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Show The Park Record A-22 Meetings and agendas Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, April 15-18, 2017 More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde to publish your public notices and agendas, please email classifieds@parkrecord.com A tale of two winters Snyderville Basin Planning Commission Notice is hereby given that the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission will meet in SPECIAL session Tuesday, April 18, 2017 Specially Planned Area Development Agreement Land Use and Zoning Chart for Lots 1, 2, 5, 6, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, and 19 in the Aspen Creek Crossing Subdivision. – Tiffanie Northrup-Robinson, Senior Planner Location: Sheldon Richins Building (Library), 1885 West Ute Boulevard, Park City, UT 84098 Public Hearing and possible action regarding the County Resource Management Plan to be included via reference within the Snyderville Basin General Plan.– Sean Lewis, County Planner AGENDA Agenda items may or may not be discussed in the order listed. 3:30 p.m. Open House Canyons Village Master Plan Open House 4:30 p.m. Regular Session Public input for items not on the agenda or pending applications. Public Hearing to amend the Canyons Specially Planned Area Master Plan and Development Agreement, including the Land Use and Zoning Chart, and site specific design guidelines; Located in the Canyons Resort Specially Planned Area. No action will be taken. – Tiffanie NorthrupRobinson, Senior Planner Public Hearing and possible action to amend the Canyons 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, April 14, 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 14, 2017 Published: April 15, 2017 - Park Record People struggle finding affordable homes in Utah The housing shortage mirrors nation-wide trend Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY — Prospective homebuyers in northern Utah are struggling amid a shortage of affordable housing in a situation that mirrors a nationwide trend. Salt Lake City’s housing inventory plummeted nearly 70 percent from 2012 to 2017, while median home prices during that time surged, according to data compiled by The Associated Press from real estate websites. About 1,100 homes are for sale each month this year in Salt Lake City — less than one-third of the 3,600 in 2012. The average starter home in Salt Lake City is selling for nearly $180,000 this year. That’s up 57 percent from $114,000 in 2012. The median home price of nearly $486,000 in Salt Lake City is up 52 percent from about $320,000 in 2012. There were only three small rural towns in the state where the median home price decreased from 2016 to 2017: Roosevelt, Price and Parowan. The national supply of homes is lower now than in nearly 20 years. The steepest drop in supply has occurred among homes that are typically most affordable for first-time buyers and in markets where prices have risen sharply. The AP gathered the data from Trulia and Realtor.com. Stephanie Pass said she was taken aback by how hard it was to find a home in Salt Lake and Utah County that fit into her family’s budget, KSL.com reported. The homes they found that were in their price range that they liked were quickly snatched up and off the market, Pass said. “When a house comes up I see that I like, we get there right away and put an offer on it the first day on the market,” Pass said. “By the end of the day, there are already three or four other offers on it.” The average number of days homes stay on the market decreased across most parts of the state, the data show. In one section of Provo, homes stay on the market for an average of 42 days — a 33-percent decrease from last year. In parts of Sandy, homes stayed only 30 days — down 19 percent from the year before. Land availability, land cost and zoning rules in cities have been compounded by a shortage of construction workers to contribute to the shortage, said Jim Wood, a housing expert at the Kem C. Gardner Institute at the University of Utah. People often have to live quite a distance from cities to find affordable homes that meet their desires, Wood said. Michele Allen sold her 1,200-square-foot home in El Paso, Texas, and moved to Utah to find homes listed for almost four to five times more, KSL. com reported. She’s been looking in Davis County. “I think the cheapest one we’ve come across was $280,000 something,” Davis said. “We’re not even looking at new houses; new houses are $370,000 to $380,000, and that’s just for a three bedroom. I’m not looking for anything enormous, but I do want something nice.” Zinke lifts ATV ban in Utah The ban on use in Recapture Canyon led to 2014 protest Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY — U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lifted a ban Monday on motorized vehicles in some parts of a Utah canyon that was the setting of a 2014 ATV protest ride that was a flashpoint in the Western struggle over government land management. The decision opens nearly 7 miles of trails for motorized vehicles at the north end of Recapture Canyon and the canyon’s west rim. But ATVs still won’t be allowed to travel the entire length of the canyon, including sensitive riparian areas on the canyon floor where some of the people rode in the protest ride, said Lisa Bryant, a Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman. Providing recreation access on public lands is important, and disabled people can’t get around without motorized ve- hicles, Zinke said in a news release Monday. The move marks a shift from previous administrations that banned ATVs to protect Recapture Canyon, which is home to Native American cliff dwellings. The U.S. government had previously closed 1,871 acres of the canyon area to motorized vehicles because of damage caused by unauthorized trail construction and damage to the archaeological sites. Zinke said the design of the trails and other measures will protect cliff dwellings and natural sites important to wildlife. The May 2014 protest ride was organized shortly after Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy had a standoff with federal officials over similar issues. San Juan County Commissioner Phil Lyman, who was convicted of trespassing in the Utah ride, became a cause celebre in the movement. Lyman said Monday that Zinke’s decision is “very vindicating” and brings some U.S. government recognition that the trail in the canyon is a road and opens the door for San Juan County’s pending legal claims that the county has a right to and ownership of the road. 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 “I’ll take it and I’m grateful,” said Lyman, who has appealed his conviction to the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court has not yet ruled on the appeal. Lyman said Zinke’s decision on Recapture Canyon also bodes well for local officials who are calling for President Donald Trump to rescind the recent declaration of Bears Ears National Monument in the area. A coalition of tribes pushed for President Barack Obama to designate the monument, but Lyman, state lawmakers and Gov. Gary Herbert have called it overly broad and said it closes off access. Zinke “has shown pretty clearly that he is willing to look at the realities of these situations,” Lyman said. Mathew Gross with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance said his organization is pleased that Monday’s order doesn’t give the county rights to the road, a move that could potentially open the door to widening or expanding the road. Gross said the order is “a reasonably balanced approach,” and his organization wants to ensure that cultural resources near ATV routes are not disturbed. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It’s hard for me to remember a winter as twofaced as this. At the ski resorts, it was a season of euphoria with day after day of great powder skiing. The quality of the skiing this year was only slightly damaged by a couple of weeks of unusual rain and over-warm temperatures. Even the bad days were good days. It seemed like both PC and Deer Valley were plagued by lift malfunctions, iced cables, power outages and mechanical breakdowns. It didn’t really matter because if a lift was down, there was still good skiing somewhere else. Friends were almost giddy over the ski season, and as things began to wind down, they confessed to being so spoiled that a day of merely average skiing wasn’t enough to get them out. As joyous as things were in the ski world, conditions were just as bleak at home. The same storms that delivered all that powder produced a siege mentality at home, with the internal roads on the ranch getting narrower and narrower. At home, this winter was defined by shoveling the roofs of all the outbuildings several times. Most years, a couple of them might need it once. Despite the effort, which involved a lot of conscripted family members with teenage children, we still had a roof collapse under the snow load. All in, I have nearly a mile of internal roads to keep open at the ranch. The road to my house obviously matters. There are two old farmhouses with tenants in them. They expect to be able to get out to go to work in the morning. So those have always had first priority. The road to the abandoned dairy barn doesn’t need to get plowed with any urgency. My sisters don’t use the old family house much in the winter, so their road can wait. The fuel tank with the supply of diesel for the tractor is behind my cousin’s house, and he usually gets around to plowing that, even though he doesn’t live there permanently. So most of the roads can normally sit there covered with snow until I plow them on my schedule. This year was different. The tractor has its limits. The snow was coming so fast and furious that I couldn’t leave the low priority roads unplowed because another foot could come that night, and then the tractor couldn’t get through it all. So it all became top priority. I was up at 5 to plow When it didn’t snow, a tree would blow over and block the road. Leaving home often involved a chainsaw. I looked at Arizona property on line.” roads to empty buildings so I could go ski, then after skiing I got to plow the second shift. It piled up higher than the blower could move it, so I spent hours with the front end loader trying to push things back. When it didn’t snow, a tree would blow over and block the road. Leaving home often involved a chainsaw. I looked at Arizona property on line. My aunt used to describe winters like this as being “one broken hydraulic hose away from the Donner Party.” While there were no wolves at the door, there were mountain lion tracks in the front yard on a pretty regular basis. So the dog stayed inside and chewed on only the good furniture. And then there would be a day of incredible powder skiing, or a surprising shot of spring corn snow, followed by too much Deer Valley lunch with good conversation over a second dessert. The warmth of a day of athletic skiing and aerobic feasting chilled quickly as I started up the canyon to my house. Kamas Valley melted back to bare ground a couple of times. Woodland held the snow, but didn’t look too desperate. It was pretty much business as usual until the last mile to my house. The canyon narrows, it curves and makes a little more shade, gains a couple of hundred feet, and the snow just packed in. It’s still not gone from my yard. With each predicted storm, my friends were speculating on how much new snow the resorts would get. In my neighborhood, the speculation was whether the barn would collapse or avalanche. Everybody is worried about how high the river will get this spring. There’s no better definition of ambivalence than a skier living in a floodplain. But the season is over now. Nothing left to do but put the ski gear away and worry about the river flowing through the kitchen. The snow made the season, but the employees at the resorts made it safe and accessible. Here’s a big thanks to all the lifties, patrollers (who don’t feel remotely sorry for me getting up at 5 — that’s lunch time for them), mechanics, groomers, cooks and everybody else who made this a great ski season. I hope you all have a great summer. 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 All the news that makes us fit It is lonely work. Most of the time it is simply sharing information others might not have. Sometimes it might be bolderstating/creating an opinion, clearly marked as such, and urging some action. The writing comes only after hours, sometimes days or weeks, even months, of quiet investigation that can lead nowhere. The truth can be illusive, buried, unpopular. The journalist pursues it anyway. Often at great personal cost. And it takes a courageous editor, publisher, general manager to support the story against the odds and remember the unspoken oath all journalists have whispered: to get to the bottom of the story, to shed light in dark corners, to stand up to the bullies — whether they be in city hall or a corporate building or a drug dealer in a dark alley. To find people to share their stories about loss and grief and fear and really bad guys in hope of focusing attention on change. Perhaps some justice. This was a huge week for the little guy in journalism, for the folks working outside of major metropolitan cities, even freelance folks, who were awarded by the Pulitzer Prize committee for their courageous work. Campus rape required gaining the trust, first, of the violent crime survivors from the high-profile campuses of BYU and Utah State University. Brave victims and sensitive photographers and tenacious, thoughtful reporters, peeled back layers of the injustice and cultural walls and religious institutions to tell the honest story of an epidemic of campus rape in Utah. The Salt Tribune, a paper that came as close to folding in the last five years as a paper could, kept doing the work anyway. And with a brave new publisher, they were encouraged to keep telling the stories that needed telling. Local Reporting. That the Pulitzer prize committee recognized the collective bravery it took to tell those stories, in this state and tell them fairly and well, is something we can all celebrate. A freelance photojournalist took raw photos of an inhumane government crackdown in the Philippines on drug dealers and users. He submitted his work to the New York Times who bravely published them. But the freelancer, Daniel Berehulak, is who was awarded the prize for his Breaking News Photography. Breaking News reporting was awarded to the East Bay Times in Oakland (a former sister publication of the Park Record). They covered the tragic story of the “Ghost Ship” in the warehouse fire that killed 36 people at a party and then they “exposed the city’s failure to have taken actions that might have prevented it.” In West Virginia, the Charleston Gazette Mail received the award for Investigative Reporting “for courageous stories in the face of powerful opposition, to expose the flood of opioids flowing into the depressed West Virginia counties with the highest overdose death rates in the country.” That one hits close home. This paper, too, has continued, Years ago, we ‘in the business’ were all afraid there was no future for local news. No one would buy the paper/turn on the radio.” for years now, brave coverage of the topic of drug deaths against opposition. Yes, there were awards to the big dogs: Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and The New Yorker. But it was the Editorial Writing of Art Cullen, of The Storm Lake Times in Iowa, (who beat out the Washington Post guy) who caught my eye. No less than The Guardian, that great paper across the pond, reported this —recognized the tiny family-run paper with a staff of 10 people, most of whom are related to each other, for winning a Pulitzer Prize by taking on powerful agricultural companies over farm pollution. The editor and father, Art Cullen, said to The Guardian, “We’ve always believed that [we] should be as good at covering Storm Lake as the New York Times is at covering New York.” How incredibly brave to write editorials against corporate farming in a state that depends upon it. What great risk it took to lose advertisers and chose the truth. Years ago, we “in the business” were all afraid there was no future for local news. No one would buy the paper/turn on the radio. The internet news and 24hour streamed radio would command all the attention the average person could devote to news. But now we find local news more critical than ever to understanding community, to shaping and celebrating and mourning community. Small town journalism is the very backbone of creating and maintaining community. Right now, our local public radio station, KPCW, is in the throes of selecting a new general manager for the station — a station built by a person who fiercely loved the news and always stuck their neck out and took on giants and embraced human interest stories with equal measure. Blair Fuelner set a tone for all journalists locally and we all learned from Blair. We encourage the committee to be fearless in selecting a journalist to serve as general manager who can lead by example, who is full of curiosity and tenacity and understanding that local journalism is the most naked and important critical tool needed for an accountable government and engaged community to succeed. We are watching the selection process with hope and curiosity and sideline enthusiasm, because news matters. The bold selections by this year’s Pulitzer committee sent a message loud and clear: Journalism matters most in small communities, where brave people face down bullies and even corporate giants and report the story anyway. If you know any of the staff at the Salt Lake Tribune, send them a note and tell them you are proud of the work done by our daily local paper. Hell, even if you don’t know them, send them a note. They may not know you, but they are reporting for you, anyway, every day, even 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. |