control tell us that, on average, over 12,000 Americans lose their lives each year to gun homicides. On an average day, 93 Americans are killed by guns and that’s not including all those that are injured. Shockingly, America’s gun homicide rate is more than 25 times the average of other developed countries. If Vice President Mike Pence and his fellow Republicans value life so highly that they are pushing to shut down Planned Parenthood and intruding their personal religious beliefs into women’s lives, then why aren’t they also forcefully pushing for stricter gun control laws? What normal citizen needs to have an automatic weapon? Mentally ill people allowed to have guns? Open carry? Concealed weapons? Apocalypse now? If so many Republicans think it’s “just fine” for ordinary citizens to carry guns in schools, malls, workplaces, why are these ordinary citizens prohibited from carrying them into the Halls of Congress? Are the lives of legislators more valuable than those first graders’ lives in Sandy Hook or more recently the vacationers who had just flown into the Fort Lauderdale Airport in anticipation of family celebrations? We don’t have to look beyond our borders for threats to American lives. The danger is real. It’s guns and legislators who are more beholden to the NRA than the USA. Marilyn Gellert Park City Family overcome by community’s kindness after house fire To all in Park City, What words can express how amazing this community has been after our loss? How could we ever express our gratitude? Our house burned to the ground two weeks ago and I suspect I still am in shock. But the Park City community has supported us in so many ways for which we are ever grateful. The kindness of strangers has been amazing and heartwarming. To all who gave us coffee and homemade cookies and warm clothes when we still couldn’t fathom what had just happened, know that we so needed those gestures and items even though we didn’t know it at the time. We unwillingly joined the tribe of Those Whose House Has Burned Down. To our tribe, thank you for your support and encouragement, the message that it gets easier. I trust you on that. All who are reading this — don’t wait until a disaster to meet your neighbors. Say hello, smile, introduce yourself, don’t wait until mayhem. Kindness is always the right choice. To everyone at Ballet West Academy who supported Mia in the most kind and caring way for a teenager who found her house in flames on a Friday coming home from school, we cannot thank you enough. To everyone everywhere: dig out your fire hydrant after a snowstorm! That is the only reason our garage didn’t burn as well. To everyone who has been watching for our dog Roxy, all who have called for her, hiked and looked for her, left food on your porches for her, thank you so so so much. She still has not been found, but she is a scrappy one and a survivor. I am so happy, so honored, to get daily text photos of all the skittish blue heelers in Summit County, until one day, some day, someone will text me a photo that is Roxanne, and I will come no matter the time or place, and I will whistle for her, and she will run to my whistle like she has since she was a pup, run like the wind as is her way, and hear my whistle and run to me with that big smile and run to me and smile and be with her family again. Thank you Park City, Jessica, Brett, Darwin and Mia Taylor Summit Park Green letter fails to account for single moms Editor: I am writing you in regards to a letter that you published on Wednesday, Feb.15, 2017. It was titled “Equal pay bill has a serious downside.” I am wondering why you would publish a letter from a person who is so unbelievably archaic in his thinking? His views on women are horrible. Does he have any idea that not everyone woman marries and has a man to take care of her. Does he really think we are Cinderellas waiting for our prince to come on a white horse? Women deserve equal pay for equal work. It’s just that simple. It really is depressing to know that this man was elected to the Wasatch County Republican party as a vice chair. The Utah Republican Party needs to come into the 21st-century and represent all of their constituents. This Jim Green is only representing less than half of his. Dr. Geraldine Manning Park City Equal pay for women is good for business Editor: As a CEO who lives in Park City, Mr. Green’s comments dumbfound me. Over 50 years of experience running and sitting on the boards of publicly traded companies, have taught me a simple truth that runs contrary to his line of reasoning — in order to win in today’s competitive environment, companies need to hire and retain the best and brightest workers. If, for arcane reasons, i.e. gender bias, companies exclude one half of the workforce, they will, by the law of averages alone, end up with a workforce that is less competitive, with a lower IQ and lacking a broader understanding of the world. The end result will be fewer, lower paying jobs in Utah. We need all of Utah’s great minds, not just half of them, to keep our economy growing. Vic Lund Park City Please see Letters, A-19 I was one of the panelists on a program put on by The Project for Deeper Understanding last week. It sounds deeply cosmic, but was really a group of elected officials, the City and County Managers, the County Economic Development Director, and for some reason, me. The topic was growth and change. It was a very informed audience who knew about as much as anybody on the panel. We are lucky in this community to have so many people engaged at that level. You are really paying attention, which is hard to do in a place with so many wonderful distractions. Spring skiing in February is one of those distractions. This had been a great week to shirk all other responsibilities and get out on the snow. The weekend looks crumby, with the potential for more rain in addition to the holiday crowds. It didn’t use to rain in January and February. It does now. It’s almost like those climate change scientists might be on to something. Anyway, the discussion about growth and change had a very familiar ring to it. It’s a conversation that has gone on for 40 years without ever finding a solution. People forget that way back in the olden days, when we all drove rear-engine Volkswagens because there weren’t Subarus yet, growth was a huge issue. When Deer Valley went through the approval process in the late 1970s, it was viewed as an existential threat. There were sheep grazing at Snow Park, and a bunch of old mine ruins all over the place. That’s where we dumped old appliances. And then they came along and proposed not just another ski resort, but a ski resort like none of us had ever imagined. The assumption was that the new-fangled jetted bathtubs in the gigantic condos would suck the water system dry, and the planets would fall out of alignment. It’s hard to imagine Park City without Deer Valley now. Fifteen years later, in the hearings on the Empire Pass project, people were demanding that Deer Valley be protected. Traffic is our current existential crisis. We have been here before, too. In the mid-1980s, before 224 was widened, we managed to get in and out of town on two very narrow lanes. This time of year, they were also very bumpy lanes as the frost pushed up under the thin pavement. Only a drunk could drive a straight line. For a while, all the traffic exited town on Park Avenue because Deer Valley Drive didn’t exist. Traffic was insane. My memory is that it was even worse than what we have now. This time of year, they were also very bumpy lanes as the frost pushed up under the thin pavement. Only a drunk could drive a straight line.” UDOT widened 224 to the present 747 runway width, and when we saw the finished product, most of us were sick. The change was shocking physically. Mentally, we all had to adjust to the idea that we lived in a town that needed, really seriously needed, a road on that scale. It was a loss of innocence. One of those, “maybe I’m really not who I always thought I was” moments. But it solved the problem for a while. So a generation later, we’re back where we started, over- whelmed by traffic. The figures are staggering: 14,000 people a day drive into Summit County; 11,000 leave; and just for good measure, 9,000 of us drive around in circles within the county. Apparently nobody can sit still around here. But that’s the reality of the unsustainable and twisted economics of resort living. If you live here, you need an executive salary in Salt Lake City (or a trust-fund fortune made somewhere else entirely) to pay for it. If you work here, you need cheaper housing in Salt Lake to make ends meet. So we all drive back and forth and curse at each other at Kimball Junction. We could swap houses. Just sayin.’ It doesn’t help that we keep building more, though some of the new growth will include some “affordable” housing that, to a large extent, would be beyond my reach if I didn’t already have a house to sell. But the growth will require additional employees in retail, food service, and hospitality jobs permanently, and construction jobs temporarily. So the 14,000 daily influx becomes 16,000 and we are forced to find other ways to get around. That probably is a very big and ugly park-and-ride lot that will be unpopular wherever it is built. There’s that loss of innocence feeling all over again. I don’t know of another resort town that has solved the problem. Aspen had a 30-year head start on us, but still depends on a workforce commuting from 60 miles down valley. For everybody who says enough is enough and moves on, there is somebody else who just discovered paradise in exactly the same place and moves in. The only constant is change. Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986. Sunday in the Park By Teri Orr Turning more than a page Restless. This time of year, when the days start stretching a bit longer and light returns to early evenings, I feel myself wanting change. My cozy home that warms me during the coldest winter days and nights seems terribly small and, at once, too large for one person. It is messy and tired and heavy feeling with weighty drapes, a graveyard of boots and jackets and gloves, scarves and funny hats. The food choices in the pantry are all… hearty. I recently stayed in Santa Fe in a perfect space with white bright walls and a tiny fireplace, a tall bed and small couch — A space with huge windows overlooking The Square there and the Cathedral. Each morning the bells of the church would gently tell me it was time to start to stir. The newspapers were hung on my door handle and the saints/crows/ ravens/blackbirds appeared on the flat roof next door to start their conversations. It was a peaceful way to begin my adventures. There was just one problem. One glaring white problem. The books downstairs. I brought a few of my own books to read from home. I purchased a few more once I rediscovered the wooden floored coffee/pastry shop and independent seller downtown. One night I ventured downstairs in the hotel to spend some quiet time in the library. There was a much larger fireplace and native blankets and pots and pillows. Giant leather couches to sink deeply into. It honestly took me a few minutes to notice but the shelves of books were odd. All the books were turned backwards so row after row of shelves had the white pages facing out into the room. It was interesting, in an esthetic sort of way. All those white pages against the white-washed plaster shelves. There was a temporary order to it all. But just as quickly it was disturbing. What was the title? Who was the author? Fiction or not? So I started turning some of the spines around. The books were all without covers and old but not old enough to be rare, really. Maybe books from the ‘50s or ‘60s. They were cloth cover, some in once vibrant col- ors now faded in most places. All hardbacks. I asked one of the lovely staff members finally, to please tell me the story of the books being backwards. She confessed she was new to the property but she had thought it odd herself. She assumed the new decorator had been going for “a look.” She promised to ask and return. Later, when I was fully enjoying the crackling fire, a glass of wine and a book of my own, she reappeared. She said the answer to the mystery was simpler …and sadder as it turned out. The decorator needed books for the space and simply purchased them all at once, paying for them by the foot. So since they had no meaning individually they were all turned backwards to look the same and fill the shelves. It honestly took me a few minutes to notice but the shelves of books were odd. All the books were turned backwards so row after row of shelves had the white pages facing out into the room.” The young woman was clearly a reader and just as disturbed by this revelation as I. I nodded and ordered another glass of wine. And then I did something a little naughty. There was no one else in the room on this weekday evening. The handsome young man entered only occasionally to stoke the fire. I started to turn a few of the books around. A blue book here and a brown one there. A faded red one. I didn’t even take time to read the titles. It was a satisfying form of rebellion. And a way to pay respect to those authors. The day I checked out of the hotel I popped in, for just a minute, to the “library” sitting room. My revealed titles remained exposed with random colors. And the wood in the fireplace might have popped right then and hissed, but I swear I heard a “thank you” whispered like a prayer. Once home and facing the winter piles of things to shelve in the garage and move to the guest room and take to the dry cleaners and just life things one doesn’t think about in the purity of a lovely hotel, I was drawn to all my books. They are a cacophony of spines and colors and shapes and subject matter. Downstairs are mostly travel books of places I have been. Art books of beautiful works I have seen and don’t want to forget. Some books about the West. Some about the performing arts. Though I know them as friends whom I really should visit more often, they are a comfortable collection. All with covers and/or spines that are noisy in color and typeface. Upstairs in my bedroom are different shelves and stacks of more urgent reading. Best sellers and thoughtful books and some from authors I have met and spent time with. In my study are a subset of travel books-bird books or books that identify mammals or about ghost towns or people who created grand cities. In the guest room are books to help you stretch, books about faith or wonder or non-fiction real life, real time possibilities. I had no idea there was actually any order to my shelves and piles. But it was comforting to know in all the disorder of these days and nights before spring, all was not/ is not complete chaos. It may not seem like much — not wanting order but understanding too much order stifles and is even a form of disrespect — but that little epiphany may just be enough to help me navigate the final few weeks of winter in the mountains. As light lingers longer each afternoon I may find time to lighten the heaviness of my surroundings. Not all at once but an afternoon here/there-like this Sunday in the Park… Teri Orr is a former editor of The Park Record. She is the director of the Park City Institute, which provides programming for the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Center for the Performing Arts. |