OCR Text |
Show Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, June 17-20, 2017 The Park Record A-22 Meetings and agendas More Dogs on Main By Tom Clyde to publish your public notices and agendas, please email classifieds@parkrecord.com Mass shooting of the week SNYDERVILLE BASIN WATER RECLAMATION DISTRICT BOARD OF TRUSTEES MEETING AGENDA Estimated LEA REs Year to Date: # Above Splitter 75; # ECWRF 137.33; # SCWRF 87; Total 299.33 Proposed this Meeting: # Above Splitter 0; # ECWRF 0; # SCWRF 57; Total 57 June 19, 2017 ** District Office** 5:00 p.m. I. CALL TO ORDER II. CONSENT AGENDA Approval of Board Meeting Minutes for May 22, 2017 Escrow Fund Reduction Approval Park City Film Studio Phase 1 – Retain 0 percent III PUBLIC INPUT IV. SERVICE AWARD – Lori Maag 10 years V. APPROVAL OF EXPENDITURES – Bills in the Amount of $2,781,781.97 Including SCWRF Project Pay Request #14 for $1,921,274.06 VI. SUBDIVISION PROJECTS Silver Creek Village Center Lot 9 South – 57 REs VII. DISTRICT MANAGER Information Item Financial Statement Impact Fee Report VIII. FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS Projects Operations Finance Governmental Matters IV. ADJOURN If you are planning to attend this public meeting and, due to a disability, require reasonable accommodation in understanding, participating in or attending the meeting, please notify the District twenty-four or more hours in advance of the meeting, and we will try to provide whatever assistance may be required. Board members may appear telephonically. Summit County Board of Adjustment Notice is hereby given that the Summit County Board of Adjustment will NOT meet on Thursday, June 22, 2017 Continued From A-14 Mountain Town News Cow elk did not react kindly to the interloper BANFF, Alberta — A cow elk in Banff National Park did what mothers everywhere may do if they believe their young are threatened. The Rocky Mountain Outlook reports the cow elk kicked a human interloper twice in the head. The individual briefly lost consciousness and then sought medical attention, but did not appear to be badly injured. Parks Canada officials say the individual tried to give the cow and calf sufficient space, but obviously the cow thought otherwise. Man left bar and drowned in the river. Is the bar at fault? STEAMBOAT SPRINGS, Colo. — It’s a different and tragic twist on a familiar theme. Steamboat Today reported a bar could be in trouble for serving alcohol to a 22-year-old man who, clearly inebriated, wandered into the Yampa River and drowned. The newspaper explains that on May 22, Arman Qureshi had taken a woman’s coat from the bar and had gone to a nearby alley. Police were called, but he ran from them and into the river. Police interviews revealed the bartender had served the man four drinks before cutting him off. In addition, the man had drunk at least twice from a woman’s drinks. Micro-apartments among solutions to housing squeeze HAILEY, Idaho — From hither and thither across the Rockies, mountain towns continue to look for ways to provide more housing, if sometimes in temporary or cramped quarters. Cramped comes to mind in the description by the Idaho Mountain Express of plans at Hailey, located 12 miles down-stream from Ketchum and Sun Valley. There, developer Jim Warjone, of Economic Housing Solutions, proposes micro-apartments of between 173 and 271 square feet. The municipal code allows housing units to be as small as 120 square feet, but only allows 20 units per acre. The developer says he needs more density of the micro-apartments in order to deliver affordable units. His original plan was to provide housing for those earning $13 per hour. In Wyoming, the distended economics of Jackson Hole are revealed in two stories in the Jackson Hole News&Guide. One tells about a new business catering to those with private jets. Another story tells about the rush by the Jackson Town Council to provide the legal means to allow a car camping site behind the community’s recreation center before the blitz of summer. In Jackson, unlike most ski towns, the busiest time of the year occurs in summer. Bob McLaurin, the town man- The next Board of Adjustment meeting is scheduled for Thursday, July 27, 2017 Published: June 17, 2017-Park Record ager, called the car-camping plans an experiment. “We think it will go well… but if it’s an unmitigated disaster, we’ll pull the plug on it,” he said. Six of the 20 spaces will be reserved for employees of Jackson and of Teton County. In Colorado, the Fraser Town Board tweaked zoning codes in an effort to address what Sky-Hi News described as the “glaring need” for housing. The changes will result in smaller lots, hence greater density. But the newspaper reported some pushback from locals who fret this will not result in more housing for locals, but instead in more housing used for shortterm rentals. “I want to be sure this is being done for the right reasons, for the locals,” said one local resident, a government employee. “I don’t want to end up living next to three small Airbnbs.” The older Fraser, a one-time railroad and ranching town, lies cheek to jowl with the newer Winter Park, home of the eponymous ski resort of the same name. In Crested Butte, after a year of talking, the town council set the basic rules for short-term rentals made popular through web-based sites such as Airbnb. Jim Schmidt, a long-term councilman, called it a good compromise. The Crested Butte News explained that any homeowner with a primary residence in Crested Butte can apply for a license to rent a home for up to 60 days per year. But the new law allows only 30 percent of homes to be rented in that way. It’s first come, first served, then there’s a waiting list. Units can be rented long term. Conversely, deed-restricted housing units — such as those provided by local governments for affordable housing — cannot be entered into the short-term rental pool. Council members heard testimony that making a little money from rentals is crucial to survival for many locals trying to bear the weight of mortgages. Even in über-liberal Crested Butte there was pushback from those — including council members — who thought the government had no right to limit use of private property. Group wants higher tax on carbon from snowmobiles REVELSTOKE, B.C. — British Columbia already has a carbon tax, although at just $30 per ton, it probably isn’t high enough to actually change behavior or suppress emissions. But an environmental group would like to raise the ante in Revelstoke, stiffening the tax on the use of fossil fuels used for snowmobiling and possibly for heli-skiing and heli-hiking. The North Columbia Environmental Society not only wants the levy assessed on snowmobiling but also wants the city to stop promoting snowmobiling. The group would have the local government use the revenues to relieve its carbon tax obligations. The group, according to a report by the Revelstoke Times, calculates that one two-stroke snowmobile can emit up to 84 kilograms of carbon per day. A Bell 212 helicopter, which is commonly used for heli-skiing, emits 4,800 kilograms per day. Perhaps the best evidence about the production of carbon dioxide by snowmobiles was done at Yellowstone National Park in the late 1990s. Since then, however, two-stroke engines have been largely replaced by four-stroke engines, which burn fuel more efficiently and produce less pollution. But regardless of the exact production of snowmobiles in the Revelstoke area, the debate probably will be more general. Daniel Kellie, the president of the Revelstoke Snowmobile Club, told the newspaper that 28,000 snowmobilers who used the club’s trails last year already paid an extra 3 cents per liter of gasoline. “As a user, we’re already paying our taxes,” Kellie said. He also wondered why the environmental group singled out snowmobilers and did not address dirt bikers or heli-skiers with the same purpose. One commenter on the newspaper’s website, though, thought it was a fair request. “If people travel in a polluting manner in order to participate in an athletic adventure that has hefty carbon footprint, it follows they have money to burn and we should ask them to bear their fair share of the civic carbon tax burden,” the person wrote. How California’s C02 tax helps run ski lifts at Aspen SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California put a price on carbon, effectively bumping up the price of gasoline by about 15 cents a gallon. Has it worked in suppressing greenhouse gas emissions? California state officials say yes, that emissions fell by 1.5 million tons in 2015. They said that’s the equivalent of pulling 300,000 cars off roads. The state, reported the Sacramento Bee, is on target to meet 2020 benchmarks established in a landmark climate change law passed in 2006. But the newspaper, after talking with a great many people, reported divergent opinions. Critics say that the climate change initiatives have dented economic growth, and they predict an even larger impact as new, more stringent carbon targets are imposed by state leaders in coming years. California’s cap-and-trade program requires fuel wholesalers, along with other big industrial firms, to purchase emissions allowances. In addition, fuel producers — from giant oil refiners to ethanol manufacturers — must purchase separate credits to comply with the state’s low-carbon fuel standard. The costs get passed along to consumers. This price in carbon has had somewhat surprising results in Colorado. Several years ago, a coal mine about 100 miles west of Aspen was outfitted to capture methane emissions. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and the methane is now captured and burned to produce electricity instead of being allowed to rise to the troposphere. Part of the economic package to make the project work included payments from California’s cap-and-trade market. The electricity is purchased by Holy Cross Energy, which distributes power that operates the ski lifts at Vail and Aspen. Wednesday was a busy day. The morning started off with a mass shooting in Washington, D.C. in which several people playing baseball before work were gunned down. They were a Congressional team practicing for an upcoming charity game between the Republicans and Democrats. Details are still few and far between at the time I’m writing this, but because one of the players was a congressional leader, he had a security detail with him. They were able to engage in what the reports describe as a combat firefight, probably saving numerous lives while getting shot themselves. Then, just for good measure, we had another mass shooting the same day in San Francisco at a UPS facility. That was a disgruntled former employee who came back and shot some of his former co-workers. Locally, there was a mass shooting in Sandy, where a crazed ex-boyfriend stalked his ex-girlfriend and ended up shooting her, her kids and a bystander. On that one, it hit close to home. My niece’s son goes to school in a district that adjoins the district where the shooting occurred. The day before the shooting, the son of the woman who was killed had been at my niece’s house. Her son had brought a bunch of friends home from school, and this kid was a friend of one of the friends. She had the sense that if she had driven a different car pool she could have been at the shooting and that her child could have been a victim. So there you have it. The trifecta of a mentally unstable guy in Washington, the disgruntled former employee in San Francisco and a crazy domestic situation. If any one of the shooters had looked even slightly Middle Eastern, we would be in full pan- ic mode. But these were gardenvariety, American nutcases with guns who decided to shoot people. So it’s apparently OK. According to the news reports, there have been 153 mass shootings since the beginning of the year. That’s about one a day. No wonder the shock value has worn off. They trot out the law enforcement officials who answer inane questions from reporters. The front line officers, who had to deal with the blood and guts and got shot at themselves, quietly go home to their families (except for those who went to the hospital after being shot), and God only knows how they deal with it. How they get up the next morning and go to work, how they dare leave their children alone or send them off to school. Unimaginable. Every time this happens (which is like every day), I think, ‘maybe this time something will change.’” Every time this happens (which is like every day), I think, ‘maybe this time something will change.’ But if nothing changed after Sandy Hook, where a school full of children was shot up, nothing is going to change because of a deranged, rejected lover, a disgruntled former employee or a political nutcase. What will these Republican Congressmen say to the NRA lobbyist next time they get the call? Now that they have been on the receiving end of the gunfire, will they be less receptive to the message or just take the campaign donation just the same? I saw a clip of a Congressman who had been there, still dressed in his baseball uniform. He had been there with his two sons, who were maybe junior high school and elementary school age. They had run for their lives and took refuge under a truck. Just out for a fun summer day with Dad, and now they are scarred for life. How do you make sense of that and get your kids to a point that they will leave the house again without fearing for their lives? This is not normal, I want to say. This is not what a civilized society looks like. But I’m wrong. A mass shooting every day is completely normal in the United States. It’s not only tolerated. It’s accepted. As long as the shooter isn’t wearing a turban, we read the article and say, “tuttut” and move on to the YouTube puppy video du jour. It is entirely too normal. We accept it, tolerate it and never stand up and demand that something be done to stop it. There are probably more guns than people in the United States. Nobody knows for sure because we don’t keep track. Of the guns. We know how many people there are. The odds of serious gun control, of actually getting guns off our streets and out of the hands of the crazy people who shoot up our schools, work places and Congressional baseball practices are about the same as the odds of rounding up and deporting 12 million undocumented people. So because of a failure of outrage, a failure of leadership, we, as a society, are accepting a mass shooting every day as being as normal as the sunrise. It makes me sick. 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 Singing before dawn Most mornings this time of year I wake the same way: Before the sun gets up. I leave my windows and little deck door open at night (there are screens) and sleep with the night air blowing and nocturnal creature sounds lulling me to sleep. I have deep dreams on these nights, and in the early morning hours, I hear a chorus of song. Not all at once, first one note, then another and then together other notes, other voices, as the birds begin their predawn songs. I thought I remembered a quote about this and tried to research it the way I remembered it: “Faith is the bird that sings before dawn.” I was quite certain that was the quote. So I did that search and spent entirely too much time learning about a kinda mystic guy from the 1800s in India who is credited with the phrase, “Faith is the bird that feels the light when the dawn is still dark.” And even after reading it in print it felt wrong. I think it might have been the refrain in a gospel song or maybe a Leonard Cohen one. Or perhaps a sentence in Anne Lamott’s book “Bird by Bird,” but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I am certain I did not make it up. Before there is a hint of dawn hitting my tiny upstairs deck, birds are singing most mornings. And it does strike me as a curious phenomenon before they know with empirical evidence the sun is coming up in the west again. They either have some kind of faith or radar it will happen, worthy of song. Last Sunday, I woke up in a lovely slow way listening to birds join in a song of their predawn making and then drifting back into delicious sleep filled with dreams, which had been me waking with a kind of muddled mystery and a touch of longing. I put on the tea and grabbed The Times and added some toast to the perfect equation as I headed out to the front porch where the sun hits. It’s a magical hour to enjoy all those indulgences just so. I was just starting the Sunday Review section where, yes, there were political columns but also thoughtful observations about love and family. I passed over the political ones. The news reads these days like a garish painted clown car with an impossible number of clowns that keep emerging to mingle with the carnies among the rides that fill you with equal measures of fear and delight. I was deep into a piece about love in the time of the internet when an friend rolled her bike on my lawn and grabbed the other wicker chair and started into a conversation that had been left dangling months ago. For almost an hour, though unexpected, we caught up on family and work and things that were broken in our little town. And then she grabbed her bike and rode off into the near noonday sun. Before there is a hint of dawn hitting my tiny upstairs deck, birds are singing most mornings.” So I planted some of my hanging baskets with herbs and flowers and tiny plants to create little songs of both color and smell that will call to me all summer long — assuming I remember to water them. But by late afternoon, the winds were blowing and the sky had darkened and my outdoor time was cut short. Next morning it had snowed. I woke up shivering in my room because the windows and door had been left open; the heat had been turned off weeks ago and the heavy winter covers had been folded and shelved. I don’t remember hearing any birds or even sensing the dawn. And though the stormy weather was a full day and the next morning again, by Tuesday afternoon — when I drove home from work — the weather was mild enough. On the corner where I turn off the main road, there were two sweater-clad kids selling lemonade. I have a per- sonal rule to stop at any and all of such stands all summer long. Sure, my 50 cents is fun for them to have, but their joy at selling the stuff is the real treat. Sometimes there is a conversation about what they plan to do with the money and sometimes there are apologies for running out of ice and sometimes there is recognition and perhaps a bit of joy — mostly from me. In most early evenings back on a different, slightly tucked away side deck, there is the fading of the day. I hear doves and I swear sometimes owls, cooing and who-ing and I am wary when I hear the owl. I am familiar with the native traditions of an owl announcing death and for years the sound of the owl would fill me with dreaded anticipation. But as a Navajo medicine man carefully explained to me, “deaths come to ideas and ways of life and systems, not just people…” After nine, the sunset has ended but the rose-color wisps, not wholly clouds, remain. I love the sky you declare to yourself is fake when you see it in some painting…until you remember just where that exact sky color was: one night in your life. The grass is so green right now and barefoot lush. My creeping thyme has flowered and the bees are crazy on the job this year and welcome back after a two-year hiatus. There was honey again this week at the farmstead on Old Ranch Road where Daisy and crew offer fresh produce and beautiful bouquets of wildflowers. There are weeks when Sunday feels the very end of the week, mostly when I am working very late on a Saturday night. The next day doesn’t feel like the start of anything except exhaustion. But in the summer, Sundays feel like the start of something. A promise. A restart button with hope attached. And this week that can be just enough to be grateful for a summer Sunday in 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. |