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Show The Park Record A-22 Meetings and agendas Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, April 8-11, 2017 More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde to publish your public notices and agendas, please email classifieds@parkrecord.com Time to recycle the garbage fee Snyderville Basin Planning Commission Notice is hereby given that the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission will meet in regular session Tuesday, April 11, 2017 2017 Work Session Location: Sheldon Richins Building (Library), 1885 West Ute Boulevard, Park City, UT 84098 Discussion regarding a proposed Conditional Use Permit for the Woodward/Gorgoza area.– Ray Milliner, Principal Planner AGENDA Agenda items may or may not be discussed in the order listed. DRC Updates Commission Comments Director Items Adjourn 4:30 p.m. Regular Session 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. Public input for items not on the agenda or pending applications. Discussion and possible action for the Lofts at Blackstone Condominium Plat; Lower Village Road; BLKSMS-LV4-B; Harrison Horn, applicant. – Tiffanie Northrup-Robinson, Senior Planner Discussion and possible action for the White Pine Canyon Village Final Site Plan; Lower Village Road; LVDAM-LV-10; Brad Johnson, applicant. – Tiffanie Northrup-Robinson, Senior Planner Approval of minutes: January 10, 2017 and February 14, To view staff reports available after Friday, April 7, 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: April 7, 2017 Published: April 8, 2017 - Park Record Timberline Special Service District Timberline Special Service District Spring Public Meeting Monday April 17th from 7- 8:30 pm at the 731 Bitner Road fire station. Agenda: Approval Election of board positions for 2017- Peter Minutes from 11/7/16- Kyle Final winter payment for Steve Anderson- Bill Review of road projects for summer 2017- Tor Approval of use of Contingency funds-Bill TSSD Bylaws- Peter Neighborhood park- Bill ++ a maximum of 10 minutes is allotted for each item for public comment. Further info at : https://www.utah.gov/pmn/sitemap/notice/387201.html Scammers target seniors These tips offer advice on how to avoid scams Katie Blandford Community Liaison,Yarrow Hospice and Palliative Care Scams targeting seniors have been on the rise in the past few years, which is something our community’s seniors need to be aware of. According to the National Center for Victims of Crime, Americans age 65 and older are more likely to be targeted by scams and to lose money once targeted, which annually totals around $40-$50 billion dollars in the United States. We would like to share some information and tips on how to avoid common senior scams. • Medicare/health-care scams: A false representative will call a senior offering bogus services through a provisional pop up clinic. Later they ask for the senior’s personal information (full legal name, social security number, driver’s license number, etc.) in order to process Medicare benefits and pocket the money. Some tips from the National Council on Aging to protect seniors from these sorts of scams are: “Protect your Medicare number as you do your credit card numbers and do not allow anyone to use it. Be wary of salespeople trying to sell you something they claim will be paid for by Medicare. Review your Medicare statements to be sure you have in fact received the services billed. Report suspicious activities to 1-800-MEDICARE.” • Funeral/cemetery scam: Scammers will find the name of an elderly widow or widower from an obituary and will call claiming the deceased has an outstanding debt that needs to be paid. They will attempt to extort funds in order to forgive the false debt. • Telemarketer scams: Telemarketing scam artists have many tactics but the most common are the pigeon drop, fake accident ploy, charity scams, sale of fraudulent products and the yes scam. With the pigeon drop, the scam artist informs the senior of a large sum of money found and asks for payment in order to split the funds and then has a second scam artist pose as a lawyer, banker or trustworthy person. The fake accident ploy is when a scam artist claims one of his or her family members or friends is injured, in the hospital, or has been robbed while out of the country and needs funds wired. With charity scams, a senior is asked to give money to a fake charity. One of the newer telemarketer scams seeks out the victim to simply say the word “yes” on the phone. For example, the scammer will and ask: “Is this ____?” and when the person answers “yes,” they record that and use the recording of the word “yes” to authorize purchases. The National Council on Aging suggests you should “request written material from a charity. Obtain the salespersons name, position, phone number, address and business license number before you do any business.” • The grandparent scam: Scammers will call and ask: “Hi Grandma, do you know who this is?” When the senior answers with the name of a grandchild, the scammer then uses this information for their fake identity. The scanner then poses as their grandchild and calls, emails, or texts asking for money for overdue rent, car payments, etc., begging the grandparent not to tell their parents. Knowledge is power when it comes to senior scams. Please pass this information along to seniors in the community and be sure to check out the National Council on Aging for some resources on how to avoid fraud: http://www.ncoa.org/enhance-economic-security/economic-security-Initifative/saavy-saving-seniors/top10scams See a photo you like in The Park Record? Photos taken by The Park Record are available for purchase in a wide variety of sizes and printing options at parkrecordphoto.smugmug.com News broke this week that about 5,000 scofflaws in Summit County have not paid their new $36 annual garbage pickup fee. The bill was sent to every property with a dwelling on it. I got billed for my house, but didn’t get billed for the hay fields. That seems reasonable. My neighbors all got the bill on their vacation cabins that aren’t occupied very often. The neighbors were very puzzled by the bill. Garbage day in my neighborhood is Thursday. The owners of the cabins tend to use them on the weekends, and on Thursday, there’s nobody home to put the garbage out. So they do what they have done for years: haul a bag of trash home in the trunk of the car and put it in their garbage can in Salt Lake. Some sneak it into the dumpster behind the church on the premise that if they are members, they are entitled to all the benefits, including redemption and trash disposal. None of them has Summit County bins. Well, that’s not right. There is one neighbor who always puts his trash out on Sunday night, so it is on the edge of the road all week. The snowplows knocked it down all winter, and now the raccoons have found it. It’s only a matter of time before we have bears getting into it. But he paid his $36 bucks, and is going to get his money’s worth. About half the time, it gets emptied on Thursday, and campers coming down the canyon refill it by Saturday, and he hauls his own trash home anyway. Most of the others don’t want the gigantic county bins. The cabins are a long way from the highway, and the garbage trucks won’t brave our narrow dirt roads to pick up a random can or two. So putting the garbage out becomes a real chore. The full can is too heavy to lift into a truck, so you either drag it half a mile to the corner on completely inadequate wheels, or you do a twostep system where you freight the bin out, then pack the trash out and fill it at the edge of the road. If 5,000 people refuse to pay $36 for a service they aren’t receiving, it begins to add up. $180,000 is real money, even for Summit County. The county’s contractor, Republic Services, is probably not very happy to be stuck in the middle of this one. The $36 charge goes to the county, not to them, but guess whose phone is ringing. For what it’s worth, Wasatch County charges $192 a year for residential trash pickup, without recycling, and Summit County is prepared to take drastic measures. They are going to quit providing the service to the people who refused to pay for it because they aren’t using the service. Some problems solve themselves.” the odds of them actually picking it up are not good if it’s even cloudy outside. Summit County is a weird place. In most communities, if a lot has a house on it, it’s reasonable to assume that somebody actually lives there, and would want the trash picked up. Not so around here. We have all the vacant second homes in Park City and Snyderville. There are thousands of seasonal or part-time cabins in the canyons on the east side. The one-size-fits-all approach can’t possibly work here. What looks like a house might have a metal fabrication shop in the back yard, with different trash needs than a house. There’s used baling twine and fencing wire scraps to get rid of with no clear instructions on recycling options. But the day of reckoning is coming. Summit County is sending out another bill. And if the people refuse to pay that one, Summit County is prepared to take drastic measures. They are going to quit providing the service to the people who refused to pay for it because they aren’t using the service. Some problems solve themselves. Summit County will withhold the unwanted or unavailable service from the deadbeats who won’t pay for it. The people who aren’t getting their trash picked up still won’t be getting their trash picked up, but they won’t be paying $36 for the privilege of not having their trash picked up. And to make up the difference in the budget, the rest of us will probably be paying $38 next year. Local government loves to shift costs out of the “general fund” which is the pool of property, sales and other taxes, and push them into “enterprise funds” that are paid for by fees charged in addition to taxes. Sometimes it’s more equitable to put the cost of a service on the people using it, but it often is just a back door tax increase. It seems like this $36 fee should be placed in the recycling bin (not in a plastic bag, but loose so it will blow all over) and start over again. 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 How we unknowingly make history The other day my friend, who is also a music agent I have worked with for years, was at a loss for words in our text conversation he sent back a string of emojis. There was a thumbs up, followed by a checkered flag, then a snowman and clapping hands, followed by a smiley face with heart eyes and finally a disco dancer. I laughed out loud, alone, in my office. Then I wrote him back and said something like, ‘but what the hell does all this mean?’ And here’s how he responded: “Good question. If we leave a digital trail 1million years from now someone might look at those icons and make up some meaning that’s beyond just some random guy’s love of goofy emojis.” “You mean like petroglyphs of the future?” I asked. “Something like that,” he said. And I laughed and went back to my work but I have to admit I have been thinking all week about how we learn now and what we learn now and what language matters and how we adapt. As the discussion is moving along again (and really never stopped in the past four years) about the need to build some new school facilities here — I have been in favor each time — it occurred to me the buildings matter, a lot, but the methods matter more. And what are we doing to teach teachers how to teach in the new world/information age? And will our new schools be built with new systems for learning and teaching? And new equipment that engages students who are already learning, every day, vast sums of knowledge all on their own? Because as someone who has worked as a journalist for nearly four decades, I envy this time in the age of news gathering. What could have taken months or years — if you even knew where to look — and perhaps thousands of dollars to travel to the source can now all be done with a few key strokes. You want to do research on something that exists only in the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.? You don’t need to leave your living room to type that in and start exploring the stacks and the documents that are stored there. Have you always wanted to see the detail in a Vincent van Gogh painting? Just type in Google art and you have access to the collection in Amsterdam. You see the brush strokes of his work in a way you’d never be allowed in the actual museum. Want to see all the artwork housed in The White House? Google art has that too. And Google earth can put you on top of Killimanjaro and the bottom of the ocean floor. You can go to the moon and you can try to understand the street patterns in Rome. Should you want to find a news story about, well, almost anything, you just type it in your This information age has students becoming crazy good at researching how one topic leads to another and they, at once, find answers to questions that might have been a semester long project in the past.” browser. And voila! pages of suggestions appear on where to find the information you need. Public records ditto. All those hours of making friends with the front desk clerk in the court system in hopes they would share the documents filed with you, in a timely fashion, are, poof, gone. Your access is immediate. And, hey, all the kids are doing it. This information age has students becoming crazy good at researching how one topic leads to another and they, at once, find answers to questions that might have been a semester long project in the past. So if we have these adapt kids who all know how to work computers in a way that we were only imagining a generation ago, why are we still teaching in so many ways like we did a century ago? Why are teachers still standing in front of a roomful of students and trying to get them to memorize stuff they don’t need to remember in the real world? Why are we teaching the same lessons when what we should be teaching is context? Sure you can access all the information, but how do you make sense of it? What are the nuanced stories to help you understand the battle or the discrimination or the disease? I keep hearing how kids are bored in school and increasingly doing poorly. Not because they lack aptitude, but because we aren’t teaching critical thinking and how to be curious and deep dive into the “why.” Give dimension to the life and pain of the artist, not just delight in the brush stroke. As we move to create much needed new buildings in our district, I hope we also move to find new ways to hack school itself. To liberate the librarian in us all and search for answers. And then to have caring teachers be able to weave together the factual stuff with the human compassion part. To spark conversations that students want to have because they are again brimming over with innate curiosity for the planet and the people on it. A good classroom should feel like you were just transported into the center of a pot of popcorn exploding. Pop! a conversation here. Pop! A project started there. Pop! A new composition on the trumpet in the air. Let’s give our teachers permission to walk away from all the “teaching to the test” instruction and give our students tools to function in the world as compassionate, curious, contextualized humans. There are, no doubt, a string of emojis that could punctuate these thoughts. And I just might research that on 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. |