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Show Viewpoints The A-13 Park Record. Wed/Thurs/Fri, January 10-12, 2018 editorial Break out the Team USA gear because the World Cup is here L letters to the editor Reader proposes transportation fixes Editor: As Park City part timers, who hope to be full time residents, we have been reading with interest the parking and traffic issues in the Record over the past year. Years ago when we rented at The Lodges in Deer Valley, we never had a rental car but used an airport shuttle and The Lodges’ shuttle or the public transport to go into town. Unfortunately, using public transport all the time is not realistic for many families. We wound up getting a cabin out in Promontory in 2010 and there are only shuttles from there to ski resorts in winter and downtown only during Sundance. We also have a golden retriever that we like to take with us, especially in summer downtown shopping, concerts, outdoor restaurants, etc. Leaving the mountain in the afternoon, we often need to stop at The Market to pick up some special cheese from Darcy and Red Bicycle Bread so a mandated shuttle won’t work for people like us and ultimately will decrease spending downtown. Personally I don’t mind paying a reasonable fee for parking in China Bridge, sheltered from snow and rain, but I would mind paying for outdoor parking at a ski resort when I am already paying $145 a day to ski. More creative solutions are needed than just banning private cars from entering the city. Perhaps partnering with businesses to give coupons to shuttle riders would help; say Deer Valley or Vail Resorts issue $10 coupons off the daily rate (no blackouts) to round trip shuttle riders. Or spend more than $50 on Main Street and you get a card for validated parking. Letters Policy The Park Record welcomes letters to the editor on any subject. We ask that the letters adhere to the following guidelines. They must include the home (street) address and telephone number of the author. No letter will be published under an assumed name. Letters must not contain libelous material. Letters should be no longer than about 300 words (about 600 words for guest editorials) and should, if possible, be typed. We reserve the right to edit letters if they are too long or if they contain statements that are unnecessarily offensive or obscene. Writers are limited to one letter every seven days. Letters thanking event sponsors can list no more than 6 individuals and/or businesses. Send your letter to: editor@parkrecord.com How about a contest promoted by the Park Record among high school students and locals for more ideas to fix this problem? We love Park City and we want to patronize local business; more creativity is needed, especially if Utah plans to host another Winter Olympics! Mary Kaye Ashkenaze Laguna Niguel, California Saving farm is a rare opportunity Editor: When people say to me that there are two sides to the discussion of whether or not we should save the Osguthorpe farm on Old Ranch Road, I’m kind of surprised. From my point of view, most everyone wants to save the farm; we just have some different ideas about how to get there. On December 9th, Bill White hosted an impactful event in support of the Summit Land Conservancy’s efforts to save the 158-acres that make the “Green Heart” of the Basin. Inspired by a young man who donated the entire contents of his piggy bank, the event was an amazing demonstration of this community’s generosity and open heartedness. Thanks to Bill White and his team of talented professionals, a challenge grant from Jim and Susan Swartz, and a group of committed community members, the event raised $182,000. Every dime will help save the farm. Saving land in the heart of our community is a major undertaking, as property in Park City is at a premium. But such rare opportunities should not be missed, just because they are challenging. Parkites have never been the type to back down from a challenge. Support comes in many ways and sizes, and all of it matters. Thank you again to Bill White and Jim and Susan Swartz for their tremendous generosity in this effort and so many other Park City causes! Here’s to a prosperous, healthy and happy 2018 to all! Joe Cronley Board president, Summit Land Conservancy ess than a month out from the 2018 Winter Olympics, the buzz surrounding the Pyeongchang Games is building. But if you haven’t yet caught Olympic fever — perhaps your sights are set instead on a certain upcoming film festival — this week offers a prime opportunity to don a Team USA beanie and get in on the excitement. Deer Valley Resort is scheduled to hold the FIS Visa Freestyle International Ski World Cup, with evening events taking place Wednesday to Friday. Attendees will watch as some of the best mogul and aerial skiers in the world cruise down the slopes and twirl through the air. Park City has been fortunate over the years to welcome dozens of world-class skiing competitions. In fact, Deer Valley is touting this week’s event as the 20th time it’s hosted an international-level competition, while several others have been held at Park City Mountain Resort. And that’s on top of regular events at Utah Olympic Park. While the competitions are always exciting, particularly when there are world championships on the line, there’s something extra special in the air when they roll into town during an Olympic year. Gathering together on a chilly winter night to support individual competitors, urge on the U.S. athletes or simply soak in the scene is an opportunity to partake in something larger than oneself. We’ll yell and guest editorial Events in Park City will be part of National School Choice Week later this month ANDREW R. CAMPANELLA National School Choice Week president Later this month, schools, homeschool groups, organizations, and individuals in Utah and across America will work together to raise awareness about the importance of opportunity in K-12 education. National School Choice Week begins on January 21 and celebrates all types of schools and education environments for children. Nationwide, 32,240 different events and activities – such as open houses, school fairs, and information sessions – are being planned, with an estimated attendance of 6.7 million people. In fact, 222 of those events and activities will be held in Utah, and four are in Park City. National School Choice Week has been celebrated every year since 2011. And even with increased awareness, many families still have questions about school choice and how it can benefit them and their communities. The first thing to know is that school choice isn’t partisan or political. It isn’t about a specific set of policy goals either. Rather, it’s about parents making personal decisions for their children. School choice means empowering individual parents with the opportunity to search for, and find, the best education environments for their individual children – regardless of where they live or how much money they make. Finding the right school is important, because every child has unique talents, challenges, and needs. School choice isn’t about finding fault with any of the schooling options available. Instead, it recognizes that while one student might thrive at a neighborhood school, another student might do better somewhere else. Research shows that when parents actively choose schools and education environments for their children, students are more likely to succeed in school. They are also PUBLISHER ....................... Andy Bernhard Editor ................................... Bubba Brown Staff Writers ......................Jay Hamburger Scott Iwasaki Angelique McNaughton Ben Ramsey Carolyn Webber Contributing ............................. Tom Clyde Writers Jay Meehan Teri Orr Amy Roberts Tom Kelly Joe Lair Nan Chalat Noaker Copy Editor ............................ James Hoyt Engagement Editor.........Kira Hoffelmeyer Photographer .........................Tanzi Propst Office Manager ..................... Tiffany Piper Circulation Manager ............. Lacy Brundy Accounting Manager ......... Jennifer Snow ADVERTISING Classifieds/Legals ............. Jennifer Lynch Advertising Director ........... Valerie Spung Advertising Sales ......................... Lori Gull Jodi Hecker Erin Donnelly Lisa Curley Olivia Bergmann Digital Products ..................... Mike Boyko Manager Production Director ..................Ben Olson Production ...................... Nadia Dolzhenko Patrick Schulz Linda Sites more likely to graduate from high school, get good jobs, and participate in their communities. School choice isn’t just theoretical. Right now, more parents in Utah and across America are actively choosing the education environments for their children than at any other time in history. National School Choice Week provides parents with an opportunity to evaluate the education options available for their children. If parents are interested in switching their child to a different school, or considering homeschooling, it helps to start looking into these options in the winter. Families in Utah can choose from traditional public schools, public charter schools, public magnet schools, private schools, online academies, and homeschooling. In terms of public school choice options, Utah has one of the nation’s broadest “open enrollment” policies in the country; students are permitted to attend virtually any public school in the state, regardless of where they live. Because the state offers a private school choice program, parents who choose private schools for their children may also be eligible for state-supported scholarships or tuition assistance for their children. Searching for a new school, or considering an alternative education environment, doesn’t have to be daunting. Parents can start by talking to their children and other parents, researching schools online, and visiting schools in person. A good place to start is the National School Choice Week website: www.schoolchoiceweek.com, where we provide more information about specific school choice options in the Beehive State as well as listings of the tens of thousands of local and regional events happening this year. National School Choice Week is a time when the country comes together around the idea that every child can succeed when they find the right school fit. This January, parents have more options and opportunities than ever before to find that right fit. For individual communities and for our country, that is a good thing. guest editorial Drastic changes in forest management aren’t answer to fires PEPPER TRAIL The Park Record Staff we’ll cheer and we’ll celebrate together, and it will be a taste of the magic that captivated us during the 2002 Winter Games and a perfect symbol of the legacy the Olympics left in our town. But beyond the community celebration, the World Cup promises to be an athletic spectacle, giving attendees a front-row seat to watch some of the best athletes on Earth doing things that push the limits of human performance — and one hardly needs to be an expert on the sports to appreciate the talent. More than that, we’ll get to watch them in one of their final competitions before they step on to the world’s biggest stage. A month from now, many of this week’s competitors — including a fair number who call Park City home — will be vying for medals in Pyeongchang. The World Cup is a chance to catch a glimpse of them before they take their places in Olympic lore. Odds are, one or two of them will come home from Pyeongchang with medals around their necks. Witnessing the build up to that this week is an opportunity too good to pass up. So break out your Team USA gear, warm gloves and bundle up. We’ll meet you at Deer Valley. For details and other information about this week’s event, visit http://www.deervalley.com/whattodo/winter/ fisworldcup. Writers on the Range Like a lot of small towns in the West, my town of Ashland, Oregon, is nestled in a lovely valley surrounded by conifer forests. The forests grow on public lands managed by the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management, and last year, as in many recent years, there were fires on those lands. The town of Ashland was not threatened, but our valley filled with thick, eye-burning smoke for weeks at a time. It was miserable. Outdoor theater and music events were canceled, drastically affecting the summer tourist season, which is critical for our economy. Folks who would usually be out hiking, camping, fishing, birding and rafting stayed indoors. Parents kept their kids inside. Everyone got cranky. We’ve never had a summer with smoke as bad as this. Understandably, people don’t want to go through this again next summer — or ever. And so the search is on for solutions. Some are taking this opportunity to advocate for drastic changes in public-lands forest management. The primary vehicle for this effort is the “Resilient Federal Forests Act,” H.R. 2936, often called the Westerman bill for its primary sponsor, Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas. In the name of making forests “resilient” to fire, it would promote logging by sharply curtailing existing environmental laws. Among other provisions, it would restrict citizen involvement in public-lands management by limiting legal challenges under the National Environmental Policy Act and other laws; greatly expand “categor- ical exclusions” in areas of up to 10,000 acres where logging and post-fire salvage could occur without any environmental assessment; and eliminate the “survey and manage” program which provides data essential for informed forest management. This truly radical bill has passed the House and awaits consideration by the Senate. Let’s be generous for a moment. Let’s say that the Westerman bill is not a cynical attempt to exploit anxiety about fire to achieve otherwise unattainable amounts of logging, long sought by the timber industry. Let’s assume that it’s a genuine attempt to solve the problem of fire — which, of course, implies: (1) that fire is a problem; and (2) that it can be solved. Most Western conifer forests, except those along the rain-drenched Pacific Coast, are adapted to frequent fires. That is true of my region of southern Oregon, where studies of tree rings have shown that fires historically returned to a piece of ground every 15-20 years or so. Most of those fires were relatively low intensity, and many were likely set deliberately by Native Americans, who made sophisticated use of fire as a land-management tool. These fires cleared out dense thickets and fallen limbs and maintained a relatively open forest structure in many areas. Decades of fire suppression, coupled with logging that has replaced complex mixed-age forests with uniform-aged stands and tree plantations, has certainly made things worse, increasing the likelihood of severe, stand-replacing fires. But that is increasingly overshadowed by another factor affecting wildland fire frequency and severity: climate change. There is not a single mention of the role of climate change in the Westerman bill, so it looks like I was too generous to set aside that whole cynical exploitation thing. Much research now supports the correlation between climate change and fire seasons that start earlier and end later, with more days of extreme “fire weather.” Such fire weather led to the devastating fires of 2017, in Northern California. Those fires burned at least 245,000 acres, destroyed almost 9,000 buildings, and cost over $3 billion. They were almost entirely on private land, not on national forests. The severity of those fires had nothing to do with a lack of logging. We are kidding ourselves if we think we can find a “solution” to wildlands fire and the smoke that comes with it. Such thinking denies fire its place as a natural and inevitable part of this environment where we have chosen to live. Our forests need fire, and there is no way we can exclude it. Instead of trying to log our way out of fire danger, we need to adapt ourselves to the reality of living in this fire-adapted landscape. We can, and should, practice “fireproof” landscaping around our homes, and carry out larger fuels-reduction projects in high-risk areas like the wildland-urban interface at the edge of our towns. But we can’t “solve” fire here in Oregon any more than Florida can “solve” hurricanes. Both are natural phenomena – and both are bound to get worse with unchecked climate change. Our best hope of a future with ecologically appropriate forest fires and tolerable levels of smoke is to take immediate action to limit climate change. What do you say, Congress: Want to focus on a real problem for a change? |