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Show Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, March 25-28, 2017 The Park Record A-26 Meetings and agendas More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde to publish your public notices and agendas please email classifieds@parkrecord.com Nuking Kimball Junction Snyderville Basin Planning Commission Notice is hereby given that the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission will meet in regular session Tuesday, March 28, 2017 Work Session Location: Sheldon Richins Building (Library), 1885 West Ute Boulevard, Park City, UT 84098 AGENDA Agenda items may or may not be discussed in the order listed. 4:30 p.m. Work Session Continued review of the proposed amended Canyons Master Plan. – Tiffanie Northrup-Robinson, Senior Planner 6:00 p.m. Regular Session Public input for items not on the agenda or pending applications. Approval of minutes: January 10, 2017 and January 24, 2017 Discussion regarding a proposed Plat Amendment involving Lots 24 and 25 of the Park City Business Center.– Sean Lewis, County Planner DRC Updates Commission Comments Director Items Adjourn A majority of Snyderville Basin Planning Commission members may meet socially after the meeting. If so, the location will be announced by the Chair or Vice-Chair. County business will not be conducted. To view staff reports available after Friday, March 24, 2017 please visit: www.summitcounty.org Individuals needing special accommodations pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding this meeting may contact Melissa Hardy, Summit County Community Development Department, at (435) 615-3157. Posted: March 23, 2017 Published: March 25, 2017 - Park Record What will a Ryan Zinke-led Interior Department be like? His priorities: energy, sportsmen access, repairs Tay Wiles High Country News Amid the flurry of Trump administration appointments in recent months, Secretary of Interior Ryan Zinke was one of the less controversial. The former Montana congressman says climate change is not a “hoax” and federal lands should not be transferred to states en masse. His January Senate confirmation hearing went fairly smoothly, with none of the major gaffes or arguments that have plagued other appointees’ hearings. So far, his stated priorities for Interior have been vague but unsurprising: rebuilding trust between the public and the department, increasing public lands access for sportsmen and improving outdated infrastructure at national parks. But considering the controversial issues embedded in those priorities he’ll soon have to wrangle, the ride won’t stay smooth for long. Perhaps the biggest questions around Zinke’s Interior are how he will balance a mining and drilling-friendly agenda with habitat conservation and access to public lands, as well as how he will achieve his priorities if President Donald Trump follows through with major budget cuts. On March 2, his first day in office, Zinke signed two secretarial orders that swiftly reaffirmed his allegiance to the sportsmen community. One order aims to create more access to public lands for hunters and anglers. Sportsmen’s groups such as the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership have lauded the gesture at a time when an increasing amount of public land blocked off by private landowners who control access points. “Sportsmen access is a huge issue,” said TRCP President Whit Fosburgh, adding one of the biggest reasons hunters quit the activity is loss of access. One way Zinke could in- crease public land access is to push for more money for the Land and Water Conservation Fund: a repository created by Congress in 1964 to use royalties from offshore oil and gas to protect land and water. “It’s the number one access tool we have in this country,” Backcountry Hunters and Anglers Director Land Tawney said. “Ninety percent of its funds are used on access.” Though Zinke supported permanently reauthorizing the LWCF as a congressman, Congress has kept it chronically underfunded for years. Zinke’s secretarial order also calls for more emphasis on wildlife conservation, though details were slim. While the hook-and-bullet crowd is pleased with the attention to preserving habitat, another one of Zinke’s priorities may counteract it: energy development. Zinke has supported oil and gas drilling and mineral extraction on public lands. In his confirmation hearing, he said, “President-elect Trump has declared energy dominance to be a strategic economic and foreign policy goal of the United States and that he intends to unleash America’s $50 trillion in untapped shale, oil and natural gas reserves.” Zinke has already opened 73 million offshore acres in the Gulf of Mexico for leasing. In the rural West, accelerated energy development could do irreparable harm to wildlife migration corridors and habitat. “That’s what makes us nervous,” Tawney said. Whether Zinke is able to encourage wildlife conservation will also depend on Interior’s new budget. The Trump administration reportedly wants to cut 10 percent of Interior’s budget for fiscal year 2018. That would mean potentially fewer funds for habitat projects such as restoring streams or clearing invasive species. And at a time when an enormous amount of resources must be dedicated to fighting wildfires, such a budget cut would be devastating. “It’s crazy to think you can keep cutting budgets and be good stewards of the land and be the next Theodore Roosevelt,” Fosburgh said. Another priority in Zinke’s Interior will be to address the $12.5 billion backlog of needed infrastructure repairs at na- tional parks. The secretary has said he hopes to seek funding through Trump’s anticipated federal jobs and infrastructure bill. One of Zinke’s top priorities may be one of the most slippery: restoring trust in the Department of Interior among an angry set of Westerners who have deep-seated distrust in federal government. To a large crowd of Interior staffers in DC earlier this month, Zinke portrayed the distrust of his department as a result of managers and rangers lacking the proper tools or authority to make decisions in the field — a problem he vowed to help fix. During his confirmation hearing, Sen. Ron Wyden, DOregon, asked Zinke how he will protect agency employees “in an era where hostility toward federal lands and federal officials is rampant, particularly in rural areas.” Zinke responded: “As someone who has led soldiers in combat, I am committed to the safety of the Department’s employees. I am also committed to restoring trust by freeing up our employees to make decisions and to collaborate with local law enforcement if things get difficult.” Other issues the new Interior secretary has commented on in recent weeks include Native American rights. Zinke told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs last week that “one thing is very clear: sovereignty should mean something.” The National Congress of American Indians has commended his attention to Native American issues thus far. The secretary also signed an order reversing an Obama administration ban on lead bullets meant to protect California condors, eagles and other scavengers that can be poisoned by such ammunition. There’s still a lot we don’t know about what a Zinke-led Interior will look like. He has been quiet on how he will combat climate change as the head manager of a fifth of the nation’s landmass, in contrast to his two predecessors, who created climate research centers and pushed renewable energy. Zinke has also said he will conduct a “bold” restructuring of the Interior Department, though details on that are so far nil. Summit County has obtained nuclear weapons, and is preparing to use them. I know we are living in a factfree world these days, but consider the evidence. The County is forming a “Blue Ribbon Commission” to develop a master plan for Kimball Junction, extending from the Outlet Mall to Redstone. My initial reaction to that announcement was, “where were you 30 years ago?” It’s pretty much built out, aside from a ridiculous amount of office space at the Boyer Tech Park that will rely on employees driving up from Salt Lake. There’s not a lot of land left. Councilman Roger Armstrong was quoted in the paper as saying the Kimball Junction area “is already quite challenging in terms of traffic.” Nothing gets past him. So they want to study things like connectivity and circulation. Those are big issues. If you have errands that take you from, say, the banks at Kimball, to Petco, to the barber shop, and the grocery store, with lunch at any number of glamorous fast food emporia, which are all within walking distance of each other, it can’t be done. You would be insane to attempt that mission on foot. It’s life threatening in a car, and suicidal on foot. You want the biggest SUV you can get, with armor-plated doors. And you would need to allow 15 minutes to make the 200-yard drive. If your list required you to go across 224 to Staples or Wallyworld, you’d best notify your next of kin. So I’m all for a Blue Ribbon Commission to come up with a plan to tame the chaos. I’ve developed my own master plan for dealing with retail at Kimball Junction: I shop in Heber. I suppose they could improve Kimball by rearranging the park- ing lots so there were functional through streets, normal intersections and clear pathways to get from point A to B without being run over. This is about the third attempt to “fix” it. The wise Council member went on, “The Kimball Junction area is essentially the heart of the West Side and the center of everything right now. We have an opportunity to get it right.” And that’s the conclusive proof that they are going to nuke Kimball Junction and start over. Packing more density into the Tech Park, with all the commuter traffic it will generate, seems like an odd solution to our problems. Sticking Whole Foods on a Now the County says we have a chance to get it right. It’s clear that they intend to blow it up and start over.” street that is already over capacity didn’t solve it, much to our surprise. It seems unlikely that rearranging the grass berms that randomly slice the parking areas into a puzzling maze will really solve it. Rebuilding the freeway ramp so it doesn’t conflict with local traffic will cost millions. The only solution to Kimball Junction is to scrape it off and start over again. It looked pretty good with cows on it. It might be possible to redesign it with a normal street system with an underpass for local cross traffic to get across 224. But 20 or 30 years of almost aggressively bad planning has stuck strip malls where there should be streets, and grassy berms, covered with impenetrable mountains of gritty snow plowed off the parking lots, where there should be walkways. There are a few small patches of inviting areas, but they stand out like oases in a hostile wasteland of bad strip mall design. Now the County says we have a chance to get it right. It’s clear that they intend to blow it up and start over. On other fronts, there has been a lot of discussion about how the Russians might have influenced our election by spreading fake news stories that we believed and based voting decisions on. There is a lot of hand wringing about how to stop them. Here’s an idea. We need to quit being stupid, gullible, suckers. When you see something presented as fact, like Summit County having nuclear weapons, you really should pause and give it some critical thought. Here’s another example. During the Super Bowl build up, it was widely reported that Americans would drink 325.5 million gallons of beer on Super Bowl Sunday. That figure was published everywhere. That’s impossible. There are about 325 million people in the U.S. A lot of them are children, who presumably were not each guzzling a gallon of beer during the game. There were others who don’t care about football and didn’t participate. Not everybody drinks beer. So when it is presented that every man, woman and child in the county downed a gallon of beer, or when reallocated among those who drank any, maybe a third of the country drank a bladder-busting 3 gallons of beer, it just doesn’t seem reasonable. The brewers later said it was really about a 116 gallons. We all have a civic responsibility to be a little skeptical. 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 Coming clean I have a sense I have been a wee bit cranky this week. It started with the robin. I came home while it was still that lovely time of day where the sun had set but light was left. I noticed, on the bare branches of my crabapple tree, which have been repeatedly pruned this winter by moose, a robin was sitting there. And it just seemed out of place. The robin, which brings me joy each spring, belonged on the lawn eating worms. In the morning light. And he should be fat. He looked so wrong on the barren tree. It was like a feral skinny kitten decided to sit on a branch. He looked out of time and place. The next day I became aware I was biting off heads on the phone of people in distant states who were calling trying to get my business … Until I remembered, in the middle of one such call, I had asked those people to call me so I could do business. The sweet intern in my office offered to get me a Coke one afternoon and instead of thanking her I told her exactly which fast food emporium to visit for the sugary, brown, bubbly drink. The oldish trees in our little neighborhood are precious — None of them existed here in the ‘70s when we moved in. After the storm this week I saw one had been pulled right from its roots and was laying on the ground. I was angry at …I don’t know … Maybe the universe … But damn, a mature tree gone? Yes, the politics of the day are embarrassing to any centrist American, let alone a liberal like me. My friends from some of the Magnificent Seven banned countries, who can no longer bring their computers on board to do work, are cancelling joining us at an annual conference. They anticipate not having their computer on board will be the least of the problems they encounter trying to visit here. The weather, which had me running for my Allegra last week, has been grim. Wet and fake snowy. The stuff that clings for a few hours but doesn’t really cover anything up for long. And snow has nearly melted altogether in my yard. A lumpy patch still in shade, but the wet dark dirt has been revealed. And from that dirt are a handful of purple crocus and the green shoots that will be tulips if the deer don’t eat all the tops off of them. The rocks I have accumulated from travels, in odd shapes, some in vibrant colors, are starting to emerge but they will need to be carved out of the thick layer of dirt settled on them. When I walked in the front door last night, I noticed my friend had returned the little fancy carry-on bag I had loaned her. It was a gift to me and included near the handle of the I ripped off the plastic wrap to better smell the soap. It was flat and smooth and seamless in its color on one side. When I turned it over, I saw the impression of pale fingertip marks had been left on the back side.” bag is a built-in charging station for your phone or computer. Rather handy when you aren’t in a place with a plug easily accessible and you need to charge up. I loaned her the bag because she was headed to the desert along the border in Arizona to do some powerful work with the immigrant community. She returned the bag and included in it was a bar of scented pink soap. The wraparound pink paper described the soap and how to use it. “Lather to remove deeply imbedded impurities”… or leave it in a drawer “as a sachet.” It described the Shea butter which was good for the skin and even “works well against stretch marks.” And it stated the scent was “exctatic earthy”. Then I saw the print at the bot- tom. The soap was created by “the hands of the Benedictine Sisters of Perpetual Adoration.” For the love of God! I said out loud to no one…Perpetual Adoration? That seems psychotic. Perpetual. Always always, all the time, adoring someone/thing all the time around the clock — adoring. I ripped off the plastic wrap to better smell the soap. It was flat and smooth and seamless in its color on one side. When I turned it over, I saw the impression of pale fingertip marks had been left on the back side. So I took the matching fingers of my right hand and I set them in the impression that been left there. And then I inhaled the scented soap. I tried to imagine the woman who had crafted this bar. Had she joyfully toiled in a kitchen-like space and chatted with others while she added the color, the scent? Had she poured the liquid in a mold or had the bars once been one long sheet that were cut apart later? And what was her name? Not her Sister name but her given name? Was it Louise or Esmeralda or Bertha ? And was the misspelled “ecstatic” her version of momentary, transcendent joy? And did/does perpetual adoration give you room for doubt? I decided to use the bar as more sachet than soap and I slept with it by my bed last evening. I had my most adventuresome dreams in months. I woke to blue skies and sunlight hitting bare branches — now the palest shade of gray-green — hinting change is promised. And I have decided if someone has spent a life devoted and adoring in creating the simple work of a bar of soap, the least I can do is be more observant as the seasons change in a pace of their own. I will not likely become adoring, but I can aim at less cranky. Not every day, but starting 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. |
