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Show FEBRUARY 1997 this is the place SCORECARD by John Helton LN Va Sido OUTDOOR aay Via 4 Double Bogey @) Just when you thought Park b> City couldn't possibly get any igger and more commercial, the Park City Ski Area is proposing a massive condominium development that would soar to eight stories. Apparently, the powers that be really like the idea, judging by all the happy talk coming ae City Hall. You thought the Town Lift Project at the bottom of Main Street was out of scale with the town? Well hold on to your hats, because lan Cumming’s new monstrosity at the Park City Ski Area will make the skyscrapers at the Town Lift look like quaint, little buildings. Add to this, recent comments by City Manager Toby Ross that Park City will discourage residential development while encour aging resort development and you ave a _ recipe for sare is alot more light around here! Yeah,| never noticed these duStballs ... we could use alittle isaster. Remember the days when Park City prided itself in being a real town? Birdie <| Gov. Mike Leavitt and Rep. Jim Hansen, two proponents of © ininimal Utah wilderness, now say they want to smoke the peace pipe with environmentalists. Does this mean the Sagebrush Rebels are admitting defeat? Hardly. Environmental groups like the Sierra Club and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance are right to be suspicious of the ploys being put forth by the governor and the congressman: Leavitt wants to designate wilderness pieceby-piece and Hansen wants to go back to the 2 million-acre mark but leave open the possibly of further wilderness designation. These are the same people who recently sued to stop the secretary of the Interior from undertaking a new survey of potential wilderness lands. Still, this is an opening that environmental groups should seize to engage in some kind of dialogue, cautious though it should be. Bogey @ _ So, like what is that tank trap > thing they've erected in the middle of Park Avenue in Park City? It is apparently the brain storm of someone at City Hall who thinks that driving in Park City hasn’t become perilous enough. It’s no secret. now, that Park City has become so popular that at high season its traffic surpasses rush hour in Salt Lake City and is more like Manhattan. Not to worry, City Hall has the answer: erect a device in the middle of Park Avenue that will confuse not only the tourists but the locals as well. While the new obstruction is designed to shunt traf fic either to the Park City Ski Area or to Deer Valley, it really only succeeds in pushing drivers into pandemonium and confusion. All of this, of course, is being done in a vacuum, because City Hall has no traffic circulation study. @ Yh) rv Religion and Money Still Dominate Utah Politics he new year got off to a pretty strange start here, in Utah. Gov. Mike Leavitt, who won reelection by a landslide, brought in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for his reinauguration and then delivered a sermon in the rotunda of the Capitol Building. It was enough to send shivers up the spines of non-Mormons, gentiles and philistines. Statistics just out show Utah, now in its 100th year as a state, is still about 70 percent Mormon — the highest unidenominational population anywhere in the The latest election nation. polling in November showed about 70 percent of Utahns are Republicans, too. But the popular Leavitt, who is backed by a State Legislature that is Republican and overwhelmingly Mormon, apparently didn’t think he was being insensitive to non-Mormons or Jack Mormons by decreeing that the emergence of Utah as a state is the fulfillment of the faith of the Mormon pioneers. For years, critics have complained that the link between church and state in Utah goes beyond what the Founding Fathers had _ intended. Leavitt's address gave them new ammunition. But if there is doubt about religion and politics in Utah, certainly there isn’t any about money and politics. The Utah Republican Party in a gaff that illustrates how far this one-party state has fallen from a pure democracy, PAGE way that she could have fulfilled her mission to be the chief watchdog on the most powerful companies in the state. Christopher Smart opened its arms to lobbyists in a very public and very dumb way. The Republicans held a breakfast for lobbyist just as the 1997 Utah Legislature was about to convene. For a mere 50 bucks, lobbyists were invited to eat breakfast with Gov. Leavitt and legislative leaders. Billed as a fund-raiser for the Republican Party, the breakfast was like shooting fish in a barrel for hungry lobbyists. But because the Utah Legislature is so overwhelmingly Republican, the breakfast brings the appearance of a government that is putting itself up for sale — or at least undue influence. If the preaching and the lobbying isn’t enough to sour the view most citizens have of state government, then perhaps Gov. Leavitt's choice of director for state Committee of Consumer Services would. Leavitt selected Lorena Riffo, a bright young Latina woman, to head the public utilities watchdog group. Unfortunately, Riffo has had no experience in the area. There was simply no 2 What has always been a slam-dunk Was approval rejected by the Committee on Consumer Services, itself, leaving Leavitt steaming. It was indeed unfortunate that Riffo was served up like a sacrificial lamb but the committee made the right decision. Her nomination, however, speaks volumes on the Leavitt Administration’s view of regulatory bodies. Meanwhile, a member of the state Radiation Control Board has been swept up in controversy for bribing another official. Khoshrow state Semnani, who owns and operates a low-level radioactive dump has admitted paying the former director of radiation control some $600,000. What’s been lost in the claims of extortion and counterclaims of bribery, is that Semnani sits on the state regulatory board which oversees his dump. That seems to be completely at odds with the notion of open and fair government. The cases of however, are not though Semnani Riffo and Semnani, isolated. And even Was originally appointed during the Bangerter Administration, certainly he fits into Gov. Leavitt's view of state government, where the powerful and well- connected are somehow entitled to more than the rest of us taxpayers. @ |