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Show A-14 The Park Record Meetings and agendas Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, January 11-14, 2020 More dogs on Main By Tom Clyde TO PUBLISH YOUR PUBLIC NOTICES AND AGENDAS, PLEASE EMAIL CLASSIFIEDS@PARKRECORD.COM A quiet week in Lake Wobegon Notice is hereby given that the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission will meet in regular session Tuesday, January 14, 2020 Location: Sheldon Richins Building – Auditorium, 1885 West Ute Boulevard, Park City, UT 84098 AGENDA Agenda items may or may not be discussed in the order listed. 4:30 p.m. Regular Session 1. Public input for items not on the agenda or pending applications. 2. Public hearing and possible action regarding a Conditional Use Permit for Layton Tree Farms Wholesale Nursery; Parcel SL-C-148-AM; 9387 N Cottonwood Trail; Larry Layton, Applicant. – Sean Lewis, AICP, County Planner 3. Discussion with possible action for the Canyons Workforce Housing Final Site Plan on parcel LVDAM-LV6A-AM-X, 3695 Lower Village Road; Tony Tyler, applicant. – Tiffanie Northrup-Robinson, Senior Planner Work Session 1. Review and discussion of Chapter 10-4 of the Snyderville Basin Development Code. – Ray Milliner, Principal Planner 2. Discussion regarding the Master Planned Development Code Amendment (MPD). – Ray Milliner, Principal Planner DRC Updates Commission Comments Director Items Adjourn A majority of Snyderville Basin Planning Commission members may meet socially after the meeting. If so, the location will be announced by the Chair or Vice-Chair. County business will not be conducted. To view staff reports available after Friday, January 10, 2020 please visit: www.summitcounty.org Individuals needing special accommodations pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act regarding this meeting may contact Vicki Geary, Summit County Community Development Department, at (435) 336-3123. Park City seeks applicants to review employees’ pay Applications to commission are due by Friday SUBMITTED BY PARK CITY MUNICIPAL Park City Municipal is seek- ing registered voters to serve on a newly created Blue Ribbon Commission to review and assess the City’s employee compensation methodology and, if necessary, recommend strategies to improve employee retention and attract future candidates. The Commission will meet multiple times from Jan. 31 through March 31. The Commission will have the opportunity to hear from and provide input to Mercer, the consulting firm selected to lead this project. Applications are available at surveymonkey.com/r/2SVNW5B and due by Friday, Jan. 17. For more information, please contact Jolene Weston at Jolene. weston@parkcity.org. Lawmakers decry lack of transparency on Iran strike Sen. Lee calls briefing ‘worst’ he has seen in office DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Trump administration made its case on Capitol Hill for killing a powerful Iranian general, but Democrats — and a handful of Republicans — said the classified briefings Wednesday were short on details and left them wondering about the president’s next steps in the volatile Mideast. Democrats said that by not disclosing many details of the threat that prompted the U.S. to kill Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, President Donald Trump is asking the American public to trust the very intelligence reports he has often disparaged. Top Trump administration officials have repeatedly stressed that the undisclosed intelligence about imminent threats to Americans in the Mideast required action — that the president would have been negligent not to strike Iran. But Democrats want more information about what led Trump to kill Soleimani — a man whose hands were “drenched in both American and Iranian blood,” according to Trump. “Trust us. That’s really what it all boils down to,” Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said after a classified briefing top administration officials gave members of the House. “But I’m not sure that ‘trust me’ is a satisfactory answer for me,” Engel said. In contrast, Sen. Jim Risch, the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the Senate’s meeting “one of the best briefings” he’s had as a member of Congress. He said the information was “crystal clear.” Some Republicans joined Democrats in criticizing the administration’s presentations. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said it was “probably the worst briefing I’ve seen, at least on a military issue, in the nine years I’ve served in the United States Senate.” He said he found it “insulting and demeaning” for administration briefers to warn lawmakers against debating the merits of further military action against Iran because that would only embolden Tehran. “It is not acceptable for officials within the executive branch of government ... to come in and tell us that we can’t debate and discuss the appropriateness of military intervention against Iran. It’s un-American, it’s unconstitutional, and it’s wrong,” Lee said, adding that he now planned to support a war powers resolution introduced by Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va. At one point, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, asked when, if not in this instance, would the administration consult Congress, according to a Senate aide familiar with the private session but unauthorized to discuss it by name. The answer from the top officials was basically a disinterest in consulting Congress, the aide said, leading some senators to storm out. The House is expected to vote this week on a similar resolution to limit Trump’s military actions regarding Iran. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said he thought the congressional briefings offered lawmakers a compelling argument that the intelligence supported the strike on Soleimani. But he noted that only eight lawmakers — the top four lawmakers in the House and Senate and chairmen and vice chairmen of the intelligence committees in both chambers — are the only members of Congress who are authorized to see all the intelligence. “One of the challenges, of course, is not everybody has, in fact most members of Congress do not have, access to the intelligence that I think was the most compelling,” Esper said. “That’s just simply the nature of the intelligence, and it’s restricted to the Gang of Eight.” Democrats also are skeptical of the timing of the strike, which comes in the run-up to a Senate impeachment trial and at the start of a presidential election year. It’s the same skepticism that some Republicans expressed in 1998 when they accused President Bill Clinton of using military strikes on Iraq to interrupt and delay a pending impeachment resolution against him. A top defender of the president, Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., said afterward that “there’s no question” the killing was justified. Asked if she was convinced by the briefing that Iranian attacks were imminent before the Soleimani strike, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., said, “Yes. My questions were answered and satisfied.” Democrats weren’t convinced. “There were so many important questions that they did not answer,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., called the briefing “profoundly unconvincing” and said “no case was made” that the Iranian attacks were imminent. “I leave this (briefing) more troubled than I went into it.” It’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon. Nothing much happened. OK, there was that day that the US blew the Iranian special forces commander to smithereens in his car at the Baghdad airport, putting the world on the brink of World War III. So there was that. And then the Iraqi government, such as it is, told us that if we were going to randomly blow up Iranian leaders in their airport, we had overstayed our welcome in their country. If we were going to have a war with Iran, they don’t want us doing it in their house. They didn’t want to get involved, so they told us to pack up and leave. The U.S. general on the ground then sent a letter to the Iraqi government saying, “OK, we’re out of here. The food sucks and the air conditioning is broken. We’re gone.” Then, after sending that letter, maybe without having cleared it with higher command (or maybe with higher command being thoroughly confused), word came from the Pentagon and White House that, no, we were not actually leaving Iraq, but we were ready for a war with Iran. The official letter was a mistake. A butt dial, with pages of detailed descriptions of what the exit would look like so Iraq wouldn’t be puzzled by the troop movements. Nevermind. While that mix-up was undermining confidence in functional US leadership at any level, Iran did exactly what everybody expected, and responded to their second-in-command having been blown up. They lobbed missiles at U.S. bases in Iraq. The reports from the impeached President of the United States, IMPOTUS, the Very Stable Genius himself, were that the Iranian General Qasem Soleimani was about to lead an imminent strike against the US, and that killing him was essential to preempt that. Then they backed off, saying he was generally a bad guy (which everybody agrees on), and had done lots of bad stuff (which everybody agrees on), and so taking him out was OK. But the imminent plot seems to have melted away. Following the missile strikes, the Very Stable Genius said that no US forces were injured. We’re supposed to believe him. It’s not clear if any Iraqi forces were injured, but apparently nobody much cares about them. If the missile strikes really didn’t injure any US troops, that’s good news. It also suggests that the Iranians were slightly pulling their punches, so they could show that they had the ability to make a lethal response to US action, but maybe didn’t need to escalate the situation. At a time when the world really needs to be able to believe that blowing up the Iranian general was justified by an imminent threat, we get mush.” Over about 4 days, we went from the brink of all out war to pulling back to something that will look like repeated and reciprocal skirmishes, like cyberattacks and small-scale terror attacks — in other words, “normal.” But I’m writing this on Wednesday, and anything can happen between now and this landing on your driveway. The stock market crashed on Tuesday night with word of the Iranian missiles, then set new records on Wednesday morning when Iran said it was through with large-scale retaliation unless IMPOTUS does something stupid. So far, he hasn’t, though we are always one Tweet away from disaster with him. Who would have thought that the religious fanatics running Iran would be the reasonable party in all of this. Remember George W. Bush and the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? They weren’t there, and the lie ruined Bush’s reputation and took down Colin Powell with him. It feels so familiar. At a time when the world really needs to be able to believe that blowing up the Iranian general was justified by an imminent threat, we get mush. Congress wasn’t brought into the loop until after it was over, despite their constitutional power over war-making. In the end, so much of this hinges on Presidential credibility with the American people and with other countries. Trump is without credibility. It’s just as likely that this was all a stunt to distract from the impeachment, as that there was a real threat. So we’ve backed off from the ledge, and settled into the sort of normal level of Middle East chaos. Nobody seems to know what’s next. If there’s a goal in mind, I’m not sure what it is. If there is a strategy in place, it’s not evident. I thought it was defeating what has morphed into ISIS, but we yanked the rug out from under the Kurdish fighters who had been effective allies in that fight. I’d love to hear the 30-second elevator pitch explaining why we are still there, what we hope to accomplish, and how we will know when it’s done. Instead, we have Iran cooking nuclear weapons again. Yes, it’s been a quiet week in Lake Wobegon, where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are cowering under their beds. 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 Crime stories and family secrets I didn’t expect most of the things that happened to me in the last days of this decade. Some were — triple-flip surprises. Since this space doesn’t allow for all the stories, I’ll unpack one. It started the day I finally decided to go to Wells Fargo and retrieve the contents of my safety deposit box. I had opened it about 10 years ago when my mother was in a home for dementia and I was handling her paperwork. I rented a big box and threw all her papers in there along with a treasure. It is an old black metal strongbox from the 1800s. Inside are 20-plus glass slides. And on those slides are images of Abraham Lincoln and his life. General Grant — and a Native American chief I haven’t yet identified — images of the log cabin where he grew up. The deathbed scene with his family and some generals standing around the bed. They are rather amazing. When my half-sister and I discovered them we decided to investigate their origin — when we had time. ... So I gave her several — maybe a dozen of the 80 slides — of critical scenes with images of people who looked important. These don’t appear to be early photographs-daguerreotypes — they are most likely hand-painted Magic Lantern slides. In the middle of my mother’s failing health — my sister passed away. Her difficult son decided to sell her home and all the contents without consulting me about any of the possessions that belonged to my mother’s estate. I decided to walk away from the drama. And I just forgot about it — slides and all. Fast forward and my daughter asked me not too long ago — where did those Lincoln slides ever end up? And I remembered the safe deposit box — so I went to Wells Fargo and said I wanted to empty it — close it up. And the lovely woman who has helped me through personal and professional mazes for years asked me politely — “Which one?” ... I cocked my head ... “Which one? I only have one.” And she looked at her computer and said ... “Actually you have two — one you opened in 2009 and the other — in 1999.” I was dumbfounded. For one thing, Wells Fargo was First Security Bank back in 1999 and that bank was on Park Avenue across from Jans. They must have moved those safety deposit boxes over when they built the new bank. And I did remember I had had a box with saving bonds for my kids’ education but I cashed those out when the kids went to college. As a full-time journalist back then, I sometimes put notes and tapes in that box. Park City was the Wild West and I was interviewing drug dealers and undercover FBI agents and just “sources.” And since people went missing in those days and were later found floating in lakes and had fatal “heart attacks” the day before testifying — I was advised by my worldliest friend at the time, Ira Sachs, to put the tapes in a safety deposit box. And so I did. But after taking out the savings bonds for the kids’ college, I forgot entirely about the box. He told me I had a choice — between an ethical dilemma and a moral one. And I confessed, I didn’t know the difference.” The bank officer asked if I still had a key. And I laughed. “If I didn’t know I had the box — I am pretty sure I don’t know where I would have a key.” So the bank officer said she would arrange to have the box drilled open. Which seemed rather dramatic to discover there might be nothing in there but maybe a rotted rubber band. But drilling into the box seemed exciting and since the bank had failed to notify me of its existence for two decades they volunteered to pay for the drill. They arranged for me to be there to watch the process and then — in great ceremony — they put me in a closed room to look at the contents. Inside were three tapes — those tiny little cassette tapes — minis — all the rage back in the late ’80s. Also inside the envelope were a series of letters on yellow legal paper from — Draper, Utah — Point of the Mountain prison. They were from Preston Mitchell, who was convicted of killing a Park City resident, former airline pilot Fred Duncan, but may have been involved in other deaths. I had covered the story and over a three-year period watched it unfold into other stories and other cases. Before Mitchell left the jail in Coalville for Draper, I had been allowed to be locked into his cell to interview him for three hours. I then wrote a series of articles for the Salt Lake Tribune. There was another trial for Mitchell a few years later when they proved an error in the first trial. The prosecution knew I had those tapes and they asked for them to be placed in evidence. Again, I asked Ira what I should do. He told me I had a choice — between an ethical dilemma and a moral one. And I confessed, I didn’t know the difference. He said “ethically you have a right as journalist to not reveal your source. Morally, if there is something on those tapes that incriminate him — the family of the victim deserves to know that.” He offered to take the tapes out of the country for safekeeping. I said it was all too crazy. I would just put them in a safety deposit box and if they were needed I would decide then. As it turned out the information I had about other crimes never came up and the evidence produced to retry him was enough to send him back to the prison. By then — 1988 — he had been transferred to Texas. Where, later his father would arrange to have a helicopter land in the prison yard and for a few hours — spring his son in a dramatic escape. I never did reveal that Mitchell had also been a confidential informant with the FBI at the time of Duncan’s murder. It was kinda crazy to be looking at those contents of an old safety deposit box from the ’90s that had been ignored for decades. And yes, I am now researching the Lincoln slides and the handwritten journal with yellowed newspaper and magazine articles from 1909 — 100 years after Lincoln’s birth — that came with the strongbox — but that is a story for another 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. |