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Show Viewpoints The A-13 Park Record. Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, July 11-14, 2020 editorial Conversations sparked by mural are vital for community progress W letters to the editor Pull together for our seniors As someone who has been closely following the public discussion concerning the future of our Senior Center, I am pleased to see the mayor and City Council have recently moved in a more positive and constructive direction. Hopefully we can build on this progress as we join together to create a facility that is commensurate with the value and appreciation we have for our senior community. I was a young reporter in 1978 when the original center opened on Woodside Avenue. I can recall interviewing Nan McPolin to learn how thrilled she was to have a place where she and so many of her friends and contemporaries could get together, have lunch, play cards and enjoy each other’s company. A few years later when my parents retired to Park City they would frequently stop in to play bridge and make new friends. If we as a community can raise over $100 million for open space, it would seem we can find a way to support our seniors with a first-class and permanent center. As our parents and grandparents encouraged us, “if there is a will, there is a way.” Let’s pull together, and honor the living history of Park City. Greg Schirf Park Meadows Keep politics off Main Street My wife and I were very dismayed and disappointed to learn of the painting of “Black Lives Matter” on Main Street. Yes, hopefully all Americans agree with that very important sentiment — so our reaction has nothing to do with that important cause! Rather, we feel very strongly that our local town’s Main Street is not the place for communicating views on any social commentary or political issues. Period! The beauty of America is that people are free to express their own opinions. The Park Record and various social media platforms serve as much more appropriate places for personal opinions. The mayor and the City Council allowing the painting of these slogans on our own Main Street crosses the line, big time! Main Street belongs to each of us. By inference, covering it with social messaging suggests that the Park City community as a whole is 100% aligned to that view (or that the government is somehow dictating that everyone should be so aligned — which is not for the government to mandate). More importantly, this action begs the bigger question as to, prospective- The Park Record Staff PUBLISHER ....................... Andy Bernhard Editor ................................... Bubba Brown Staff Writers ......................Jay Hamburger Scott Iwasaki Alexander Cramer Contributing ............................. Tom Clyde Writers Teri Orr Amy Roberts Tom Kelly Joe Lair Engagement Editor............. Jeff Dempsey Photographer .........................Tanzi Propst Circulation Manager ............. Lacy Brundy Distribution........................... Henry Knight ADVERTISING Advertising Director ........... Valerie Spung Advertising Sales ................... Jodi Hecker Lindsay Lane Director of Digital Marketing .. Tina Wismer Production Director ..................Ben Olson Production ......................... Louise Mohorn ly, which social views and commentary should be given a “painted voice” platform on our special mountain town’s only little Main Street? If we do in fact believe in freedom of speech, does this set a precedent for Main Street becoming a mural of diverse social and political views? Where does it stop, and critically who is to decide which views can be displayed, and which cannot? Park City government, in allowing this action, has stepped onto a very slippery slope! My wife and I are not alone among locals in this feeling of disappointment over this decision. Many neighbors and friends have said that they were equally surprised and disappointed. In fact, it might even cause some “backlash” in people spending less or not visiting Old Town until the situation is rectified — an unintended consequence which would impact merchants or restaurants along our city’s main drag as they struggle to recover from the impact of this poor judgment. We as Park City can do better in deciding where and how to best convey our passionate views, whatever they might be. Larry Alleva Glenwild Mountain town high Park City has the opportunity to be a progressive and forward-thinking community on marijuana. Park City has always been ahead of the Utah state agenda. Park City needs to work with the state to establish a pilot program for medical marijuana which bridges medicine and business. Marijuana is a remarkable addition to our health care system. The benefits of marijuana include nervous system stabilizing, pain relief, emotional relaxation, mental creativity, appetite and rest benefits. If a doctor introduced a prescription that could provide all of the aforementioned traits in one pill than our entire community would all be popping the pill. Many American communities have endorsed and established marijuana as an essential need for people. Times are changing and marijuana is not the dangerous psychedelic monster drug that it was misclassified as in the past. Marijuana is an herbal all-natural health treatment that can be consumed in a myriad of forms. It doesn’t necessarily have to be smoked and carcinogens can be removed from use. Park City will be better off with marijuana laws and regulations that are more similar to Colorado. Tax revenues from a new business stream will be able to add to schools and public facilities. Crime rates in other American cities that have adopted marijuana have not gone up. Park City has the opportunity to be on the frontier of marijuana access, legislation and regulation. Mark Boyle Kamas 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 hat kind of a community is Park City? What kind do Parkites want it to be? Those are questions residents are asking themselves after a week of controversy incited by the painting of a massive Black Lives Matter mural on Main Street and its subsequent defacement. The reaction to both the mural and the vandalism of it were illuminating. To some, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” spelled out in the middle of Park City’s most iconic street was a rallying cry, affirming the community’s commitment to progress on racial equality, and the vandalism, then, was itself a racist act. Others argued the mural had no place on Main Street simply because the shopping, dining and entertainment strip is not where such a statement should be made. For others, still, the frustration was with the message itself. Muddying the water further is the question of whether it was appropriate for City Hall to provide the Park City Summit County Arts Council with $15,000 of taxpayer money to fund artwork that ultimately promoted a political message — and “Black Lives Matter” is, in the country’s current climate, a political message. We believe it was unwise to spend taxpayer money on the artwork, particularly in the midst of an economic crisis with no clear end in sight. Yet we support providing a prominent platform for artists of color during a moment in which minori- ty voices, so often shouted down, must be elevated. And the artwork itself was important. Black lives matter. Period. Likewise, other murals painted on Main Street as part of the project were also thought-provoking, spelling out “Solidarity,” “Peace, Unity, Love” and “Justicia Para Todos,” Spanish words translating to “justice for all.” Collectively, they presented a stirring statement in support of equality. Most importantly, though, they sparked a conversation, the impact of which will be felt long after the paint has faded from the Main Street asphalt. Our hope is that all of us, whatever our views, use this moment as an opportunity to better understand our neighbors. Parkites must reckon with the fundamental issues of race and equality head on, resisting the human urge to retreat to our respective corners and instead make an honest effort to empathize with one another. Grappling with these topics and the questions they raise is difficult. Doing so has a way of making obvious all the ways we’re falling short, as individuals and as a community. But if we’re committed to it, it will also show us the path forward, revealing the kind of place Parkites want their hometown to be and how to get there. Not as individuals who happen to live in the same couple of zip codes. But together, arm in arm, marching toward a future filled with progress, understanding and compassion. guest editorial Development proposal at Tech Center seeks to strip progress previous leaders secured MARY CHRISTA SMITH Park City I write this letter with a great sense of urgency. There is currently a proposal by Dakota Pacific to reopen and amend the development agreement for the Tech Center parcel at Kimball Junction. The Snyderville Basin Planning Commission is scheduled to hear public comment on this item on July 28 and is receiving public input until that date. I encourage everyone in our community who cares about potentially adding residential density through a change in the Tech Center development agreement to take the time to learn about the history of this land, the agreements that were put in place and what is at stake with this proposal. In the early 2000s, the land that we know as the Tech Center was owned by the real estate arm of the LDS Church and was designated as a “village center” at the time, with intensive commercial space, a school and over 800 individual homes in a sprawling subdivision. County and city officials worked out a deal that would be equitable for the people of Summit County. The community’s goals were: 1. Remove the residential density (reducing impacts to schools, infrastructure and traffic) 2. Preserve the open views along S.R. 224 3. Create areas for public recreation 4. Allow for development of business park that would offer high-paying jobs (not service jobs) In December of 2008, the city and county together paid $25 million to acquire the 350 acres, as well as an additional 350 acres in Round Valley. The community used $25 mil- lion of open space bond money to remove residential density from both the open space and the Tech Center parcels. Summit County and Park City, with great care and consideration, created the Tech Center with the intention of removing residential density, creating high-paying jobs and preserving open space. The 2020 visioning process makes clear that residents in both 84060 and 84098 overwhelmingly value open space and limited growth. Residents have made clear we are not in support of creating more residential entitlements, period. We are especially against the undoing of the development agreement and our $25 million investment on this land. “We” invested $25 million to strip the residential density entitlement from this land and to create a development that would create high-paying jobs, not service-level jobs for the hotel and mixed-use commercial proposed in the project. The proposal by Dakota Pacific seeks to add 1,100 residential units, along with a hotel and mixed-use commercial to this site and goes completely against the intent of the development agreement. According to Todd Hauber, Park City School District business administrator, this project is projected to increase our student enrollment in Park City School District by 500-plus students, necessitating the need to build another school. I ask the Planning Commission, planning staff and Summit County Council to honor the wisdom and work of our community elders, who with care, and at great expense, created the Tech Center to limit residential density, sprawl, impacts to schools, traffic congestion and create a space for high-paying jobs. It is simply inappropriate to undo the $25 million investment in this land. Just say NO, period. guest editorial We either lie about them or omit them RICH WANDSCHNEIDER Writers on the Range Finally, “Black Lives Matter” gains traction. Showing videos and telling stories that bring attention to the large numbers of deaths by police and the cases and deaths by COVID-19 among African Americans has led to this long-delayed confrontation with our prejudiced society. What we see with our own eyes can no longer be ignored, which makes this seem a historic moment that could bring about real change. The press has gone some way towards reporting the heavy impact of the disease on the working poor. Solid reporting has brought out the disproportionate number of black and brown people working as house cleaners, health care aides, and in food processing plants, public transportation and other occupations that put them at greater risk of contagion. Poor neighborhoods, poor water and crowded living conditions have also been exposed as furthering the spread of the virus. What may not have registered is that the worldwide epidemic has also hit American Indians particularly hard. With a population of just 173,667, the Navajo Nation had 7,549 confirmed cases and 363 deaths attributed to the virus as of July 1. That is more than 4,447 cases per 100,000 people — a higher per-capita rate than anywhere in the United States. For comparison, New York is at 2,150 cases per 100,000 people. Put another way, at the Navajo Nation rate, my state of Oregon would have over 184,000 COVID cases and 8,970 deaths instead of 208 deaths. (Source: Worldometer). Yet the press has devoted little space to the virus having its way in Indian country. The history of disease among tribes is in a word — terrible. Epidemic diseases killed more indigenous people in the Americas at the start of European colonialism than all the Indian wars. Measles, smallpox and tuberculosis devastated the misnamed Indians, from fishermen-borne diseases brought to tribes along the Atlantic coast in the 16th century to the near-extirpation of the Cayuse in the 1840s. These diseases, unfamiliar to the native Americans, continued to damage tribes through the twentieth century. Charles Mann argues strongly in “1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus” that disease attacks on Indians had a genetic component, meaning that indigenous Americans were far more susceptible to viral diseases than white populations. And, according to Indian friends, there are strong tribal memories of the devastating 1918 flu. That gen- erational memory has some living in fear today as COVID-19 marches across America. Historian Alvin Josephy said that when we are not lying about American Indians our history we are omitting them. A recent instance of omission: Politico reports that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has turned down tribal epidemiologists’ requests for data about the virus that it’s making freely available to states. For Euro-Americans, it’s been a harsh road traveled over and around American Indians. Most of it has had to do with land: They had it and white people wanted it. Disease killed off Squanto’s people, and when the Puritans arrived they were saved by caches of food remaining in what seemed like an empty landscape. Combat with superior numbers and firepower grabbed more land from native Americans. When war didn’t work, treaties — and a continued rewriting or abandoning them — snatched more land. After disease and war and treaty making, there was government policy: the Indian Removal Act of 1830 sent tribes to “unsettled” lands across the Mississippi. The Dawes Allotment Act of 1887 tried to divide remaining Indian lands into parcels for individual Indians to farm, selling the “surplus” un-allotted lands to settlers. The Termination Act of 1953 tried finally to do away with all treaty and contractual relations and obligations with the federal government — freeing up more land to be purchased by Weyerhaeuser Timber and white farmers and ranchers. There are complex histories of the relationships between today’s Latino and Indian, and among African Americans and American Indians. But what can always be said of native Americans, who remain invisible to many, is that they have defied deliberate attempts to eradicate them. Against all odds, against massive disease outbreaks and repeated injustices, they persevere. Black lives matter, Indian lives matter, and COVID-19 is teaching us more about the history of both. Any true telling of today’s pandemic and past ones, of our country’s history and vision of our future, must include the original native Americans. Rich Wandschneider is a contributor to Writers on the Range (writersontherange.org), a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively discussion of the West. At the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture in Joseph, Oregon, he is developing the Josephy Library. |