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Show A-2 The Park Record Continued from A-1 The Park Record. Serving Summit County since 1880 The Park Record, Park City’s No. 1 source for local news, opinion and advertising, is available for home delivery in Summit, Wasatch, Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties. Single copies are also available at 116 locations throughout Park City, Heber City, Summit County and Salt Lake City. SUBSCRIPTION RATES In Summit County (home delivery): $56 per year (includes Sunday editions of The Salt Lake Tribune) Outside Summit County (home delivery available in Wasatch, Salt Lake, Davis, Weber and Utah counties; all other addresses will be mailed via the U.S. Postal Service): $80 per year To subscribe please call 435–649– 9014 or visit www.parkrecord.com and click the Subscribe link in the Reader Tools section of the toolbar at the bottom of the page. To report a missing paper, please call 801–204–6100. 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No portion may be reproduced in any form without written consent of the managing editor or publisher. The Park Record (USPS 378-730) (ISSN 0745-9483) is published twice weekly by Wasatch Mountain News Media Co., 1670 Bonanza Drive, Park City, UT 84060. Periodicals postage paid at Salt Lake City, Utah, 84199-9655 and at additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Park Record, P.O. Box 3688, Park City, UT84060. Entered as second-class matter, May 25, 1977, at the Post Office in Park City, Utah, 84060 under the Act of March 3, 1897. Subscription rates are: $56 within Summit county, $80 outside of Summit County, Utah. Subscriptions are transferable: $5 cancellation fee. Phone: 435–649–9014 Fax: 435–649–4942 Email: circulation@parkrecord.com Published every Wednesday and Saturday Lawmakers weigh in With no Utah state legislators hailing from Summit County, concerns regarding lawmakers heeding the will of the voters are magnified as some worry that, with propositions 2 and 3 as precedent, the Legislature could also overturn Proposition 4, which calls for an independent commission to take the reins of drawing the state’s electoral map. In response to a question from Himoff about redistricting, King said that, in the last round of redistricting after the 2010 Census, Summit County was divided up to weaken the already-small Democratic caucus on Capitol Hill. “I know for a fact, because I was involved in the redistricting process in 2011, I was on that committee, that there was some gerrymandering that took place regarding Summit County at least in the House,” King said. After the panel, King elaborated that, while he believes Summit County’s current districts are gerrymandered to dilute the influence of its Democrats, future redistricting should take care to draw lines not just based on the county’s borders but the economic and cultural differences between its eastern and western halves. “People on the west side of Summit County might say, ‘We’d love to have our own representative’ and people on the east side might say, ‘We want our own,’” King said after the panel. “We don’t have that now. What we have is the west side of Summit County split between three House members.” Quinn, a fiscal conservative who has regularly engaged with liberal-leaning Park City voters and officials since his election in 2016, said that he hears from his Summit County constituents more than from those in Wasatch County, and that he believes Summit County de- Continued from A-1 Responders remembered knew that they probably weren’t going to come out.” He said they were motivated that day by what they saw as the duty to help others. He said firefighters and police officers “are proud of their professions.” Hewitt said he remembered “the nobility and the resolve of our nation” as he suggested those ideals be recalled on the anniversary as well. “We’re willing to try to help others, try to save other people’s lives, even at the risk of our own lives. That’s exactly what happened on 9/11,” Hewitt said. Wade Carpenter, the Park City police chief, was the top law enforcement officer in the Southern Utah community of Brian Head on Sept. 11, telling the crowd he was at the time also active in a national tactical association. Twelve tactical officers from Yonkers, New York, Carpenter knew died on Sept. 11, he said, delivering emotional remarks. “I had 12 of my tactical brothers that lost their lives from Yonkers, New York, Continued from A-1 Trucks inspected cern of the Police Department, City Hall and rank-and-file Parkites in places like Old Town. There has been a series of accidents over the years in Park City involving failed brakes, resulting in run- Direct Importer of the World’s Finest Rugs A t t h e H i s t o r i c Vi l l a T h e a t r e 3092 So. Highland Dr., Salt Lake City (801)484-6364 888.445.RUGS (7847) Mon.-Sat. 10 am to 6 pm serves its own legislator on Capitol Hill. “I’ve already told leadership in my party that I think Summit County ought to have its own representative,” Quinn said. In response to a question from Himoff on voters’ will, Winterton said that he has a tough job balancing the interests of the western side of Senate District 26, which includes Summit and Wasatch counties, and the agricultural and energy interests of the eastern side that comprises the Uintah Basin. He said that while redistricting “scares” him, he believes the election of a Summit County legislator is inevitable. Issues of Summit County’s representation are far more pronounced when it comes to the state House districts. For the larger state Senate and the congressional districts, though, the math gets trickier. The legislators have kept themselves relatively busy through the body’s “offseason.” Quinn, a tax hawk who was tasked with carrying Gov. Gary Herbert’s failed tax reform effort through the Legislature last session, has traveled the state to get input from voters on the issue. It hasn’t been pretty, he said. According to him, at one point his wife seriously floated the idea that he should wear a bulletproof vest. Winterton, meanwhile, said he’s put 23,000 miles on a truck he bought at the beginning of the year. As a former trucker who said he was “thrown into” the issue of Medicaid expansion as the chair of the Senate’s Health and Human Services Committee, he’s been attending workshops in addition to seeing more of his vast district and interacting with its voters, including those in Park City. As for the leader of Utah’s House Democrats, King said he’s continued to build relationships not only as the chamber’s minority leader, but its “superminority leader.” The special session on medical marijuana is set for Monday. Leg.utah.gov provides livestreams of votes and floor debates. that I spent many, many hours with, and to this day ... it still breaks my heart,” Carpenter said. The police chief offered a personal tribute “to men and women in uniform who have served selflessly throughout our nation and throughout our world and the families and communities that support them.” One of the people who attended the event, Snyderville Basin resident Scott Zink, is a retired New York City Police Department sergeant who spent 24 years with the agency before retiring in 2009 and moving to the Park City area in 2013. He responded to the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, describing in an interview that a sergeant at the scene ordered him to secure the perimeter rather than head into the buildings. He was several hundred feet away as the first tower collapsed. Zink said he worked 18-hour days for three weeks after Sept. 11 and then a stretch of 15-hour days, as part of the search-and-rescue effort, as a member of the recovery teams and as security. He talked about the loss of Sept. 11 first responders from sicknesses in the years since the day. “It still hurts. It’s still tough to deal with,” Zink said, adding, “It’s something I think about every day. Never forget is true.” away trucks on the community’s hilly roads. Marsac Avenue between upper Deer Valley and Old Town has been an especially notorious stretch of street, with trucks losing brakes on the steepest section. Some of those cases have involved runaway trucks careening down Marsac Avenue, often called the Mine Road at that location, before they crash. A runaway-truck ramp was eventually built on Marsac Avenue as a safety measure. A dump truck in May was forced onto the runaway-truck ramp after it lost its brakes. Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, September 14-17, 2019 Continued from A-1 Protections discussed area in the past, but have been rebuffed, according to Park City Mayor Andy Beerman, who also sits on the Central Wasatch Commission. The bill would protect the Monitors from future expansion. The legislation deals mostly with land protections while the other main thrust of the Central Wasatch Commission — solving transportation problems — is left to a separate but concurrent process. Most of the land included in the proposal is now controlled by the U.S. Forest Service. While it’s being protected currently, the protections could be undone with administrative rule changes. Chris Robinson, a Summit County Councilor and member of the commission, said if the bill becomes law, undoing the land protections would require an act of Congress, a critical distinction. Effects on private land This bill supposedly removes all private landholdings from the newly protected areas, leaving irregular shapes cut out from the teal-blue overlay on the maps the commission presented. But one landowner at the meeting said he had three holdings that would be subject to the new designations, including some inside the proposed new ski area boundaries. Cottonwood ski areas would increase control of their base areas if the bill is passed through a series of land swaps that would allow the resorts to take privately held lands on the mountainsides in exchange for publicly held land at the base areas of the resorts. Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude would then own the land at their base areas and the Forest Service would own land on surrounding hillsides. Ski area expansion into newly protected land would be prohibited. For the man who owns land inside the new boundaries, the proposal is troubling. Beerman told attendees the intent of the bill is not to include any private land in the newly designated areas. The commission’s communications director, Lindsey Neilsen, said the bill includes language that necessitates the new designation not harm or hurt private landowners. But the landowner at the meeting did not appear mollified, saying the bill’s intent is less important than its actual wording. It’s not that the maps are inaccurate, the man said, it’s that the process started with promises to negotiate land swaps and now appears set to take his property. He was assured otherwise, but pointed at the map that showed his land overlaid in blue. Land protections Ralph Becker, the commission’s executive director said the bill’s top priority is watershed protection. That’s been the No. 1 issue for stewards of the land for a century. The draft explicitly allows for fire mitigation and watershed protection work in the proposed National Conservation and Recreation Area. It would also restrict ski area growth to the defined base areas, and would not permit expansion into the conservation area. The area has a history of mining, which often contaminates land. The legislation includes language that attempts to make sure cleanup costs are absorbed by the ski areas rather than the federal government. The details of how the land would be protected will be outlined in a management plan that would be written within three years of the bill’s passing. At the input session, people got a glimpse of how certain decisions were made. Responding to a question about the name of the new land designation, Becker explained it’s called that because one group really wanted a National Conservation Area while another wanted a National Recreation Area. Thus, the National Conservation and Recreation Area. Similarly, the White Pine Watershed Protection Area is so named to allow for some existing uses, like heli-skiing, that are banned in the Wilderness Area designations that cover neighboring lands. Summit County has considered pushing for federal legislation that would create a Watershed Protection Area to cover lands in the Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest, though for different reasons. The two projects are not related. Transportation fixes Other conversations at the meeting centered on transportation. Becker said both Park City and Summit County had made it clear they did not want any sort of new connection to the Wasatch Front, including something like a tram system. He has said expanding Guardsman Pass is off the table, which seems to be the consensus. But as for an aerial connection, neither Beerman nor Robinson have taken as hard a line as Becker has suggested. Beerman said an idea like a gondola connection would merit discussion but made clear he was not advocating for it. Such a system would have to be for transportation purposes rather than new skier access, and align with environmental and backcountry user goals. He said the Cottonwoods side has been more resistant to a connection. Robinson said he wasn’t sure where such negotiations stood now. While he’s sure people are against tunnel connections, he said some of his fellow County Councilors would like to see the resorts on the Wasatch Front and Wasatch Back connected. The legislation explicitly allows transportation improvements on the conservation land, including roadway improvements and “mountain transportation systems.” It leaves open the option for baseto-base resort connections and transportation systems like aerial tramways. What comes next The draft legislation presented Tuesday is the fourth version of the bill, and though Becker said it’s about 95 percent identical to a 2016 effort, this one has gone through Congressional Drafting Services, changing its language and readying it for introduction. The legislation lacks a sponsor, but Becker said U.S. Rep. John Curtis’ office has worked closely on the legislation and their representatives communicate weekly, if not daily. He did not say Curtis had committed to bringing the bill before Congress. U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams previously served on the Central Wasatch Commission. Becker said the feedback gathered at public information sessions like the one in Park City will be compiled and categorized, and the commission will respond to each category of input in writing. Public comment on the draft of the bill is open until Thursday, after which the commission will review the feedback and likely vote to forward a bill in November. To read a copy of the bill and see maps of the proposal, visit cwc.utah. gov. |