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Show A-20 The Park Record Meeting and agendas Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, February 24-27, 2018 More dogs on Main By Tom Clyde TO PUBLISH YOUR PUBLIC NOTICES AND AGENDAS, PLEASE EMAIL CLASSIFIEDS@PARKRECORD.COM Feeling a little too successful Notice is hereby given that the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission meeting scheduled for Tuesday, February 27, 2018 has been CANCELLED The next Snyderville Basin Planning Commission is scheduled for Tuesday March 13, 2018. WSD Board Meeting Weilenmann School of Discovery will hold a meeting of its Board of Directors on Tuesday, February 27, at 5:30pm. Address is 4199 Kilby Road, Park City. The public is welcome. Herbert talks shop on hot state and national topics Governor dishes on school safety, Utah grocery tax BRADY MCCOMBS Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY – Gov. Gary Herbert said Wednesday that he’s not convinced Utah should spend taxpayer money to sue California over its extra tax on coal and that the $2 million estimate for private attorneys to handle the case seems “exorbitant.” The Republican governor also spoke about Medicaid expansion, school safety and a proposal to end the sales tax on food at his monthly news conference on KUED-TV. Coal lawsuit Herbert said he’s not clear what motivated Republican Rep. Mike Noel to propose pushing the state to challenge a California rule that charges utilities an extra $15 per megawatt hour to buy power from Utah’s coal-fired Intermountain Power Plant. The rule is designed to reduce climate-changing gases and encourage cleaner energy use. Noel says California’s policy is hurting coal miners in his rural district and violates the U.S. Constitution. Herbert suggested the coal industry, not Utah, foot the bill for the legal challenge. The $2 million estimate from the Snell and Wilmer law firm includes nearly $1 million for expert witnesses and $125,000 for travel and other expenses for attorneys and witnesses. Lawyer Denise Dragoo says the complexity of the case would require paying three expert witnesses and two law firms, one of which helped North Dakota get Minnesota’s ban on out-of-state coal overturned. Medicaid expansion The governor said he’s excited about a proposal from state Rep. Robert Spendlove to partially expand Medicaid and include a work requirement. The Trump administration’s embrace of work requirements for Medicaid coverage led Utah and other conservative states to reconsider plans to expand health care for the poor. Utah declined to expand Medicaid under former President Barack Obama’s health law and have the U.S. government pick up most of the cost. Lawmakers, concerned about their share of the cost, instead passed a very limited Medicaid plan covering a sliver of the state’s poorest residents who are homeless or need mental health or substance abuse treatment, particularly those in the criminal justice system. Herbert said he talked with Vice President Mike Pence and is confident about getting a waiver to implement a work requirement for people who are “able-bodied physically and mentally.” “We will help them through skills, education and training to get a job,” Herbert said. “If you’re unemployed, to get a job. If you’re underemployed, to get a better job. And help you get off the government dole, the government system – to be self-sufficient.” Spendlove’s legislation has yet to be introduced. Safe schools Herbert said he wants to ensure schools are practicing active shooter drills and following laws that call for controlled access to schools, which is supposed to result in visitor screening. He said he’s asked his education adviser to work with superintendents and principals to assess how well schools are doing. He made the request after the school shooting in Florida last week. The governor said everyone should take a hard look at what’s happening in society to lead people to want to kill. “Is that part of our family upbringing or the breakdown of family, the lack of fathers in the home?” Herbert said. “We ought to be concerned about violence that we just seem to tolerate that comes out of Hollywood.” Food tax Herbert doesn’t like a proposal that the Utah House passed this week to repeal the statewide sales tax on food and raise the rate slightly on other purchases. He said he believes the tax base should be broadened, not reduced. The proposal would remove the 1.75 percent tax on food, excluding candy. Sales taxes on other items would increase from 4.7 percent to 4.92 percent. “I don’t know that that really helps those who are impoverished,” Herbert said. “They have to buy hard goods, too.” Republican Rep. Tim Quinn of Heber City, the measure’s sponsor, says taxing food is immoral. But Herbert said the state is better off helping people in need get food stamps and government assistance. Lobbying group criticizes bill on drunken gun use Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY – A proposal to allow Utah residents who are legally intoxicated to use a weapon as self-defense while in their home is being called hypocritical by the American Beverage Institute. The national lobbying group has opposed a law approved last year that lowered the state’s blood alcohol content limit for drunken driving from 0.08 to 0.05. The group published a fullpage advertisement – with the headline “Too Drunk to Drive, But Sober Enough to Carry a .45?” – in Tuesday’s issue of the Salt Lake Tribune. The group says people shouldn’t be able to carry a gun if they can’t legally drive. Republican state Rep. Norm Thurston of Provo, the bill’s sponsor, says he started the legislation at the request of Utah defense attorneys. Thurston says the group is twisting the intent of his bill. Don’t get buried in news you don’t need. Call 435–649–9014 to get the news you care about It sort of feels like February out there all of a sudden. Last weekend’s storm didn’t live up to the hype, but we’ve come to expect that. The predicted 18 to 20 inches at my house turned out to be somewhere around 6 inches, maybe eight. It was blowing around enough that it’s hard to tell. It’s been a long time since I woke up to -10 degrees, and while that’s normal for this time of year, it’s a shock. Up on the mountain, it was a solid 18 inches. I was counting on light powder. What we got was a little on the wet side. The wind also rearranged it a couple of times during the storm, so the end result was a bit heavy and wind packed. Not that I’m complaining. This season, any snow is good snow, and I certainly had fun playing in it on Monday. Monday was Presidents Day, and the town was stuffed to the gills. Then to add to the festivities, the roads in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons were closed or restricted. Based on the traffic in Empire Bowl, there were a lot of Alta and Snowbird skiers here. It wasn’t crowded, but it was a lot busier than normal for a stormy day when the usual Deer Valley crowd is making a late start. It’s getting harder to know what normal is. In an almost snow-less winter with spring-like temperatures, it feels like skier numbers are up anyway. Driving in on Monday, 248 was backed up to the rail trail crossing. The traffic trying to exit U.S. 40 from Heber was backed up a half mile into the 65 mph traffic on the freeway. Traffic inched forward, and then moved freely once I passed the light at Comstock. The storm was obviously a factor, but the road crews had done an amazing job of getting things cleared after a storm of that size. It was really just normal traffic. It was only about 8:45 a.m., but already the PCMR lots were full and people were parking at the high school lot. Parking at Deer Valley was tight, and ultimately spilled out on to the road. I don’t know if they cut off ticket sales that day, but if had to be close. It’s something the community has spent the last 40 years working for. Not traffic jams specifically, but the overall effect. The marketing efforts of the Chamber and the resorts have paid off. So this is what success feels like. Beaches or ski hills, there’s a In exchange for them subsidizing our living far beyond our means, we put up with snarled traffic, difficult parking, lift lines, and general congestion. And some Texan poaching my line through the trees.” difficult relationship between the residents of the resort towns and the visitors who make the towns possible. Now there is a third party in the mix – the “down-valley” workforce the resort town needs to function, but cannot house locally. The daily influx of workers in Summit County is about 10,000 people. That’s everybody from the liftie at the top of the mountain to the burger flipper at Kimball Junction. We’ve got no solution for them. It’s easy to say that if we just had fewer visitors, we’d need fewer employees, and there would be less traffic, more parking, and maybe condos that are now vacation rentals would turn back into full time housing. It would all be sunshine and lolli- pops, like it used to be. Except that it’s the visitors who pay the bills around here. About 85 percent of the sales tax revenue Park City receives comes from visitors spending $2,000 a night on hotel rooms, $900 a day on ski lessons, lift tickets, ski rentals, meals, and on and on. The sales tax on those $30 lunches at Miners Camp adds up, and it’s not the locals buying them. We eat at home. Property tax is equally skewed. Primary residents — locals — get a 45 percent discount on our property taxes, while all those vacation condos and second home mansions are taxed at the commercial rate. About 60 percent of the total property tax revenue for the City comes from property taxed at the commercial rate. The end result is that our lifestyle here, with golf courses, ice sheets, recreation centers, libraries, dog park and you name it, is heavily subsidized. The City spends about $14,000 per resident, with about 70 percent of that coming from people who don’t live here. That’s about ten times what Coalville or Kamas spends per resident, and almost all of their revenue comes from the residents. The differences are pretty hard to miss. The visitors pay for the MARC, the ice sheet, Bonanza Flat, public art and flower baskets. In exchange for them subsidizing our living far beyond our means, we put up with snarled traffic, difficult parking, lift lines, and general congestion. And some Texan poaching my line through the trees. It’s the bargain we made a long time ago. And one I still wonder about. g 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 ‘Teach your children well...’ The Vietnam war was my era, and Civil Rights and civil disobedience. I was such a good girl for such a long time. Raised by wolves — actually just Republicans — I was polite and eager to please. Until I wasn’t. In my senior year in high school, my all-white school was integrated. It happened by busing black students from 10 miles away into our school. I was a member of a service club that “built spirit.” I remember the day I was asked to help a new student learn our campus. He was a black football player, and my boyfriend (later my husband) was the captain of the football team. It was the first day of integration for our school. I met Franklin at the bus. Led him to his first period class and was waiting outside the door when the bell rang to show him the lunchroom. At some point — news people appeared to record all this in my San Francisco suburban town. At the end of football practice no one had considered Franklin would have no bus to take home — it had left hours before. I offered him a ride. I had my black Ford Falcon with no restrictions on where I could drive. He kept saying “Are you sure you wanna do that?” And it just seemed like my hospitality should extend to getting him home. I had never driven to his high school — Ravenswood — before. We made small talk about his first day and when he guided me to his neighborhood he suggested corners where I could drop him. I just kept driving until we reached his home. He got out of the car, thanked me and told me to lock all my doors and drive straight out of there. The next night the local weekly paper came out and my mother was furious — I was on the front page — with Franklin — showing him the campus. She used all of those words I taught my own children years later were words we NEVER used. And she told me how embarrassed she was — what a disappointment I was to her. I didn’t tell her the fact she was involved in her fourth divorce and was sleeping with the married mayor embarrassed me. I left for college months later to Colorado — where I was involved with other polite white girls in a civil rights march on campus. I transferred from that school after only one semester. I was engaged now so I headed to the University of Nevada to be with my fiancé. Protests about the war in Vietnam were growing. I was planning my wedding. And I was taking a graduate level poetry class. It was a mistake — everyone else was older and smarter. A hiccup in the schedule had put me there. I asked if I could stay. The professor was a cerebral, long-haired guy, at the end of his tenure — he didn’t care as long as I did the work. Because the haters are always there — sometimes in your own family.” And I did because everything happening in that class was relevant. Those folks — and now me — were writing mostly very bad poems but about issues of the day. Kent State happened at the end of the semester — students in Ohio were shot and killed on a campus in the middle of the day for protesting the war in Vietnam. They had in no way threatened the National Guardsmen who showed up and fired into the crowd. Days later I was getting ready to join my poetry teacher in leading a march on the football field to protest the shootings. We had been told any teacher participating would be fired and students ran the risk of having their grades for the semester erased. I decided not to tell my fiancé I was marching. As I got ready to leave my dorm room the phone rang. There was no caller ID then. Or recording machine. I picked up the call. It was my estranged mother, wanting to talk about the wedding I was paying for. I told her we could talk later — I was leaving for an event. She said she thought classes had been canceled. I said I was attending a rally in support of the students who had been killed at Kent State. What she said next changed ev- erything. “Those kids deserved to die. And If you weren’t in class where you belonged, I would hope the same thing would have happened to you.” I hung up. I walked down to the football field and joined my long-haired professor. The school took pictures of us so they could accurately erase our grades. My fiancé was on the field for spring practice. He looked away when he saw me. They released our grades eventually and I got an A in that class. Honestly, I think all of us who marched got A’s. The professor was fired — he didn’t care. My fiancé told me to never do anything that dumb again. And for years I didn’t. But I also didn’t forget. When I got divorced with two small children — six and half years later — after six years of being abused, I started writing again. So I have been watching the news this week with much heartbreak and much pride. I don’t know if this actually is the Age of Aquarius (in astrological terms) if these are Indigo children (in psycho babble terms) or if these are a tribe of superhumans emerged. Their origin doesn’t matter. They are fearless — frank speaking — no crap taking — fluid of gender — missing predictable bias and wanting a world of fierce equality — young humans. As former President Obama said, “We have been waiting for you. And we’ve got your backs.” Hearing those words I hope inspires them even more. Because the haters are always there — sometimes in your own family. Sometimes all it takes is a longhaired professor who believes in you or a former president of a once-great country to praise you — to have those words inspire you for a lifetime. Let’s make certain all the young people hear from us how proud we are of their bravery to speak truth to power. Tell them any 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. |