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Show A-2 Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, September 19-22, 2020 The Park Record 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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Phone: 435–649–9014 Fax: 435–649–4942 Email: circulation@parkrecord.com Published every Wednesday and Saturday Write-in candidate vies for school board Thomas Cooke mounts campaign to unseat incumbent president ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record In November, three names will be on the ballot for three Park City Board of Education seats. But in one race, there will be a line to write in a candidate’s name along with the name of an incumbent board member, after Thomas Cooke, a member of the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission, recently launched a write-in campaign. He is challenging one-term incumbent and board President Andrew Caplan in District 2. The seats are geographically apportioned. Cooke lives in the Trailside neighborhood and has lived in the Park City area since 1993, when he came out for one season as a ski bum. He has a master’s degree in English and works as a digital marketing consultant and freelance writer. His daughter previously attended Park City schools but the family opted for the Winter Sports School as her ski racing career became more serious. In addition to serving on the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission, Cooke has been involved in coaching and administering youth sports programs. Caplan is running for his second term on the Board of Education. He lives in the Old Ranch Road neighborhood and has a fourth-grader at Parley’s Park Elementary School and a kindergartner. He works in international finance and has a bachelor’s degree in government and economics. He said continuity on the board is important and that his experience in the finance world would continue to serve Continued from A-1 Newcomer challenges decades at Rocky Mountain Power and aims on Capitol Hill to bring “the science and the economics to the table” to address air quality and promote clean modes of transportation. She added that her background gives her the skills to make progress on environmental issues. “One thing you learn really quick is building consensus,” she said. “If you can’t get consensus real quick, stuff doesn’t get done and, ultimately, either the economy suffers or people suffer. That’s true in the utility business, and I also think it’s true in the business of government.” King, too, highlighted issues like clean water, clean air and protecting public lands. He also intends to continue to promote gun control legislation, as he has in recent legislative sessions, though with little success. “The only way that we’re going to make progress on gun violence is if we have people stepping up and saying, ‘This is a priority’ and they start voting in a way that reflects those priorities,” he said. “In other words, you have to have candidates who are concerned that if they don’t address gun violence, they’re not going to get the vote of people and are going to lose elections.” The candidates, meanwhile, have differing views about the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. King praised Gov. Gary Herbert’s overall leadership but characterized his unwillingness to enact a statewide mask mandate as “inexplicable.” the board well as it navigates big-ticket capital projects that will likely involve issuing debt and bonds. Caplan said he was particularly proud of the work the board has done in his first term regarding school safety, lowering class sizes, master planning for district facilities and mental health initiatives. But he said he was most proud of increasing teacher compensation. Cooke said he is not running because of dissatisfaction with the way the district returned to school amid the pandemic, acknowledging the difficulty of that process. He hopes, rather, to increase transparency on the board, disseminate more information to parents and teachers, and to restore trust in the district and the board that he says is flagging. “I think right now, the board needs to get the trust of the community back, and the first step is to listen to the community,” Cooke said. “... People don’t really care what you know until they know that you care. First thing I want people to know is that I care. I care about our teachers. I care about our students.” Caplan pushed back on the notion that the board hasn’t been listening to the community, and contended that the board, the district administration and the union representing teachers saw eye-toeye through the reopening process. “Were we on the same page about reopening? Yes. Were we on the same page about salary increases? Absolutely,” Caplan said. Cooke filed one week after the Park City School District sent a letter to teachers that he said prompted him to run. “That letter was an embodiment of the heavy-handedness (of the board): ‘We’re doing this, I don’t want to hear any complaints,’” Cooke said. The Aug. 24 letter was signed by the five members of the board and sent privately to teachers and later obtained by The Park Record. Parts of the letter appear to link a proposed compensation Statehouse debate scheduled The Better Utah Institute and the League of Women Voters of Utah has organized a debate between the two candidates seeking to represent Park City in the Statehouse in House District 54. The debate, featuring Democrat Meaghan Miller and Republican Mike Kohler, is scheduled for Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. It will be held via Zoom. Residents can RSVP to attend here: act.betterutah.org/event/2020-debate-series-rsvp/15. He added that state officials should not view steps to fight the pandemic as a choice between public health and the economy. “That’s a false choice,” he said. “Any public servant or candidate who talks about this in that way should not get anybody’s vote because it misunderstands a fundamental truth, which is that our economy is going to reopen successfully only to the degree that the virus is contained.” Hunter said she wears a mask in public but has mixed feelings about a statewide mandate, indicating that she has “great faith in Utahns that they will do the right thing.” “I personally have a personal mandate to wear a mask and to socially distance,” she said. “And I would pray that everybody has that. But do I criticize the governor for not making a mandate? I don’t know. I go both directions on that.” The November election will be conducted primarily through mail-in balloting. The deadline to register to vote is Oct. 23, with ballots slated to be mailed to registered voters three weeks before Election Day Nov. 3. For more information, visit the Summit County Clerk’s website at summitcounty.org/281/Voter-Registration-Elections. TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Board of Education President Andrew Caplan, left, has been challenged by writein candidate Thomas Cooke, a member of the Snyderville Basin Planning Commission. Cooke says his goal is to regain the trust of the community, while Caplan points to successes including increasing teacher compensation. increase — which was later approved — with support for the district’s plans to return to in-person schooling. “Please understand that the actions of a few are jeopardizing our ability to deliver on this much warranted salary increase,” the letter states. “When a group of your peers continuously undermine the district through print, radio and social media because they are not getting their way please understand it hurts us all in the eyes of the community.” Cooke said he counts several teachers among his friends and that many of them are anxious about the return to school but fear speaking out. “To me that’s a gag order: ‘Don’t talk about your anxieties or your discomfort with how we’re going back,’ when I think that’s exactly what the school board should be doing,” Cooke said of the letter. Cooke added that he thought the board had lost the trust of the teachers and that he was running to regain it. Caplan said the teachers who opposed the district’s reopening plans were a vo- Continued from A-1 Vandalism case cold ed. The artist who created the Black Lives Matter mural returned to Main Street a short time later to repair the vandalized artwork and slightly alter the piece. The murals, which are temporary, have largely faded in the twoplus months since they were made. The Police Department in late August cleared a person of interest in the case. The police focused the investigation on the Davis County man shortly after the vandalism. The police said an officer stopped a vehicle late at night several days later and found the driver matched the description of a person seen on surveillance footage from the night of the vandalism obtained from a Main Street business. The police said at the time perpetrators sometimes return to the scene to observe the location after a crime is committed. The man was never arrested or charged after a police interview. The cal minority and that passing what he called a record-breaking salary increase would have been a tough sell to the com-b munity if teachers decided not to returno to the classroom and the district resumed remote-only learning. a The Board of Education passed a $2.4p million compensation increase for staffs members on Aug. 26. t Caplan and the board have expressedc a desire to increase teacher compensa-f tion and have done so multiple times. But Caplan said the raise couldn’t havei happened when it did if teachers had re-p fused to come back to school. He addedi that he had been thanked by multiplem teachers and members of the teacher’so union for the letter. t “The vast majority of communityc members as well as staff were happy,” Caplan said of returning efforts. “… It’sD a perfect example, regardless of howl much time, effort and planning you putm into something, it’s impossible to pleaset everyone. Had we simply listened to thep loudest critics, we wouldn’t have gonem back to school.” s t man told the police he was not in Park k City the night of the vandalism and that he had demonstrated in support p of the Black Lives Matter movement a or in protest of the police killing of r George Floyd. The police, though, 2 learned the man once worked for a a paint contractor and said enough paint b was used in the vandalism to cover 2,000 square feet of the Main Street asphalt. The Police Department obtained a search warrant and further permission from the man to gather GPS data from the person’s mobile phone. The information showed the phone was not in Park City the night of the vandalism, leading the police to clear the person. Little acknowledged the Davis County man was the only viable lead in the investigation. The lieutenant said the Police Department spent at least 20 man-hours on the investigation, including the initial response, canvassing Main Street, reviewing surveillance footage, executing the search warrant, interviewing the person of interest and interviewing former employers of the person. He said graffiti cases are difficult since the perpetrators work so quickly. Little said an act of graffiti is a “very frustrating crime” and “very tough to solve.” “Discouraging we could not report back to the community with a positive outcome, with closure to it,” Little said. Corrections An article in the Sept. 16-18 edition of The Park Record titled “District details virus numbers, minimal so far” and an editorial titled “Transparency about case counts in schools offers peace of mind” incorrectly stated that the Park City School District will notify parents whenever there is a positive coronavirus case in their child’s school. Superintendent Jill Gildea clarified that parents will be notified only when there is a positive case in their child’s classroom or if there is spread of COVID-19 in a school beyond an isolated case. Count On Us - People Banking With People You can count on Grand Valley Bank as together we navigate through these challenging times. You can depend on our steady and locally grounded excellent service. 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