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Show B-1 ELECTION DAY IS TUESDAY! Ballots must be postmarked by Monday. Voters can return them at a drop box until 8 p.m. Tuesday. In-person voting will be held Tuesday at the county fairgrounds. RENOWNED SKI MAP ARTIST OFFERS HIS PERSPECTIVE ON PARK CITY’S RESORTS ELECTION, A-8 COLUMNS, A-14 STUDENTS ARE GLUED TO THE PRESIDENTIAL RACE, TOO THE EAGLES ARE HERE, RIGHT ON TIME, TOM CLYDE SAYS Park Record. The PA R K C I T Y, U TA H W W W. PA R K R E C O R D . C O M Sat/Sun/Mon/Tues, October 31-November 3, 2020 Serving Summit County since 1880 Olympic lift for gondola network? | Vol. 140 | No. 78 $1.00 Block the competition Picture ‘grim’ if virus trends aren’t reversed City signals interest in linking aerial transit to federal Games monies Health officials provide sobering warnings heading into winter as situation worsens in county, state JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record Park City leaders are interested in continuing talks about the prospects of building an aerial transit network and see there being the possibility for assistance with the funding should Salt Lake City and the wider region be awarded a Winter Olympics. Mayor Andy Beerman and the Park City Council on Thursday held a discussion about aerial transit, essentially a gondola system, that was preliminary in nature. The elected officials want staffers to continue to study the possibilities. A future Olympics was mentioned several times on Thursday. It was an intriguing point in a broader discussion and signals Park City’s leadership is weighing the financial opportunities a Games could bring. An Olympic region can enjoy a concentrated amount of funds from Washington in the years before a Games, as the host city and venue cities invest in transportation and infrastructure. The projects are usually seen as being needed in the communities on a long-term basis, but the Olympics can bring the ability to accomplish them on a tight timeline. Salt Lake City and the Olympic region have been selected as the U.S. candidate city to host a future Winter Olympics. It appears the Games of 2030 or 2034 are possibilities, but it is unclear when a decision will be made regarding which of them will be pursued. If Salt Lake City is selected, governments throughout the Olympic region will likely seek funds from Washington for a broad list of projects. It appears Park City leaders want to be ready with possibilities should a Games be awarded, potentially putting the community in a position to quickly move if funds are available. At least three of the members of the City Council mentioned the Olympic possibilities. None of them spoke at length about the Games, though. Officials see the Games as an opportunity to advance City Hall priorities like housing and transportation, typically high-dollar endeavors. Any financial assistance related to a Games would be expected to reduce the burden on the municipal government itself. The Olympic mentions on Thursday came as the mayor and City Council considered the idea of a gondola system that would be another option in the transit system. A gondola system like the one discussed would be an ambitious project that would link key locations in an effort to fight traffic in the community. Traffic has long been one of the chief concerns of Parkites with the complaints continuing even after officials have taken steps like greatly expanding the transit system over time. A City Hall consultant has researched a gondola system that would link Old Town, the Park City Mountain Resort base area, the Snow Park area of Deer Valley Resort and the planned location of an arts and culture district City Hall wants to develop along Kearns Please see Olympic, A-2 2 sections • 26 pages Classifieds .............................. B-6 Editorial................................ A-15 Restaurant Guide.................... B-9 Weather .................................. B-2 ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record meant people who had booked reservations for the holidays needed to decide whether to cancel them in recent days. Check-in dates for the holidays usually are staggered but typically increase in the several days around Christmas. “We’re concerned. I don’t want the trend to continue,” she said, adding that bookings for Thanksgiving are up from what is normal and there had not been cancellations for that holiday through the end of the workweek. There are communitywide concerns about the upcoming ski season, the first full one amid the spread of the sickness. The illness forced an early end to the 2019-2020 ski season as health officials attempted to stop the spread. It is expected that economic numbers will drop across a range of Park City industries this ski season, with the possibility businesses with ties to the ski industry will especially suffer. According to Sideris, bookings in December through Thursday dropped by 33% from the same period last year. The number of nights involved in the bookings was off by 21%. Revenue, though, rose by 6%, meaning those who made reservations wanted higher-priced units. The Park City Lodging cancellations for the holiday period could be an ominous sign since Soon after the initial shock of the pandemic began to wear off in the late spring, local health officials started warning about what might happen this winter. Many of the remedies they suggested to slow the spread of COVID-19, like social distancing and moving activities outside, are harder in the winter. But the real fear has been about what happens when the annual seasonal influenza surge is layered atop the hospital demands from the pandemic. Hospitals in the state are filling even as cold weather has only recently hit, and Summit County Health Director Rich Bullough used stark terms to describe the local COVID situation. “To me it means — and I’ll just be blunt about this — it means unless behaviors change, we’re in trouble,” Bullough said Thursday. “I grew up in Utah, I grew up loving winter. This is the only winter in my life I’m not looking forward to, because I’m very concerned about the direction we’re heading right now.” Bullough said that wearing masks, maintaining social distance, limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer and washing hands consistently are keys to keeping the virus at bay. He has also stressed the importance of getting a flu shot. Around 14% of COVID-19 tests in Summit County are coming back positive in a rolling seven-day average, Bullough said, and the virus is hitting the East Side just as hard as the Snyderville Basin when the case numbers are adjusted for population. “The hot spot related to current cases and increase in cases is in the Kamas Valley,” Bullough said. “This is not (only) a western Summit County issue.” He said there had been 189 new cases in western Summit County over the past two weeks, and 66 in eastern Summit County. On a per capita basis, 47% of new cases are occurring on the East Side. The South Summit School District is currently the hardest hit school district, he added. According to the state Department of Health, there were eight active cases in the district as of Thursday. The Park City Hospital retains capacity to treat patients, its medical director Wing Province said. The facility is accepting non-COVID, non-critically ill patients from other Intermountain hospitals to create more room to treat COVID patients at the five Intermountain hospitals that have been designated for that purpose. The Intermountain system has 23 hospitals, Province said, five of which have been designated to re- Please see Cancellations, A-2 Please see Picture, A-2 TANZI PROPST/PARK RECORD Park City senior Hayden Goodman (3) and junior Cassie Prior (1) jump to block a spike from Salem Hills’ Ryen Bradshaw during a match Wednesday evening. The Miners won a five-set thriller in their final match before the Class 5A state playoffs, which begin Tuesday. For coverage of the match, see page A-7. Lodging firm concerned as holiday cancellations grow It could be a sign visitors are hesitant with COVID surging in Utah and much of country JAY HAMBURGER The Park Record Park City Lodging, a prominent firm in the area’s vacation-rental industry, said this week it has received a string of reservation cancellations in recent days that were for the crucial holiday stretch between Christmas and New Year’s, an early signal that travelers are hesitating as the ski season approaches amid the continued spread of the novel coronavirus. Rhonda Sideris, the president of Park City Lodging, said in an interview the cancellations started last week, then continued into last weekend and into this week. Some of the recent cancellations involved larger-sized units, she said. Park City Lodging manages approximately 250 vacation rentals, making it one of the bellwethers of the local industry. Sideris said the recent cancellations coincided with a 60-day period offered by the online travel agency VRBO to cancel a reservation without penalty. The 60-day period Harrowing experience lingers with doctor He treated patients in New York during early stages of the pandemic ALEXANDER CRAMER The Park Record Dr. Wing Province was in New York City in April, part of a team who traveled to aid the city’s overburdened medical system at the peak of what has become the indelible image of the pandemic in America. Tractor trailers parked outside of hospitals, their refrigerators running to keep the bodies cold. Mass graves. People dying in hospital hallways with no bed available and not enough staff to serve them. As an emergency department doctor, Province is used to seeing death. But what he saw in New York City was something different, and with the way COVID-19 is spreading in Utah and hospitals here nearing capacity, he is cautioning the public to follow health guidelines to prevent similar circumstances unfolding here. “I saw and experienced things there that make you want to wish you could take your memories and put it in someone else’s mind who doesn’t believe that this is a legit disease, or the ‘scamdemic’ as they say, so they can recognize how horrible this can be on individuals or families,” said Province, the medical director at Park City Hospital. He served at one of the hardest hit emergency departments in Manhattan, he said, a hospital that received the nickname “Dunkirk” because of the number of bodies there. He recalled it as something like a war zone. “There’s a sight and sound and smell to COVID I’ll never forget. See people that are drowning but they’re not underwater, but they’re breathing like they’re underwater. Patients on a monitor, can hear their oxygen saturation levels going down. ... I can’t describe the smell but it’s the smell of near death,” he said. “And you have nurses and doctors who are stretched to the max. My medical director there, the doctor in charge of the whole emergency department, when I was there, she took her own life.” The situation in Utah isn’t anywhere near as dire, Province said, but there’s a building sense of urgency in the requests from health officials when they ask members of the public to wear masks, maintain social distance, avoid large groups and wash their hands often. Gov. Gary Herbert’s administration has effectively ordered a mask mandate in 23 of Utah’s 29 counties, though he has resisted calling Please see Experiences, A-2 COURTESY OF INTERMOUNTAIN HEALTHCARE Dr. Wing Province saw firsthand what happens when a hospital system is overrun by the COVID-19 pandemic when he volunteered to work in New York City in April. The medical director of Park City Hospital urges Utahns to take the coronavirus seriously. CORONAVIRUS TRACKER Summit County Utah Known cases: 1,458 Hospitalizations: 69 Deaths: 1 Known cases: 112,932 Hospitalizations: 5,395 Deaths: 601 DATA AS OF OCT. 30 SOURCE: UTAH DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH |